Abstract
This article argues that legal education must reclaim its public role through critical and transformative pedagogy. Drawing on interviews with animal law educators from five Australian universities, it examines the disconnect between how educators describe their teaching – often in neutral terms – and the reality of their classroom practices, which reflect critical and transformative approaches. These practices foster ethical reflection, emotional engagement and justice-oriented learning. The article calls for greater recognition and support of such pedagogies as essential to preparing students to question legal norms and challenge injustice within and beyond the law.
Legal education is never neutral. Each pedagogical choice – what is included, what is omitted, and how it is presented – constructs a narrative about the law, legitimises certain forms of power, and shapes the kind of legal professional students are expected to become. As Giroux’s work suggests, every educational act is political, and every political act is pedagogical. 1 This insight is particularly urgent in the context of legal education, where the stakes are not only professional, but societal.
Law schools do more than train competent professionals – they shape the ethical compass and justice orientation of future lawyers. In doing so, they shape society itself. Legal education, then, carries a profound responsibility to serve the public good – not merely by imparting technical knowledge, but by equipping students to interrogate law’s impact and envision more just alternatives. 2
Despite its critical potential, legal education often resists justice-oriented or politically engaged teaching. Norms of professionalism, objectivity, and neutrality continue to define what is seen as legitimate, while approaches that engage with law’s complicity in harm may be dismissed as activist or lacking rigour. This reflects the enduring fiction of political neutrality in legal education, a narrative that serves to uphold dominant power structures. 3 Reclaiming legal education as a space of ethical inquiry requires both support for critical educators and affirmation of critical pedagogy as legitimate and necessary.
Animal law provides a compelling case study for this inquiry. As a field entangled with legally sanctioned forms of harm, industry-driven regulatory frameworks, and significant moral complexity, animal law exposes the limitations of traditional legal education centred on doctrinal and vocational pedagogies. When animal law is presented as neutral, it can obscure the political and moral choices embedded within these frameworks, normalise harmful practices by treating them as standard elements of legal doctrine rather than as practices warranting ethical scrutiny, and discourage students from interrogating whose interests the law ultimately serves. When taught critically, it can prompt students to reflect, engage emotionally, and question the ethical foundations of law, thereby reconnecting legal education with its broader public purpose. 4
To better understand how these dynamics play out in practice, this article draws on qualitative interviews with five animal law educators, representing approximately 56 per cent of those teaching standalone animal law electives across Australian universities in 2023, and explores the pedagogical tightrope they navigate. While their classroom practices incorporate elements of critical pedagogy and transformative learning, and encourage ethical reflection, confront structural harm, and foster social awareness, these same educators often describe their approach as neutral, objective or non-directive. This points to the complex professional terrain in which educators must operate: one in which the desire to engage students critically is mediated by pressures to maintain institutional and professional legitimacy, minimise reputational risk, and manage classroom dynamics, including students’ varied ethical commitments and emotional responses to confronting material. In a subject like animal law, where legal violence and moral contestation are central themes, this tension is particularly acute.
This analysis is situated within broader critiques of legal education’s narrowing pedagogical scope and argues that recognising and supporting critical, justice-oriented teaching, especially in fields like animal law, is essential to repositioning legal education as a site of public good. Without such support, the very practices most capable of advancing its civic function risk remaining constrained or disguised despite already occurring in classrooms across the country. Revitalising the public purpose of legal education requires legitimising these pedagogies, not treating them as peripheral or precarious.
Although this article uses animal law as its primary lens, the pedagogical tensions it examines are not confined to that subject. The dynamics of neutrality, legitimacy and justice-oriented teaching arise across legal education. These dynamics matter because law students do not remain learners; they become future lawyers, policymakers, regulators, advocates, and community leaders. Their capacity to identify injustice, interrogate legal frameworks and imagine more ethical alternatives is shaped by the pedagogical choices made during their legal education. Animal law therefore functions as a particularly revealing case study through which the broader, future-oriented responsibilities of legal education can be understood.
