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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2019
Common Law systems have always practiced a fairly consistent comparative legal research and scholarship. Initially through the mere exportation of rules and principles from England this was a somewhat centripetal comparative law but it has passed through various modes of radial, circumferential, centrifugal and ultimately polycentric comparisons and cross-fertilizations. Nevertheless, this exercise in comparative law, also in Australia, has remained largely within the boundaries of the Common Law world. It is no longer possible for legal research to be conducted wholly within the boundaries of a single legal system, even that of the enlarged Common Law. Legal researchers need to look beyond the borders of their own jurisdictions. Hardly any legal system today is capable of operating without international interactions requiring a knowledge of foreign legal systems, and many legal problems, or socio-economic problems which law must help to solve, may find useful models elsewhere. In Australia there are needs for reform in fields such as intellectual property, banking or consumer law, and for providing qualified advice including predictions of developments in foreign legal systems to ensure that foreign commerce and trade is fully informed of potential benefits and disadvantages to be found under foreign law. Australia must also be able to take its proper place in fields such as international environmental protection, and to take advantage of potentially beneficial developments in dispute resolution techniques. All of these situations are ones in which, by looking outside their national and even Common Law framework, Australian legal researchers will be better placed to provide concrete benefits to Australian society.
1 Melbourne would offer a similarly useful focus—but with two fewer law schools—and the outcome would, we think, be similar to what we conclude about the situation in Sydney. Other Australian centres are each considerably smaller and so do not here require further mention.Google Scholar
2 Categorisation of legal research is somewhat problematic. Conventional categories, such as property law, tort law, contract law, and constitutional law, while still useful for certain purposes, are often quite inadequate to capture the content of research which spans a number of them (such as business law, or environmental law). The categories listed here are based largely on those chosen by the researchers themselves to describe the areas in which they are engaged when responding to surveys which were circulated among the academic staff of the five schools. Responses were not avaliable from all staff, particularly from some staff on leave, and so we relied either on personal knowledge or on advice from other colleagues in order to provide the most complete and accurate picture possible. Certain fields or sub-fields which are purely part of the teaching curriculum in the various Faculties may be absent.Google Scholar
2aWe did not consider it necessary for this article to indicate in detail in which particular institutions which particular fields of research received attention, especially as many of the fields are addressed in two or more places.Google Scholar
3 See Joseph Lo Bianco, National Policy on Languages (Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Education 1987).Google Scholar
4 This publication is available from: The Law Librarian, University of New South Wales, Kensington 2033, Australia.Google Scholar
5 B. Wilson, National Survey Of Law Libraries In Australia (Sydney: Australian Law Librarians’ Group 1984).Google Scholar
6 Note that, in Sydney, the libraries of the Attorney-General's department and the Australian Law Reform Commission aim at a comprehensive coverage of Canadian Provincial legislation, but this is not always current.Google Scholar
7 Now the Australasian Law Teachers’ Association (ALTA).Google Scholar
8 Australasian Universities Law Schools Association—Committee on Australian Legal Education, Report No.1: Law libraries in Australian Universities (Sydney: AULSA 1974).Google Scholar
9 See B. Wilson (supra n.6) 187.Google Scholar
10 Cf. Heather Creech, A Guide to Legal Research in Papua New Guinea (Sydney: Law Book Co. 1990) and the earlier Catalogue of the Pacific Law Collection, October, 1985, for the Law Library of the University of Papua New Guinea.Google Scholar
11 Australian Law Schools: A Discipline Assessment for the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission [“The Pearce Report”], Vol. I (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service 1987) pars. 19.44 and 19.76.Google Scholar
12 See, e.g., Ralph Lansky, German Libraries for Comparative Foreign and International Law (Hamburg: Arbeitsgemeinschaft für juristisches Bibliotheks- und Dokumentationswesen 1990). See also, Jürgen Gödan, Foreign and International Law Research Centers in West Germany: The Max Planck Institutes, 76 Law Library J. 464–481 (1983).Google Scholar
13 For a guide to establishing such a library and a useful survey of models, see generally, Jürgen Gödan, Fent camí per un Institut Català de Dret nacional i estranger, 1990 Revista Jurídica de Catalunya 263–277, and Jürgen Gödan, Buitelandse en internasionale regsnavorsingsentra in die wěreld, in: F. Venter (et al.), Regsnavorsing: Metode en Publikasie (Capetown: Juta 1990) 357–373.Google Scholar
14 The Pearce Report (supra n. 12) A Summary (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service 1987) 76.Google Scholar
15 The Pearce Report (supra n. 12) par. 19.206–7.Google Scholar
16 The detail for much of the Pacific material is provided in the ground-breaking bibliography by Jacqueline Elliott, Pacific Law Bibliography (2nd ed., Hobart: Pacific Law Press 1990).Google Scholar
17 This and other figures used in our estimates are based on average prices currently paid by the library of the Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, for book and serial purchases of a kind and from sources and countries rather similar to those envisaged in this article. Where, based on local experience, we expect costs differences, or that special Australian factors are relevant we have taken them into account. Our overall cost estimates are therefore composites used merely as general indications.Google Scholar
18 The experience of the Max Planck Institute, Hamburg, e.g., shows a ratio of 9:11 for purchases: staff costs. This ratio need not bind absolutely in Australia because there are probably differences between Australia and Germany, e.g., in labour costs, but we cannot realistically expect a substantially better ratio to apply in the Sydney-region.Google Scholar
19 The Pearce Report (supra n. 12) par. 9.58 (emphasis added).Google Scholar