Fulbright law scholar here to learn
A distinguished scholar is spending two months at AUT Law School to explore how our academics’ approach to restorative justice prioritises people as individuals and acknowledges the influence of historic wrongs.
Susan Brooks is a 2021 US Fulbright Global Research Scholar and a Professor at Drexel University’s Kline School of Law in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on “relational lawyering”, an ethos that she says is informed by “principles and values of kindness, dignity, respect, transparency, inclusivity, democratic participation, positivity, empathy, compassion, and an ethic of care”.
Within the legal context – among academics and practitioners – this means finding models and approaches that recognise the diversity of and within Indigenous groups, honour the person holistically, and acknowledge individual, collective and cultural experiences with systemic injustices of the past and present.
“I see New Zealand as a positive model in this space, even just at the level of the country’s commitment to recognising past harms and oppressions,” says Susan, who notes there are parallels between AUT’s and her university’s relatively young law schools. “The work underway here in the fields of non-adversarial and restorative justice can help us reimagine what it looks like to be more culturally sustaining and aware – with the shared goal of reducing rates of incarceration and recidivism.”
AUT School of Law Dean, Associate Professor Khylee Quince, is excited about hosting Professor Brooks during her fellowship.
“We are privileged to have someone of Professor Brooks’ standing and experience visit us, so we have the opportunity to collaborate and learn from one another during her time in Aotearoa. Her visit is timely, given the important work being done in our courts and across the justice system to embed restorative and non-adversarial approaches to harm and conflict. It is always useful to see how allies are doing similar work in other jurisdictions, to inform our own direction.”
While here, Susan will teach the Non-Adversarial Justice Law elective. Associate Professor Katey Thom suggests this will be an excellent “opportunity for our students to hear about how to support their future clients in a relational way, providing practical examples of doing non-adversarial justice approaches; a focus that is often missing in legal education”.
Susan says the work is inherently slow, which goes against that United States’ traditional “quick fix” approach that focuses on easy answers and punishment.
“Our legal culture is very competitive, adversarial and transactional. By looking through the NZ lens, I aim to help grow the small-scale models that exist in the US, so we ultimately spend less on the ‘back end’ of incarceration and more on ‘front end' investments into education, antenatal care, early childhood education – the whole continuum.”