At the start of this book, we introduced four ways of thinking about ethical behaviour for lawyers. Zealous, client-focused lawyering – adversarial advocacy – was contrasted with lawyering that counterbalances client advocacy with upholding the responsibilities and duties of citizens to society – responsible lawyering. A third approach, moral activism, sees the ethical duties of lawyering as being not so much in vigorously asserting clients’ rights, or the rule of law, as in actively doing one’s best in the interests of justice. Finally, an ethic of care sees the ethical virtues of all three of the preceding approaches as overrated and emphasises instead the importance of caring for and respecting the needs and moral aspirations of each person with whom the lawyer may come in contact, as well of themselves. In each of the previous chapters we have examined how the values represented by the different approaches would apply to certain situations and contexts that arise in legal practice. In this chapter we examine the significance of personal values awareness for lawyers’ ethics. The book concludes with a suggested method for self-assessing one’s ethical type/preference.

Part I reviews the underpinnings of statutory interpretation from three perspectives. The first is functional: the basic characteristics of statutory interpretation. The second perspective is historical: the modern development of the law of statutory interpretation. The third perspective is constitutional: the key constitutional concepts relevant to statutory interpretation. These perspectives contribute to understanding the fundamental interpretative principles in Part II and many other principles covered in this book (such as the use of legislative history in Part IV).

We are living in the era of educational data and standardised testing. As one teacher puts it, ‘Boom, and it’s all about data!’ (Spina 2021). This chapter explores the consequence of ‘datafication’, including how the possibilities of social governance have increased exponentially. Contemporary governance has always been about the management of data, whether this involves making particular populations intelligible through continual assessment, or by constructing ever-increasing categories of difference. However, the ever-increasing need to instantly correlate almost unfathomable amounts of data means we are no longer subjected to ‘an avalanche of printed numbers’ (Hacking 1990, p. 189) as in the early nineteenth century, but rather a worldwide, mile-high tsunami. The potential of governance is moving far beyond those envisaged within earlier iterations of individuationߝdifferentiationߝnormalisation outlined in Chapter 5. The datafication of education ߝ and life in general ߝ means that the possibilities of correlation, differentiation and intervention are now almost limitless.

[12.1] An Act is passed when the final stage of the enactment process is completed. It may not come into operation for some time after it is passed. It may come into operation wholly at the one time or in stages over a period.

We are now in the Anthropocene, a time in the earth’s four-billion-year history when human activities are affecting the planet to such an extent that humans have become a ‘significant geological force’. The risks facing humanity also challenge the rule of law. Ideally, law operates to help keep a society stable, peaceful and ordered. Since law is ‘the principal means of implementing public policy’, law must evolve to play its part. Lawyers have a key role to play in assisting that evolution, and the ethics that govern lawyers’ work will play a large part in determining its success. This chapter focusses on the work of lawyers in addressing climate change and environmental damage. Such work raises important issues about lawyers’ role generally and the values and ethics underpinning that role. In this chapter we consider how the different ethical approaches (adversarial advocacy, responsible lawyering, moral activism and ethic of care) are informing lawyers’ actions on behalf of the planet. Of course, many lawyers will draw from several ethical approaches in their work. Likewise, all four approaches can support efforts at law reform, which we discuss later in the chapter.

[35.1] In a society in which it is often said that the quantity, variety and sources of law made by or under the authority of parliaments is expanding at a significant rate, resolving apparent conflict is a staple activity of the courts. Interpretative resources are drawn on to resolve such conflict.

A lot has been written recently about the emergence of a ‘global society’ in which economies, cultures and political systems of different nations have started to coalesce. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these commentaries have often taken the form of binary debates ߝ ‘globalisation is all-encompassing’ vs ‘globalisation is pretty irrelevant’; ‘globalisation is the glorious road to the future’ vs ‘globalisation is the road to hell’; ‘globalisation is a fundamentally economic issue’ vs ‘globalisation is really about cultural homogenisation’. Generally speaking, these binaries aren’t helpful, and the phenomenon of globalisation deserves a less reductive and more thoughtful analysis, as it increasingly affects us all ߝ particularly within the sphere of education.

[22.1] This chapter addresses the common law where it is part of the history of an Act and so forms part of its wider context. This is distinct from using common law as a precedent, or as part of the wider contextual surrounding law.

[32.1] The task of an interpreter is to determine the intention of Parliament ‘assisted by such aids to construction as can properly be utilised’.1 This chapter considers residual common law presumptions and aids that are potentially available.

This chapter argues that the relationship between popular culture and the classroom remains a contentious issue. Its presence has been used as a symbol of how much our culture has declined and how educationally corrupted our schools have become, while its absence has been used to suggest our schools are out of touch with their primary constituency ߝ young people. This is not a simple issue to address; even the notion of ‘culture’ itself is subject to considerable disagreement.

Previous Parts have examined contextual aids beyond the Act that are supplied by the legislative history (Part V) and Interpretation Acts and other Acts of general application (Part VI). Part VII continues in the same vein and examines other interpretative criteria beyond the Act concerned.

[26.1] This chapter builds on chapter 25, which examines the role played by Interpretation Acts. Unless expressly or impliedly disapplied, an Interpretation Act applies to all Acts passed by the same legislature. But an Interpretation Act is not the only Act that applies to other individual Acts. Across the statute book of a jurisdiction there is a range of Acts that support the operation of individual Acts. Some have a broad application, such as a Human Rights Act. The application of others depends on the subject matter of the individual Act.

[1.1] Statutory interpretation is a many-faceted thing. It is a substantive body of law and a process involving a set of skills. It is distinct from (but overlapping with) the application of the law. It is not wholly different from the interpretation of ordinary speech. But it is dissimilar in major respects from formulating the ratio decidendi or the rule of a case. Functionally, statutory interpretation resolves a question of law between parties to a dispute. It also contributes to law-making in the sense that the text of the statute, read with the interpretation, constitutes a new understanding of the law.

This chapter considers how the structure and processes of the regulatory systems that govern the legal profession are relevant to lawyers’ ethics and behaviour – that is, the significance of institutions for lawyers’ ethics. In this chapter we consider ways in which the ethics demonstrated by the legal profession as a whole are likely to affect lawyers’ individual and personal ethics. We begin by discussing how our current approaches to regulating the legal profession might, or might not, embody and engender the values that should characterise legal practice. We then focus on the ‘law of lawyering’ – rules and regulatory regimes that have been created to apply specifically to lawyers under the legislation and case law governing the legal professions of each of the States and Territories. The next section provides a brief history of the development of Australian legal professional regulation, before contrasting this with a different regulatory approach that sees market competition as the fairest and most efficient form of professional regulation.

[25.1] Each Australian jurisdiction has an Act dealing with the interpretation of the Acts of that jurisdiction.1 Such Acts are referred to in this book, including in this chapter, as ‘Interpretation Acts’, irrespective of their actual title.