Teaching about justice

Re: Are our judges being taught by social warriors?, Barbara Kay, March 21 Barbara Kay suggests law schools should teach only legal “logic” without getting involved in notions of “justice.” This sounds impressive, but is ( a) literally impossible and ( b) as such, misguided as a goal.

Legal education engages normative values — inevitably ( even if for the most part only by uncritical acceptance of the status quo). ( Ontario’s Court of Appeal observed “education ( i s) never morally neutral,” in a recent case about a parent who wanted notice, among other things, whenever their child might be exposed to “values” at school). Law schools should grapple with that, explicitly.

Society is well- ser ved when l egal reasoning is transparent: that is why judicial decisions — by far the biggest component of “judicial education” — are published publicly.

Child- custody l aw, f or example, has evolved over the years, as a result of ongoing “conversations” between judges and litigants and evidence, so that today the law is clear that children are usually best served when both parents continue to parent after separation ( provided they are good parents). Where the “line” is will continue to be the subject of an ongoing conversation. But thankfully we can learn a lot about our judges’ ongoing judicial education by reading the law ( for example, on the public database CanLii).