The Effects of Regulated Discretion on Police Referrals to Restorative Justice

The Nova Scotia Restorative Justice Program relies heavily on referrals from police who are authorized to refer a range of property and both violent and non-violent offences. Federal legislation and provincialprotocols guide referral decisions. Both are designed to ensure that police consider extra-judicial measures, including restorative justice. This article reports the findings ofa surveyof police officers on their views of restorative justice and the types of cases they consider appropriate for a referral. The findings confirm what other researchers have found about the types of cases police officers prefer to divert from mainstream criminal justice responses. Placed in the context of the Nova Scotia Restorative Justice Program, the current survey findings shed light on how efforts to structure discretion and decision-making will have limited effect

A Place at the Table and A Voice in the Hall: "Third Wave" Feminists in the Canadian Academy

This article discusses the findings of a survey of junior female academics in Canadian universities designed to help describe a cohort we thought would be linked through self-identification or ideology as "third wave" feminists. This work is an exploration of some of the ways junior women academics situate themselves within particular feminist labels and debates about feminism. Résumé Cet article discute des résultats d’un sondage de jeunes femmes académiques dans les universités canadiennes conçu pou aider à décrire une cohorte que nous pensions serait reliée par l’entremise d’auto-identification ou d’idéologie comme féministes de la "troisième vague." Ce travail est une exploration de quelques unes des façons dont les jeunes femmes académiques se situent parmi les étiquettes féministes particulières et fait le débat sur le féminisme

Imagining Success for a Restorative Approach to Justice: Implications for Measurement and Evaluation

Whether restorative justiceis successful, or not, is a complex question. Attempts to answer this question by practitioners, professionals, and scholars have often been bounded by common notions of success in standard criminal justice terms. The authors of this paper suggest that ifrestorative justice is properly understood in terms of its focus on relationship, success should be measured on new and different dimensions. This paper seeks to bring a relational imagination to the scholarly effort of capturing the essence ofrestorative justice and figuring out how to assess its successes and failures. The authors offer a foundation and agenda for future research and development of a relational approach to assessment

Plagiarism in second-language writing

Plagiarism is a broad and multidisciplinary field of study, and within second-language (L2) writing, research on the topic goes back to the mid-1980s. In this review article we first discuss the received view of plagiarism as a transgressive act and alternative understandings which have been presented in the L1 and L2 writing literature. We then survey and identify salient themes in the growing body of work relating to plagiarism, primarily from an L2 writing/applied linguistic perspective. These themes include terminological distinctions; views of the role of textual plagiarism in language learning and a writer’s development; a concern with students’ and teachers’ sometimes differing understanding of plagiarism; and disciplinary differences in perceptions of plagiarism. We review research into the role of the electronic media in changing orientations toward plagiarism, the potential role of culture as a cause of plagiarism in the work of L2 writers, and pedagogical approaches to guiding students away from plagiarism. Methodological issues in researching plagiarism are surveyed, and the article concludes by suggesting directions for future research

The Effects of Regulated Discretion on Police Referrals to Restorative Justice

The Nova Scotia Restorative Justice Program relies heavily on referrals from police who are authorized to refer a range of property and both violent and non-violent offences. Federal legislation and provincialprotocols guide referral decisions. Both are designed to ensure that police consider extra-judicial measures, including restorative justice. This article reports the findings ofa surveyof police officers on their views of restorative justice and the types of cases they consider appropriate for a referral. The findings confirm what other researchers have found about the types of cases police officers prefer to divert from mainstream criminal justice responses. Placed in the context of the Nova Scotia Restorative Justice Program, the current survey findings shed light on how efforts to structure discretion and decision-making will have limited effect

MOTIVATING LAW STUDENTS TO WRITE LIKE LAWYERS: CONTEXTUALISING LEARNING IN THE “WRITE IT LIKE A LAWYER” CASE STUDY

This article explores the incorporation of contextualisation as a teaching method in legal writing programmes in South African law schools. The article argues that teaching legal writing using contextualisation can take students on a transformative journey as they learn how to write like lawyers. This will enhance student comprehension and motivation, inspiring them to engage critically with the learning materials and encouraging them to transform both on a personal level and in the context of practising law within South Africa’s constitutional dispensation. This concept is examined through the lens of a case study on a legal writing programme, the “Write it Like a Lawyer” [WiLL] programme implemented at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, in 2019. The article begins by emphasising the importance of critical thinking and student motivation when teaching students how to write persuasively. It then goes on to describe the significance of transformative, values-based teaching in South Africa today. The article concludes with recommendations for further research that could be carried out to inform the implementation of future legal writing programmes in South African law schools

Motivating Large Groups of Law Students to Think Critically and Write Like Lawyers: Part 2

This two-part article explores two central themes – student motivation and critical thinking – as they relate to teaching law students how to write like lawyers. The article examines these two themes through the lens of a case study on a legal writing programme, the “Write it Like a Lawyer” (WiLL) programme implemented at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban in 2019. The design of the programme draws upon three distinct teaching principles – constructive alignment, learner participation and conversations in feedback. This article argues that by applying these principles when teaching legal writing, law students are motivated to engage critically with legal materials, thereby enabling them to produce persuasive, logical, coherent legal writing, containing well-substantiated arguments. The article is in two parts. Part 1 began by focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of the main themes of the article as well as the teaching principles applied in the WiLL programme. It then went on to describe the significance of the central themes to a legal writing programme such as WiLL. Part 2 of this article moves on to a discussion of the three teaching principles – constructive alignment, learner participation (including blended-learning techniques) and conversations in feedback – and the manner in which these principles were used to achieve the desired outcomes in the WiLL programme. Finally, the second part of the article evaluates the relative success of employing the three principles in order to further student motivation and critical thinking in the programme. The article concludes with recommendations for improvements that could be implemented in future such programmes

Facing the challenge of improving the legal writing skills of educationally disadvantaged law students in a South African Law School

Many first-year students in the School of Law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College, who have been disadvantaged by a poor primary and secondary education, exhibit poor legal writing skills. Over a period of four years, in order to address this urgent need for legal writing instruction, the School of Law introduced two successive legal writing interventions. The first intervention was the Concise Writing Programme, followed by the Integrated Skills in Context Programme. The Concise Writing Programme focused on English writing skills and grammar in the hope that first-year law students would be able to transfer these generic writing skills to the more specific legal discourse within which they were learning to operate. The Law School reviewed the success of this initial programme and found that students who took part in the programme not only lacked the motivation to learn generic English writing skills, but that they also did not find it easy to transfer these skills to the more specific legal writing environment. The Law School then implemented a second legal writing intervention – The Integrated Skills in Context Programme. This programme acknowledged the fact that legal writing has a multi-faceted nature, encompassing legal analysis and application, as well as logical sequencing and argument, all of which could not be taught in a vacuum, particularly when most of the student base was largely unfamiliar with any form of legal discourse and many had English as a second language. This paper recognises that there is no silver bullet to improving the legal writing skills of these students. The reality is that it will take hard work as well as financial incentives to make a difference to these students' legal writing skills. Our students need intensive one-on-one attention by qualified academics, and this means that those doing the instruction must be recognised and adequately compensated.Keywords: Legal writing skills; South African Law School; generic English writing skills; academic disadvantage; legal discourse; legal analysis and applicatio