2006 Prizegiving Ceremony

On Thursday, 18 May 2006, the Sydney Law School held its annual prize giving ceremony, with over 200 people, consisting of prize donors, the prize winners and their family and guests, attending.

The wonderful support provided to the faculty from the community and the profession continued again this year, with several new prizes also being awarded to recognise the excellence of the students.

The University Medallist, Selina Wrighter , gave the student address at the Ceremony.

The Sydney Law School would like to congratulate all its prize winners for 2006.

The complete list of prizewinners is below.

Prize winners

Speech by the University Medallist, Selina Wrighter

Let me start by saying what an honour it is to have been asked to speak today;

It’s certainly my pleasure to be able to address every one here as a distinguished guest.

Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dean, Pro-Dean, Head of School and members of the Faculty;

Dr Joye and all the other Prize Donors: I’m sorry that I can’t address each one of you by name, but I think that I can speak on behalf of all the other Prizewinners when I express my sincere thanks for your generous recognition of academic excellence – without which this occasion certainly would not be possible.

Friends and family: I think that your support is perhaps the most serially undercomplimented, but is the most fiercely felt and appreciated of all;

And colleagues: I would like to pass on my warmest congratulations to all of the Prizewinners here today, as well as to my classmates both present and absent who are graduating from the Faculty of Law in 2006. It is a great achievement – and also a bit of a relief – to finally earn and be awarded a degree in law. Among such outstanding peers, it is a special mark of distinction to earn any part of that degree with excellence, so Prizewinners, once again, congratulations.

As for myself:

I searched a long time for something to say to begin this speech that would be equal to the honour of being awarded the Law University Medal for 2006 – but through all the history of my legal education the one thing that kept nagging at me was this: Applying the “but for” test of causation that I’d been taught so well at Law School – that is that “but for” circumstance X, situation Y would not have occurred – you could say that the reason I’m standing here today is from a want of courage… You see, when I finished high school, having a UAI of over 99 and just enrolling in an ARTS degree was braver thing to do than I was equal to.

Arts was however where my interest lay. The thing that I wanted to do upon entering university was continue my study of Indonesia, the huge but often overlooked country beyond Australia’s northern border. Indonesia was a turbulent, diverse society; a floundering academic discipline… and incidentally, quite an appealing travel destination — three things which made it the perfect area of study for an aspiring Arts student.

Unfortunately even then, nasty rumours had reached me that as a future Arts Graduate I might hope to enjoy an intellectually….but unfortunately in no other way enriching career, and several parties (parental included) may have suggested that ‘since I had the marks’, why not ‘consider enrolling in law’? A sort of ‘2-year fall back plan’, just in case.

The problem with this plan was that I’d really never had any interest in studying law, believing as I did that the only people who did law degrees were people who wanted to be Big-L Lawyers: to stand up in a robe and a wig in court and argue a lot… or worse yet, people who wanted to become Politicians.

It was a friend’s father who pointed out the error of my assumptions, with a promise that was too intriguing to resist. Himself something of a serial graduate – a law graduate but not a lawyer – he told me that studying law would not only require me to learn about crimes and contracts, torts and taxation, but would teach me nothing less than “a new way of thinking”.

I enrolled, at the beginning of the 2000 academic year, as the proud candidate for a Bachelor of Arts… *cough* (and Laws).

It’s true that especially for the years of my first undergraduate degree, I always took greater pride in my Arts studies than my Law studies, an allocation of importance that I perhaps felt was given in inverse proportion to the recognition I perceived other people gave to my two chosen disciplines.

Case in point: I was recently fortunate enough to return from almost half a year of travelling overseas, during which time I was often asked where I was in life and how I could afford the luxury of a six month ‘break from the real world’. I’d tell my questioner that I’d recently graduated from university; they would ask what subject I’d graduated in. When I told someone that I’d studied Arts, the best response I could generally hope for was a diplomatic ‘ah’; the worst, the dreaded question ‘so what kind of painting do you do?’

On the other hand, what consistently surprised and impressed me was the look of recognition that spread across a person’s face, the note of understanding that modulated their voice, when I told them that I had recently graduated in law. To my mind at least that look said three things:

First there was a recognition of the academic commitment I had made to first qualify for and then successfully complete a degree in law;

Second an assumption that I would soon, would want to be joining the ranks of that esteemed profession, of lawyers – why else after all would I spend 6 years of my life studying law?

