Amicus Curiae The Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies Inside ... Special issue: ‘Reflecting on Blackstone’s Tower’ Introduction Read more on pag e 311 Articles Read more on pag e 314 Notes Read more on pag e 501 News and Events Read more on pag e 523 Contributors’ Profiles Read more on pag e 526 Visual Law Read more on pag e 531 Series 2, Vol 2, No 3 310 Amicus Curiae CONTENTS Special Issue: ‘Reflecting on Blackstone’s Tower’ Guest Editors: Fiona Cownie & Emma Jones Editor’s Introduction Notes Michael -Palmer . 311 The Independent Panel’s Report on Special Issue Articles Judicial Review (CP 407) and the Government’s Consultation Document Blackstone’s Tower in Context on Judicial Review Reform (CP 408) Fiona-Cownie & Emma-Jones Patrick -J- Birkinshaw . 501 . 314 University of London Refugee Law Twining’s Tower and the Challenges of Clinic Online Launch Making Law a Humanistic Discipline Carl -Stychin . 521 David-Sugarman .. 334 The Tower News and Events Completion of IALS Anthony-Bradney . 352 Transformation Project . 523 Rutland Revisited: Reflections on Georg Schwarzenberger Prize . the Relationships between the Legal 524 Academy and the Legal Profession IALS Library . 524 Steven-Vaughan . 371 Selected Upcoming Events . 524 Experiencing English Law Schools: Contributors’ Profiles . 526 The Student Perspective Visual Law Jessica-Guth, Fiona-Cownie China’s Three Internet Courts & Emma-Jones . .. 390 Yang-Lin . 531 Building Access Routes into Blackstone’s Tower: Including Disability Perspectives in the Liberal Law School Amicus Curiae Contacts Abigail-Pearson .. 406 Editor: Professor Michael Palmer, SOAS and IALS, University of Should We Rethink the Purposes of London the Law School? A Case for Decolonial Thought in Legal Pedagogy Production Editor: Marie Selwood Foluke-Adebisi . 428 Email address for all enquiries: [email protected] Gender, Sexuality and the Law School: (Re)thinking Blackstone’s By post: Eliza Boudier Tower with Queer and Feminist Amicus Curiae, Charles Clore House, Theory 17 Russell Square, London WC1B Chris-Ashford . 450 5DR Blackstone’s Tower Revisited: Legal If you would like to contribute an Academic Wellbeing, Marketization Article or short Note to a future and the Post-pandemic Law School issue, please visit the Amicus Curiae webpages to view the Style Guide Richard-Collier . 474 and submission information. Series 2, Vol 2, No 3 Introduction 311 EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION MICHAEL PALMER IALS and SOAS, University of London elcome to the third issue and an activist reformer’ (Baxi Wof the second volume of & Ors 2015: vii-viii). I first met the new series of Amicus Curiae. William at a workshop, kindly We appreciate the support that organized by his UCL colleague contributors, readers and others Professor William Butler, held in have given the journal, assisting late 1988 at Peking University Law the progress that the relaunched School, where he introduced his journal has made. audience to Alice in Wonderland’s Much of this issue consists Cheshire Cat. Understanding the of a collection of essays, kindly Cat, he explained, will helps us all organized and edited by Professors appreciate better the fugitive nature Fiona Cownie and Emma Jones, of evidence law. The Cat keeps which explore questions about disappearing and fading away, so that sometimes English legal education and one could see the whole its development in the light of body, sometimes only a Professor William Twining’s seminal head, sometimes only a study delivered as the Forty-sixth vague outline and sometimes nothing at all, so that Alice Hamlyn Lectures and published was never sure whether or as Blackstone’s Tower: The English not he was there or, indeed, Law School (1994; see also Twining whether he existed at all. 1997). An earlier and more general In practice, our rules of appreciation of Professor Twining evidence appear to be rather like that (2006: 211-212). and his work offered the observation that he ‘has been (still is in my This insight was well-understood view) the most influential figure and appreciated by a local in British legal education over the audience in Beijing that was last half century’ (Arthurs 2011: more accustomed to carefully 3). A subsequent characterization regimented lectures delivered in described him as ‘an intellectual the spirit of constructing a perfect who is a pre-eminent Renaissance socialist legal system with Chinese man among legal scholars: a characteristics. Our workshop was bricoleur … [who has made an] … part of an ‘academic tour’ of China outstanding contribution to legal involving visits to a range of local education as a pedagogist, an legal institutions, and Professor innovative educational practitioner Twining was quick to grasp the Spring 2021 312 Amicus Curiae importance of the point that Upendra Baxi, Francis