Working Links Seminar: Who are judges writing for?
Tuesday, 23 September 2008, 5:45 pm to 8:00 pm
Register at http://www.unisa.edu.au/giftofknowledge/register.asp
Bradley Forum, Hawke Building, UniSA, North Terrace, City West Campus
Professor Vicki Waye is UniSA's School of Law, which opened this year. Vicki's expertise includes arbitration (both domestic and international), evidence, procedure, corporate law, contract law and wine law.
The `Working Links' seminar series brings together business people, students, academics and Alumni - all who want to be excited, challenged and informed by the latest thinking on business issues. The series is presented by senior academics and business leaders whose knowledge and research takes you behind the headlines to see what is really going on.
You can't access the law if you can't understand it. But that leads to a dilemma for judges. Judges need to explain their legal determinations in concise language that makes the message clear; too concise, however, and the reasoning that ought to be subject to public scrutiny is hidden. If judges over-amplify, on the other hand, it makes the law arcane except for a small group of elite legal specialists. Ideally the balance between conciseness and amplification should be determined by the intended audience of the judgment. Compared with other jurisdictions, Australian judgments tend to be long and complex. So is the Australian judiciary writing for a different audience to its counterparts elsewhere? Just who are Australian judges writing for?
