The Marlee Kline Lecture in Social Justice

The Importance of Creativity, Empathy and Imagination to Legal Education in Canada

Over the past 40 years legal education in Canada has undergone moments of sustained critical review. Much of this scholarship is focused on a perceived divide in legal education between those who see the work of law schools as akin to trade school aimed at developing the “practice ready lawyer” and those who see the role of legal education as that of graduating students with strong critical legal and social science skills, legal advocates who could, but who might not ever practice law. This presentation works to bridge these important and intersecting questions about the role and the value of legal education, not as oppositional, but as two pillars amongst many in the work of access to justice. 

This paper, honouring the legacy of Marlee Kline, examines the role that embodied learning plays in the lived work of legal advocates. I will argue that the skills of 21st century legal practice, particularly with respect to equity, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism and decolonization are best developed in classrooms that are dynamic, problem-based, experiential and that draw on arts-based practice. I aim to leave our audience rethinking the role that critical pedagogies should play in the development of humane professionals and the impact that will have on the evolution of law itself.

*This event is eligible for 1 hour of Law Society of British Columbia CPD credit. 

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Speaker

Gillian Calder is a Professor, and former Associate Dean, at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law where she has been teaching Constitutional Law, Family Law and related seminars from feminist, queer and anti-colonialist perspectives since July 2004. Gillian’s research has focused on questions of legal imagination, theories of constitutional law, law's impact on our understanding of the family and family formation, performativity and storytelling. In particular, she is keenly interested in critical legal pedagogy and the role creativity, ethical imagination and empathy should play in a legal education. Her recent work has focused on law and emotion, where she is weaving connections between teaching, embodiment and social location. Gillian was Marlee’s student (UBC Law 1995-1997) and she is grateful for the opportunity to connect the learning she did in Marlee’s classrooms to her research and teaching today.