Clark D. Cunningham

Affirmative Action: Comparative Policies and Controversies

Although the phrase ‘affirmative action’ apparently originated in the United States, the practice of providing benefits or preferential treatment to individuals based on their membership of a disadvantaged group can be found in a wide variety of forms in many other countries, most notably India, which developed affirmative programs as early as 1927. Other countries that have more recently developed affirmative action programs that contrast in significant ways with US programs include Australia, Israel, and South Africa. Despite the potential benefits that derive from cross-national study of such differing approaches to comparable problems, comparative scholarship on this topic has been quite limited, although the final years of the 1990s saw a significant increase in published work in this area. After surveying this scholarship, the balance of this article will provide a comparative analysis of three particular issues: justifications for affirmative action, selection of beneficiary groups, and determination of individual eligibility.

“How can we give up our child?” A practice‐based approach to teaching legal ethics

This article builds upon the work of the philosopher Alasdair McIntyre to suggest that a practice-based approach is not only a valid method for teaching values but indeed essential. Such an approach is also urged by the recent critique of American legal education published by the Carnegie Foundation and validated by extensive social science research on moral development. The Four Component Model of moral behavior developed by James Rest and applied to professional education by Muriel Bebeau is then applied to an example taken from the author’s law school course on professional responsibility, in which he uses written and audiovisual documentary materials in combination with simulation exercises, drawing from the well-known “Baby Jessica” adoption case. The article was an invited contribution to a special issue on the Values of Common Law Education of the Law Teacher: the International Journal of Legal Education, which is the official journal of the Association of Law Teachers (United Kingdom).