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Painful injustices : clinical legal education and the pedagogy of suffering

In this thesis, I argue that clinical law teaching requires a theoretical analysis and pedagogical framework to address law students encounters with social suffering in clinical law contexts. A critical pedagogy of suffering, I argue, would take at its starting point an acknowledgement of the importance of the law student-client encounter as a deeply important pedagogical site - a place where certain views about lawyering, law, and justice are played out, and therefore a place that ought to be the subject of close attention by clinical law scholars and teachers. I argue that a critical pedagogy of suffering would focus specifically on the presence of human suffering in many of these encounters. Such a pedagogy would seek to distill the ways in which larger social and systemic forces produce and distribute social suffering, and how the dominant legal gaze and dominant legal practice are too often incapable of assessing or responding to these forces. It would also work to challenge notions that emotions and suffering are apolitical and unrelated to progressive legal practice, and to build a conception that engaged, critical witnessing of social suffering by lawyers and law students might lead to passionate and thoughtful lawyering for social justice in clinical law settings.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-03232011-140745
Date29 March 2011
CreatorsBuhler, Sarah Marie
ContributorsKeet, Michaela, Mosher, Janet, Carter, Mark, Kleefeld, John
PublisherUniversity of Saskatchewan
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-03232011-140745/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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