Letters to a Law Student Who Cares About Justice

The following notes respond to a prompt asking legal academics at ANU to write a short message to law students who chose to study law because they cared about justice. For such students, law school can be a disillusioning and alienating place. The intention of these pieces is to provide some assistance or consolation to students feeling this way, and to be a platform for honestly discussing some of the issues with legal education.

We hope these messages will be the beginning of an ongoing conversation. We are inviting responses from law students to these prompts. We would love to hear more about your experiences of law school and your reactions to these pieces. Did anything resonate with you? Did anything anger you? Were any of these assurances convincing, or is law itself inherently inadequate to meet societal injustice? What do you want legal academics to know about your experiences at law school?

Please email responses to demosjournal@gmail.com.

Dr Asmi Wood, Indigenous Peoples and the Law, International Law and Legal Education

Like many of our law students I too was once a young idealistic person who wanted to ‘make a difference.’ This aspiration was, however, framed in the inexperienced and groundless certainty of a young person, and it was probably a vague, non-specific hope, imagined in a fuzzy stream of consciousness that was bound to never ever be realised. However as we say in Torres Strait Islander law and lore, if the heart is right then the mind and body will surely follow. Consequently, now, as a not-so-young-lawyer, I remain, if not still idealistic, then perhaps still wanting to ‘make a difference for the better’ if not to the world at large, then more realistically to ‘my world’, whatever that might mean from day to day.

Historically this ‘world’ has been damaged by years of oppression, exploitation, neglect and discrimination. This extreme results in a world view that ‘never expects’ justice to be done, so is never disappointed, yet this also creates a debilitating inertia that does little or nothing positive to help ameliorate this situation. However, as with many indigenous people, I eventually realised that the causal link in this chain of intergenerational damage must individually be broken and this is a battle that can be taken head on and won. I chose the smaller battles, of trying to do what was better in the circumstances.

Yes, you are unlikely to make a difference to every child who is suffering but you can bring your legal skills and financial resources to make a difference to a single child or a battered person needing legal help. Even if we can’t help every asylum seeker or internally displaced person in the world, we can help a single asylum seeker to navigate the complexity of the law and language hurdles that they will face.

And for me? I know that I can’t help every Indigenous child gain the benefits of a Western education. But with the tremendous support of people like the law Deans at the ANU, our current VC and the remarkable strength and wisdom of people like Aunty Anne Martin of our Tjabal Centre and Professor Dodson of our NCIS, I can help young and not so young Indigenous people to avail the fabulous resources of our university and to realise that tertiary education is in many cases a very realistic and achievable goal.

If I were to articulate what I found useful as a yardstick in life, it is, that the sense of hopelessness is the true enemy of our species and that every positive deed, if thoughtfully and purposefully directed to the problems near at hand, can and most likely will, make a difference.

If shame is ever a motiving force, then one should feel ashamed, not because they could not complete the thousand mile journey but only that one never took that first crucial step. At this initial stage, it is crucial that you articulate what you consider ‘good and right’, and develop skills which you can then use to help you ‘improve your world’, and then set your heart firmly on using this knowledge and associated skills to do what is best for our broader community. Your mind and body will follow in time!

Justine Poon, Refugee Law and Legal Theory

Studying law can offer moments of great joy, in seeing an invisible system materialise through your developing understanding of it. In a system composed mainly of words, there is power in being able to articulate and advocate for how law should be. It can also be cause for despair when it seems that this all-encompassing system is at odds with your values and indifferent to questions of justice.

This tension creates an uncertainty that is necessary to do anything that is against the grain. The knowledge that you gain at law school plus uncertainty breeds hope: ‘This is the way things have been…but maybe it can be different’. ‘The law says x…but what are the reasons for that and is it just and should it be?’

Uncertainty is the impetus to explore the deeper structures of legal (and social and political) precedents and to search for the arguments that would be effective in making the changes that you want. It is also a way of staying somewhat distant and immune from the pressure to be doing or studying law in a particular way or working in particular places – you can take up those opportunities, but you can retain a healthy ambivalence instead of fully subscribing to the view that this is the one and only way to think about law and to do legal work.

To temper the discomfort of uncertainty, it is worth keeping a reflective journal in which you think about how what you are learning and doing reflects on your developing sense of values. This will help you keep track of the bigger picture and reorientate you in moments when you feel disconnected from your values.

Finally, good luck. It’s going to be a winding and weird road but you are going to do wonderful things. I recommend the book: Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

Dr Anthony Hopkins, Criminal Law and Indigenous Peoples and the Law

Many of us come to law school because we have begun to see injustice, in our lives and in the lives of others, or even in our exploitative relationship with the earth. And we see that law is there, everywhere, entwined with these injustices, acting to validate or invalidate the distribution and exercise of power. With openness to possibility, we come to law school to learn about the law and to work with the law in the pursuit of justice. This motivation is clear and empowering, at least in the beginning.

Yet for many students, the experience of law school is one of learning rules – an often painstaking examination of legal categories, causes of action and elements. If we are honest about it, the idea of justice can get lost in a seeming reverence for the rules themselves. Knowledge of the law can come to define success for the law student, rather than the extent to which a student realises the justice to which the use of law, and law reform, can be put. This risks invalidating the core motivation that may have drawn a student to the law in the first place. Dissolution and alienation can follow.

What advice would I give, then, for the student of injustice?

Here it is easiest to reflect on my own experience. On arrival at law school, my concern was with the gross level of inequality existing in Australian society. I quickly found a focal point in the intersection between the criminal law and the experience of Indigenous Australians. It was with the failure of the criminal law to truly understand that the injustices of the past continue in the present, reinforced each day by our criminal justice system. This drew me to undertake a legal placement at the Aboriginal Legal Aid Service in Central Australia. There I found lawyers whose values I shared, whose motivation was the struggle against injustice and who used their knowledge of the law for their clients in this struggle. I met Aboriginal Field Officers whose generosity of spirit helped me come to understand the pride of their people, and the power of connection to country and kin. They taught me to work not just for people, but with them, as an equal, however different our lives might be. In this work, knowledge of the rules mattered. It mattered to those whose lives were caught up in those rules, and the intersection of life and law mattered as a foundation from which to call for change.

So, when dissolution threatens, as it will in law school – and in your work with the law as a graduate, wherever that may be – my advice is that you reflect on your deepest motivation and remain true to that. Continue to seek the revolution. But, also seek out opportunities to put your legal knowledge into action. The experience of working with and for people, or the planet, in the pursuit of justice is fundamentally empowering. Keep the justice question with you – keep asking it – and remind yourself that law is there and your knowledge of it matters.