Deng ‘people’s mediation committees’ and Yash Ghai. His unwavering did (as they still do) a lot more commitment to legal education work than the ‘people’s courts’. and its reform, and to his role as Back in the UK, he gave much kind a mentor, institution-builder and support and encouragement to supporter of younger scholars Professor Simon Roberts and I in (Lacey 2019), continues to motivate the development of the University us ‘more than somewhat’. of London Intercollegiate LLM The Special Issue is supple- programme of (very likely), the first mented by an important Note degree course in the UK dedicated contributed by Professor Patrick to ‘alternative dispute resolution’. Birkinshaw on the findings of This innovation has been ‘blamed’ the Panel launched in July 2020 from time to time for facilitating to consider options for changes the introduction of Lord Woolf’s to the process of judicial review access to civil justice reforms of through an Independent Review of the late 1990s (see also Twining Administrative Law. The Report of 1993). Subsequently, in a volume the Panel (CP 407) was published celebrating the SOAS Law School’s in March 2021. The Review’s Fiftieth birthday and its continuing findings have been responded to by engagement with comparative the Ministry of Justice in Judicial legal studies, Professor Twining Review Reform: The Government contributed an insightful essay Response to the Independent Review that argued for a more global and of Administrative Law (CP 408), inclusive vision for comparative and Professor Birkinshaw, inter law—one which would free itself alia, points to a number of issues of the dominance of the ‘country in the response of the Government and western’ tradition (Twining as well as the Review.1 2000). Over the past two decades, his inspirational scholarship has In addition, Professor Carl Stychin, continued to flourish, drawing Director of IALS, contributes a not only on his early intellectual short Note on the University of engagement with the work of London’s new Refugee Law Centre. Hart, Collingwood, Llewelyn and This body provides legal advice for Mentschikoff but also the voices refugee clients on a pro bono basis, of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, is based on a model of Clinical Amartya Sen, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Legal Education, and is located in 1 Professor Birkinshaw is the author of a number of important studies including (2020) European Public Law: The Achievement and the Brexit Challenge Alphen aan den Rijn: Wolters Kluwer; (2010) Freedom of Information: The Law, the Practice and the Ideal 4th edn Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Law in Context); and with Mike Varney (2019) Government and Information Rights: The Law Relating to Access, Disclosure and their Regulation 5th edn London: Bloomsbury Professional. Series 2, Vol 2, No 3 Introduction 313 Charles Clore House. The Clinic is collaboration between academics and supported by the Central University non-academics in the field. and by ten of the University’s The Visual Law contribution in this Member Institutions, operates issue is offered by Lin Yang, a young in partnership with Macfarlanes scholar who is currently working and Clifford Chance, two leading on online dispute resolution and its international law firms based in regulation, primarily with reference to London, and provides opportunities developments in the People’s Republic for lawyers to undertake pro bono of China. His note introduces us to work. The new initiative seeks China’s three innovative online courts also to bring together the shared and explains their growing role in the interests of refugee law scholars PRC’s justice system. and practitioners, and to encourage References Arthurs, H W (2011) ‘Introduction to the Symposium in Honour of William Twining’ 18(1-2) International Journal of the Legal Profession 3-5. Baxi, Upendra, Christopher McCrudden & Abdul Paliwala (2015) Law’s Ethical, Global, and Theoretical Contexts: Essays in Honour of William Twining Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lacey, Nicola (2019) ‘Forward’ in William Twining Jurist in Context: A Memoir Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Twining, William (1993) ‘Alternatives to What? Theories of Litigation, Procedure and Dispute Settlement in Anglo-American Jurisprudence: Some Neglected Classics’ 56(3) Modern Law Review 380-392. Twining, William (1994) Blackstone’s Tower: The English Law School London: Sweet & Maxwell. Twining, William (1997) Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline Oxford: Clarendon Press & New York: Oxford University Press. Twining, William (2000) ‘Comparative Law and Legal Theory: The Country and Western Tradition’ in Ian Edge (ed) Comparative Law in Global Perspective: Essays in Celebration of the Fiftieth