2005 Media Releases
Monday, 15 August 2005
La Trobe University establishes 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, a distinguished socio-legal researcher and Foundation Head of the La Trobe Law Program in the early 1990s, has been appointed to the Chair – a new research position linked to the University’s Institute of Advanced Study.
Professor Thornton says 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. Committed to human rights and civil liberties, he died in May 2003.
Professor Thornton’s new role will contribute to the intellectual life of the Institute of Advanced Study in conjunction with the La Trobe School of Law. In addition to pursuing her own research in socio-legal scholarship and supervising students, she will encourage visitors to the Institute – based on the University’s main Melbourne campus at Bundoora – maintain links with the legal profession and academic institutions, and organise seminars and colloquia.
‘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, scholars from these areas will be especially welcome,’ she says.
Professor Thornton’s research includes citizenship, discrimination, legal education, the legal profession and feminist legal theory. She is 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 Mr McGarvie. ‘Socio-legal scholarship,’ she explains ‘involves the study of law in its social context. It rejects the arid and formalistic approaches that depoliticise the law and cordon it off from the social forces that animate it. Law can be better understood with the aid of the insights of disciplines, such as history, philosophy, literature, politics and sociology. The interdisciplinary nature of socio-legal scholarship enables justice to be imagined in new ways, as well as enhancing law’s standing as a scholarly rather than merely an applied discipline.
‘Law is a powerful normative force but the complexity of modern society reveals that technocratic solutions to contemporary problems – such as international terrorism, transnational governance and reform of workplace relations or homicide law – are impoverished without reference to social context.’
A University Medallist in law from the University of New South Wales, Professor Thornton also holds degrees from Sydney and Yale. She has held Visiting Fellowships at London, Oxford, Columbia, Georgetown, York (Can), Ottawa, ANU, Sydney and Victoria. She 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.
Professor Thornton is a former member of the Australian Research Council (Humanities and Social Sciences Panel, Appeals Committee and Council) and a consultant to international agencies including the ILO and chair of government committees. 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.
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Tel: 03 9479 1268.