Head, Michael --- "Law, Social Change and Social Justice" [2001] UWSLawRw 1; (2001) 5(1) University of Western Sydney Law Review 3

• Law, Social Change And Social Justice

---

INTRODUCTION

LAW, SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL
JUSTICE

This special, inaugural edition of the University of Western Sydney Law Review, dedicated to the theme of "Law, social change and social justice in the 21st Century", arose from a series of public addresses convened under the same title by the University of Western Sydney Law Faculty at the Campbelltown campus, during 2000.

By publishing the series as our first edition, we have chosen to underscore many of the values that are embodied within the new, unified University of Western Sydney Law School, established this year.

The public address series posed critical questions. We asked leading figures in various branches of the legal fraternity to address the relevance and accessibility of the law under conditions of:

•	Rapid technological and economic change
•	Ever greater globalisation of economic and social life
•	Increasingly glaring social inequality.

The topics were ambitious. Among the questions raised were: "Whither Human Rights?", "Can the Law Deliver Social Justice?" and "What has Happened to Legal Aid?" Other lectures tackled far-reaching issues: "Consumers and Class Actions", "Civil Liberties Under Threat" and "Law Schools and Their Communities". Two focussed specifically on the social role of the courts and the legal profession: "Should Major Law Firms Have a Social Conscience?" and "Why do Judges Make Law?"

The speakers included judges of the High Court and Federal Court, prominent legal practitioners and leading law teachers, as well as a social scientist.

The public addresses were delivered monthly, on Wednesday evenings, to audiences that included university and secondary students, academics, school teachers, community legal centre staff, lawyers and members of the general public. Each speaker responded to questions and discussion, which sometimes continued far longer than their address.

Campbelltown was a highly appropriate venue for the series. Sydney's western suburbs, with their high levels of social disadvantage, young populations and substantial immigrant communities, present important challenges to the legal system. The series is testimony to the UWS Law School's vision to serve and relate to the community in which it is based.

It also highlighted our Community Law Program, which enables UWS students to major in Community Law, covering courses such as Immigration and Refugee Law, Social Security Law, Human Rights and Civil Liberties, Family Law, Anti-Discrimination and Jurisprudence.

In the Law School, we take pride in providing a law course that is relevant not only to the business world, but also to the needy and to ordinary working people, who too often face a legal system that is far beyond their reach financially and where all the dices are loaded in favour of the rich and powerful.

This volume presents the papers in the order in which they were given, and largely as they were delivered. Minimal editing has been performed - in some cases, references have been added - with a view to allowing the lectures to be judged as they were intended, as contributions to discussion on some of the major issues facing law and society in the new century.

Peter Cashman was the first participant, taking as his theme "Consumers and Class Actions". He outlined the historical development of class actions, both in the United States and Australia, reviewed some of the main controversies surrounding their rise and sought to assess their significance and value as a means of consumer redress against corporate power.

Peter Cashman is one of the best-known class action lawyers in Australia, now General Counsel at Maurice Blackburn Cashman and national president of the Australian Plaintiff Lawyers Association. He was the Commissioner jointly in charge of the Australian Law Reform Commission Reference on Class Actions and Founding Director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

Michael Kirby gave the second address, seeking to answer the question: "Whither Human Rights?" Speaking from personal experience in the battle to defend basic rights, he observed that the definition of human rights has broadened considerably over the past few decades in several fields, including sexuality, privacy and the human genome, and engaged in some informed speculation about the developments to come in the years ahead. The judge concluded with a plea for more citizens to stand up against "irrationality and injustice".

Justice Kirby has been on the High Court of Australia since 1996. He is one of Australia’s longest serving judges, having been first appointed in 1974 as a Deputy President of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. He also served as foundation Chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission from 1975 to 1984 and has held numerous positions in international agencies, including OECD, WHO, UNESCO, ILO, UNDP, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Global Commission on AIDS.

Tom Campbell delivered the third public address, seeking to answer the question: "Can the Law Deliver Social Justice?" Somewhat contentiously, he defended two central theses. The first was that moral desert should be regarded as an essential element of justice, eschewing more egalitarian propositions. The second was that governments, not courts, should be the arbiter of social justice and that, therefore, Australia was better off without a bill of rights.

