UAlberta Faculty of Law Professor Peter Sankoff at Bond University, Australia, July 2013Professor Peter Sankoff recently returned from a busy five-week trip to Australia and New Zealand. A trip "back home" of sorts, as Professor Sankoff lived in New Zealand for ten years before moving to the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta, the visit involved several different components, including a week of teaching, a number of workshops, a keynote address at the Australian Animal Studies Conference, and, finally, a book launch.
Professor Sankoff began his trip in Auckland, where he taught a five day intensive seminar entitled "Comparative Themes in Evidence Law", a course that explored the way evidence laws are currently evolving in Canada and New Zealand, with the objective of giving students a richer understanding of evidentiary principles more generally. The course was held as part of the University of Auckland LL.M graduate programme, and examined the way in which the two countries are attacking long-standing problems in the law of evidence, including restricting the trial judge's discretion to exclude, framing evidence to the jury, the hearsay rule and other matters. The class included students from New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Norway.
While in Auckland, Professor Sankoff also ran two workshops for members of the Law Faculty. The first focused on experiential learning in the classroom and the way it could be used effectively to provide alternative forms of assessment for students. The second - which was repeated the following week at Bond University in Australia - involved his work on Evidence Capsules and the "flipped" classroom, for which he recently received a Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund grant from the University of Alberta. The workshop was well received, with several members of the Auckland faculty expressing an interest in experimenting with the new technology in coming years.
Professor Peter Sankoff's keynote lecture at the 5th annual Australian Animal Studies Group conference-Life in the Anthropocene, July 2013Professor Sankoff's trip concluded in Sydney, Australia, where he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sydney and a keynote speaker at the 5th annual Australian Animal Studies Group conference: Life in the Anthropocene. Professor Sankoff's address was entitled "The Animal Rights Debate and the Expansion of Public Discourse: Is it Possible for the Law Protecting Animals to Simultaneously Fail and Succeed?", and considered how the theory of deliberative democracy, as developed by Jürgen Habermas and others, could be used to explain the importance of positive public discourse as an essential way of encouraging long-term democratic change in animal welfare law. Professor Sankoff examined the legal regimes of Canada and New Zealand and concluded that, while Canada has a number of laws that ostensibly protect animals, New Zealand's regime is much better at creating the public discourse required to meaningfully advance animal protection over the long-term. Professor Sankoff isolated aspects of the New Zealand law he felt were beneficial, and suggested ways in which animal protection law can be amended to encourage more productive public discourse.
(l-r) Professor Peter Sankoff, UAlberta Faculty of Law and Celeste Black, co-editor of new book, Animal Law in Australasia: Continuing the DialogueThe last day of Professor Sankoff's visit to Sydney involved the launch of his new book, Animal Law in Australasia: Continuing the Dialogue, and a workshop of the same name he co-hosted with Celeste Black of the University of Sydney. The workshop was attended by 25 academics and lawyers from the region with a strong interest in animal law issues, and involved discussion of current issues, including the Australia-Japan whaling dispute before the International Court of Justice, new research ideas, teaching strategies and law reform initiatives.
Professor Sankoff is happy to report that the trip, while very busy, was a wonderful experience, though after such a long voyage he is especially pleased to be back in Edmonton.
Professor Peter Sankoff with his workshop attendees from the Animal law in Australasia workshop