Free Hands and Minds: Pioneering Australian Legal Scholars

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Peter Brett (19181975), Alice Erh-Soon Tay (19342004) and Geoffrey Sawer (19101996) are key, yet largely overlooked, members of Australias first community of legal scholars. This book is a critical study of how their ideas and endeavours contributed to Australias discipline of law and the first Australian legal theories. It examines how three marginal figures a Jewish man (Brett), a Chinese woman (Tay), and a war orphan (Sawer) rose to prominence during a transformative period for Australian legal education and scholarship. Drawing on in-depth interviews with former colleagues and students, extensive archival research, and an appraisal of their contributions to scholarship and teaching, this book explores the three professors international networks and broader social and historical milieux. Their pivotal leadership roles in law departments at the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, and the Australian National University are also critically assessed. Ranging from local experiences and the concerns of a nascent Australian legal academy to the complex transnational phenomena of legal scholarship and theory, Free Hands and Minds makes a compelling case for contextualising law and legal culture within society. At a time of renewed crisis in legal education and research in the common law world, it also offers a vivid, nuanced and critical account of the enduring liberal foundations of Australias discipline of law.

Reviews

[W]hile it is unquestionably a work of impressive scholarship, it is also a timely meditation on the role of legal education and the discipline of law in Australia Free Hands and Minds makes compelling claims about the important place of Australian law schools in our society a provocative and really masterful work but just as importantly, a terrific read. * Professor Jan McDonald, University of Tasmania, Australia *
A superb contribution to legal life writing and the transnational history of legal education and scholarship. Barties accomplishment is to recover the lives, contributions and times of three very different marginal figures who played a leading role in the broadening of academic law in Australia. One of the many virtues of this wonderfully novel book is the way that it illuminates the relationship between their scholarly activity, politics and the growth of the discipline of law; the importance of international networks of legal scholars embracing America, Australia and Britain; the variety among "progressive" legal scholars; and the significance of gender. In the process, Bartie offers vital insights, while highlighting some of the intellectual, institutional and moral confines of the discipline of Law. * David Sugarman, Professor Emeritus, Lancaster University Law School *

Author Bio

Susan Bartie is Lecturer in Law at the University of Tasmania, Australia.