Nigel Duncan

Black Box, Pandora's Box or Virtual Toolbox? An Experiment in a Journal's Transparent Peer Review on the Web

Abstract We all accept that peer review is an essential part of journal publication in all disciplines, but almost everyone is agreed that it could be improved. This article describes an experiment in peer review with a legal education journal The Law Teacher. It reports on the process, and describes ways in which the process can be improved for the future.

Preparing Ethical Lawyers: A Prescription and a Practical Proposal

This report proposes a method of making progress in developing the ethics project in legal education. It presents the findings of research into how ethics is currently taught in a number of different jurisdictions and then considers ways in which an effective community of practice might be developed. This involves establishing effective methods of dissemination and collaboration amongst all those interested in developing ethical legal professionals. The report explores ways of using Web 2.0 technologies to achieve these goals. Finally, it presents a new website designed to enable educators, practitioners, regulators and judges to contribute to a developing resource bank and to engage in collaboration and discussion in improving our efforts at developing ethical lawyers.

Pro bono legis doctorum:* Forty years of the law teacher

THIS JOURNAL came into existence in 1967 as The Journal of the Association of Law Teachers. This remained its title until 1971, when the current title: The Law Teacher was substituted. The original title, however, has continued to be used as a subsidiary title and can be found in this issue at the head of the

Unfair dismissal: procedure, fairness and compensation

This article addresses those provisions of Employment Act (EA) 2002 (implemented on 1 October 2004) which introduce statutory disciplinary and grievance procedures. In particular, it will consider the impact of the new provisions on traditional approaches to procedural unfairness by employers, the doctrine established by the House of Lords in Polkey v A E Dayton Services and the calculation of compensation in these cases. A significant recent decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, handed down by Elias P. has answered a number of questions about the meaning of statutory language which is described as ‘elusively vague’ by the President of the EAT. Inevitably, further questions remain.

Learning professional ethics – an international perspective

This report addresses work done at the 4th Worldwide Conference of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE), held at Cordoba, in 2006. GAJE, established in 1996, is an international alliance of legal educators and NGOs concerned with promoting issues of social justice through legal and community education.