Bulletin

Issue: September 2005

News

La Trobe University creates McGarvie Chair of Socio-Legal Studies

La Trobe University has established the Richard McGarvie Chair of Socio-Legal Studies to honour a former Chancellor, the Hon Mr Richard McGarvie AC.

Professor Margaret Thornton has been appointed to the Chair, a research position linked to the University's Institute of Advanced Study.

Professor Thornton, from the La Trobe School of Law and Legal Studies, is a distinguished socio-legal researcher. She has been at La Trobe since 1990 and was the Foundation Head of the Law Program in 1992.

A University Medallist in law from UNSW, she also holds degrees from Sydney and Yale. She has held Visiting Fellowships at London, Oxford, Columbia, Georgetown, York (Can), Ottawa, ANU, Sydney and Victoria.

Professor Thornton is one of a small number of senior judges, legal practitioners and academics recently invited to be Foundation Fellows of the Australian Academy of Law. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

A former member of the Australian Research Council (Humanities and Social Sciences Panel, Appeals Committee and Council), she is also a consultant to international agencies including the ILO and chair of government committees.

Her research fields include citizenship, discrimination, legal education, the legal profession and feminist legal theory. A prize in Discrimination and the Law was established in her name at Macquarie University by Judge Colin Phegan in recognition of her contribution to discrimination jurisprudence.

She is currently completing an ARC-funded project on the impact of the corporatisation of universities on the legal academy and legal knowledge in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.

Among her books are The Liberal Promise: Anti-Discrimination Legislation in Australia, Oxford University Press, 1990 and Dissonance and Distrust: Women in the Legal Profession, Oxford University Press, 1996 which was later translated into Chinese.

Professor Thornton says it is fitting that the new Chair of Socio-Legal Studies should be named for such a distinguished person as Mr McGarvie. Socio-legal scholarship, she explains, involves the study of law in its social context.

'It rejects an arid and formalistic doctrinalism that depoliticises law and cordons it off from the social forces that animate it. Law can be better understood with aid of the insights of disciplines, such as history, philosophy, literature, politics and sociology. The interdisciplinarity of socio-legal scholarship enables justice to be imagined in new ways, as well as enhancing law's standing within the academy as a scholarly rather than an applied discipline.'

'Law is a powerful normative force but the complexity of modern society reveals that technocratic solutions to disparate contemporary problems, such as international terrorism, transnational governance and reform of workplace relations or homicide law, are necessarily impoverished without reference to the social. This was a factor appreciated by Mr McGarvie in his support for a socio-legal professional education for future lawyers, as envisaged at La Trobe.'

Professor Thornton hopes to make a contribution to the intellectual life of the Institute of Advanced Study, in conjunction with the School of Law, through her commitment to socio-legal scholarship. In addition to pursuing her own research and supervising students, she will encourage visitors, maintain links with the legal profession and academic institutions, as well as organise seminars and colloquia. She says, as the study of law and legal texts is of increasing interest to scholars in the humanities and social sciences, particularly to those in history, English and cultural studies, they will be especially welcome.

Professor Thornton says that Mr McGarvie, a former Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria and Governor of Victoria, always promoted the highest principles of social justice.

A prominent jurist, Mr McGarvie served as the University's third Chancellor from 1981 to 1992.

Following wartime service in the Royal Australian Navy, Richard McGarvie embarked on a distinguished legal career which culminated in his appointment as Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1976.