And third there was all too often a look of gleeful anticipation… that I would now be paying 350% more than I was 10 sec ago for whatever it was I had my eyes on purchasing, and which all of my protestations that I was a ‘poor student’ and not a ‘rich lawyer’ were going to be useless to undo.

All these self-assured predictions as to my impending lawyerhood were actually a little ironic, given that my primary purpose for travelling overseas was not in fact to be ripped off by unscrupulous merchants, but rather to temporarily evade the seemingly inevitable natural progression from poor-law-student-to-rich-lawyer by joining a volunteer project in India, teaching English to children from local slum areas – a job for which I am pleased to say my six years of university education prepared me almost not at all.

The school consisted of about 25 students ranging in age from a manic, bouncing-off-the-walls-and-off-other-students-teeth age 4, to a cocky-and-ready-to-face-the-world 15. The school building could be described as little more than 4 walls and a roof. The teaching resources of the school consisted of little more than the permanent and volunteer teachers’ imaginations. It was impossible then not to appreciate how privileged my own education had been; it certainly put all those remembered complaints about the shortage of power-outlets in LT1 & 9 into perspective.

In spite of the rudimentary facilities, however, what constantly amazed and uplifted me was the kids unflagging enthusiasm for, and enjoyment of learning: whether it was being taught higher levels of multiplication, practising English vowel sounds, dancing the Macarena, or asking this strange new travelled person who was now at their disposal small questions about a big big world, such as: Why do aeroplanes fly? Do aeroplanes touch the sky? Do aeroplanes have seats? Do the seats have seat-belts? Do aeroplanes have toilets? But… if the people on the aeroplane sit in seats and are wearing seat belts then how can they go to the toilet?

It reminded me why I’d enjoyed studying a language so much: because studying a language is not just about learning words, forming sentences – but about being able to ask new questions about the world, because you have had a different perspective on the world opened up to you.

I also then realised that the reason I had, ultimately, enjoyed studying law so much – despite my continued resistance to that end-state of being a ‘L’-lawyer – was because learning law had not been so different to learning a new language. For a start, I think that anyone who has struggled to turn a 100+ page High Court judgment or a particularly convoluted piece of legislation into plain simple English will agree with me that a lawyers job is as much that of a translator as anything. More than that though, as my friend’s father had told me, studying law – like studying a language – gave me a new way of thinking about the world. As students of law we are taught to speak and understand a world constructed in terms of rules, rights and responsibilities. We learn to ask questions about the world in those new terms. The exciting thing about the language of law, however, is that as we use it, as we answer those questions – when, as attorneys we give advice, as judges give judgment, as legislators draft legislation – we also have the power to change our language, change the law, recreating the terms in which the world is spoken and defined.

The most important thing that I think I learned in law school, then, was not to know what the law is, or has been, but rather to ask what it should be; and this in turn has changed my understanding of what a lawyer can be. I have been taught to be an advocate – to argue the position in law that best supports a party’s interests – but not just that. I have been taught to be a judge – to find the position in law that most correctly resolves a bipartisan dispute – but not just that, either. Most importantly I think, I have also been taught to make my own answer to questions which are both legal and social – criminal to environmental, human-rights to taxation-related – and to form a response to these issues that can never be something so simple as right, but which must always be informed, considered, and conscientious.

When law degrees today clearly draw the top talent of each academic generation – and when not all law students are confident upon leaving high school that the end state they want to reach is that of a Big-L lawyer – I think it is critical that law programmes continue to develop the diverse perspectives necessary for law students not only to become fluent in law, but to become socially responsible practitioners of law – regardless of what job-title they end up answering to. It is to the credit of this law school that I now, at the end of my degree, feel as if I have as many paths open to me as I did back in 2000, but now with greater competence, and greater courage, to address them.

The final thing I would like to say today – and again something I think brought home by my experience in India – is (and I don’t hesitate to use the word) a *huge* thank you to each of the teaching staff of the faculty who have used their language with intelligence, imagination and the strongest sense of professional integrity to educate the next generation of law graduates. I think our appreciation for you is not often enough expressed out loud, but let me assure you that it’s there, in the expression that I have seen cross colleagues’ faces when they speak about a tutor, lecturer or professor who has inspired them to think, learn and be more.

The most recent appointee to the High Court of Australia, Justice Susan Crennan, began her career as a teacher. Let me conclude only by saying that I at least would see no less honour in the opposite career progression, and that I only hope that I can do this law school justice as a student, as a lawyer, and as a teacher in the years to come.

Thank you.