Professor Campbell is an internationally-noted author on equality, social justice and the law. His books include The Left and Rights (1983), Justice (1988 and 2000) and The Legal Theory of Ethical Positivism (1996). A former Dean of the Law Faculty at the Australian National University, where he continues to teach, he was previously Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stirling.

In some respects, the fourth lecture, given by Ronald Sackville, took a similar view to Professor Campbell's. Posing the question, "Why do judges make law?" and subtitled, "Some aspects of judicial law making", the lecture was a closely-argued case for judges to exercise caution, and observe certain guidelines, in exercising their power, widely acknowledged today, to make law. The judge maintained that, while the judiciary had a responsibility to replenish the common law's approach to contemporary challenges, judges should generally leave law reform to parliament.

Justice Sackville has been a judge of the Federal Court of Australia since 1994. He was formerly Professor of Law (1972-1985) and Dean of the Faculty of Law (1979-1981) at the University of New South Wales. He was Commissioner for Law and Poverty on the Australian Government Commission of Inquiry into Poverty (1973-1975); Chairman of the South Australian Royal Commission into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs (1979-1981); and Chairman of the New South Wales Law Reform Commission (1981-1984). After practising at the bar from 1985, he chaired the Commonwealth Access to Justice Advisory Committee, which presented its report, Access to Justice: An Action Plan, in 1994.

The fifth event in the series was a forum entitled "Civil Liberties Under Threat?" Two active participants in the field, Tim Anderson and David Grace, presented a disturbing picture of substantial erosions of legal rights, the boosting of police powers and selective policing directed against working class areas. They raised serious concerns about the misuse of police power and decisions by governments to effectively reverse the presumption of innocence.

Dr Tim Anderson is a lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney. He also guest lectures in the areas of justice, rights and penology, was Secretary of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties from 1997-99, and has written or co-authored six books on the criminal justice system, prisons, civil rights and self-advocacy. David Grace QC is one of Victoria's leading civil liberties lawyers. The son of Holocaust survivors, he established his own legal practice in 1977, and has appeared in many landmark cases in the High Court and State and Territory Supreme Courts. He was awarded the 1996 Pro Bono Advocate's Award by the Victorian Law Foundation and the Public Interest Law Clearing House for services to the community and the advancement of civil liberties. He has been Chairman of the Criminal Law Section, Law Institute of Victoria, since 1994 and Director of the Australian Advocacy Institute since 1997.

"What has Happened to Legal Aid?" was the title of the sixth public address, delivered by Susan Armstrong. The speaker traced the emergence of a national legal aid system in Australia in the 1970s and the subsequent erosion of that system. Nevertheless, she argued that Australia had fared better than the United States, Britain or Canada, whose legal aid networks she examined by way of comparison, and pointed to the establishment of community legal centres as an achievement.

As Research Director of the Law and Poverty Commission, and Convenor of Law and Social Justice Committee of the Australian Council of Social Services, Susan Armstrong was heavily involved in the development of Australia's current system of legal aid. As the Foundation Director of the South Australian Legal Services Commission she subsequently had an opportunity to put those policies into practice. She is now a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of NSW.

The seventh speaker in the series, Neil Rees, delivered a systematic and critical examination of the role of law schools, under the title, "Law Schools and Their Communities". After reviewing Australia's proliferation of law schools over the past two decades, he argued for a broader conception of their social functions and for more active participation by their members in public and media debates over law and social justice.

As a student at Monash University in the early 1970s, Professor Rees helped set up one of the first free legal advice and assistance services in Australia, catering for those unable to afford lawyers. He later served as a member of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal before being appointed Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Newcastle, where he led the creation of a clinical legal education program, involving students and staff in taking test cases and meeting the needs of local people.

In the final public address, Harland Koops sought to answer the question: "Should Major Law Firms Have a Social Conscience?" The speaker examined the rise of large law firms and argued that they are uniquely placed to help meet a series of challenges to democratic values, including unequal access to legal services, the undermining of civil liberties and worsening social inequality. He concluded that social conscience should move major firms to use their power and influence to protect against encroachment upon society's democratic foundations.

Harland Koops, a partner in the Sydney firm, Henry Davis York, has been involved in complex commercial litigation, including leading High Court cases. Earlier he was awarded the university medal for law at the University of New South Wales and worked in Chicago on securities fraud and criminal appeal cases.

Michael Head

Editor