The narrowing of legal education
Legal education in Australia has long been subject to critique for its narrow focus. 5 In discussing Thornton’s critique of the corporatisation of legal education, Appleby, Burdon and Reilly observed that neoliberal competition reforms had produced an increasingly vocationally focused curriculum in which critical theory and critical thinking were marginalised in favour of a positivist-dominated approach to legal knowledge. 6 Thornton argued that an emphasis on doctrinalism, accepted knowledge and ‘right answers’ has displaced the questioning voice in legal education, contributing to a focus on black-letter law at the expense of deeper understanding and ethical reflection. 7
Stobbs, in 2015, echoed these concerns, suggesting that the ideal of the university as a site for broad, critical, liberal education had become little more than rhetoric, masking increasingly commercialised relationships between universities, government and students. 8 Together, these critiques portray legal education as driven by commercial imperatives and vocational outcomes, with justice-oriented learning relegated to the margins. 9
Despite these pressures, there have been continued efforts to reclaim space for critical pedagogy. A 2013 survey of Australian law schools by Appleby, Burdon and Reilly, found a strong desire among educators to foster academic freedom and critically engage with how law influences society. 10 While acknowledging the dominance of doctrinal and vocational mass education, the authors identified encouraging developments: renewed attention to pedagogy, student wellbeing, and learning outcomes that support critical thinking. 11 Importantly, they noted that alternative teaching strategies, such as critiquing substantive doctrine or reflecting on orthodox legal methods, could be integrated without undermining doctrinal or professional content. 12
Yet many of these structural tensions persist. In 2022, Gibbon et al described the enduring struggle between legal education’s transformative aspirations and the regulatory constraints of professional accreditation. 13 On one hand, there remains a commitment to academic freedom and the development of socially engaged legal thinkers. On the other, accreditation frameworks enforce prescriptive curricula and entrench traditional expectations about what ‘counts’ as legal education. 14 These competing pressures illuminate the aspirations Gibbon et al describe: a vision of legal education that cultivates critically aware, socially engaged thinkers and supports deeper forms of learning beyond technical mastery. The authors argue that the broader aims of legal education, including lifelong learning, critical meaning-making and world-changing thinking, are essential for equipping graduates to engage with injustice and contribute to social progress, rather than merely reproduce existing legal structures. Yet this broader focus is too often sidelined in favour of a narrow focus on technical proficiency and job readiness, 15 a tendency reinforced by the corporatisation and policy settings shaping contemporary universities. 16
In this context, transformative learning theory offers a useful lens through which to reclaim legal education’s purpose. 17 Transformative learning involves prompting students to critically reflect on the assumptions and values that shape their worldviews, enabling a shift in their frame of reference and fostering deeper ethical and social awareness. 18 Although still emerging in legal education research, 19 it offers a promising framework for developing reflective, socially responsive graduates and aligns closely with the aims of critical legal education. 20
These possibilities are not abstract. Even within constrained institutional settings, deep ethical engagement can emerge, particularly in ethically and socially complex areas of law. 21 Animal law provides a rich site for this kind of pedagogy. Its content raises moral, political and legal complexities that prompt students to question dominant frameworks and reflect critically on law’s role. As this article argues, recognising and supporting these pedagogical possibilities is essential to reorienting legal education towards its public purpose: producing socially responsive knowledge that contributes to justice both in the classroom and beyond. 22
Teaching harm as law
Central to this article is the concept of harm legitimation – the process by which the law, through codification and institutional authority, normalises and validates certain forms of harm. This process is rarely overt. It operates subtly through legal language, regulatory frameworks, and, crucially, through legal education itself. When law is presented as a self-contained and neutral system, detached from its ethical and political consequences, it risks teaching students to view systemic injustice as both legally valid and morally acceptable. 23
A clear example of this dynamic arises in the context of animal law, where suffering is often structured into legal norms. Consider the practice of carbon dioxide (CO2) stunning of pigs, a lawful but contested method of slaughter in Australia. 24 Scientific evidence shows that this practice causes extreme pain, fear and respiratory distress before the animal loses consciousness. 25 Yet it remains legally permitted under animal welfare legislation in every Australian jurisdiction – laws that, on their face, purport to protect animals from unjustifiable or unnecessary harm, while accepting a level of suffering deemed ‘necessary’ for human ends. Alternatives such as inert gas hypoxia or modified hypercapnic mixtures demonstrate scientifically measurable welfare improvements over traditional CO2 methods. Yet none have been widely adopted, largely due to cost, existing abattoir infrastructure, processing speed and labour efficiencies. 26 This reveals how ‘necessary’ suffering is not purely a scientific standard, but one shaped by economic and industry imperatives. 27
When taught doctrinally, this lesson may end with a reading of the statute and a conclusion that the practice complies with animal welfare legislation. The implicit message is clear: if the law permits it, it must be humane. This doctrinal approach not only reinforces the legitimacy of the regulatory framework but risks silencing deeper ethical questions: Is this just? What assumptions underpin this legislation? Whose interests are served, and whose suffering is normalised? Do the ends justify the means?
This is the danger of pedagogical neutrality. A student unfamiliar with the controversies surrounding CO2 stunning may internalise the idea that legal validity equals moral legitimacy. Even those who instinctively question the practice may be left without the critical tools or ethical frameworks to challenge it. 28 In this way, legal education can become complicit in legitimating harm, not only by failing to critique the law, but by failing to equip students to do so. 29
By contrast, a more critical and transformative pedagogical approach might invite students to engage with scientific literature or observe video footage of pigs gasping and thrashing in CO2 chambers. Confronted with the scientific or sensory evidence of suffering, students may be encouraged to consider the law from the animal’s perspective and ask whether alternative legal frameworks might better align with values of justice and compassion. These methods can disrupt the illusion of neutrality and expose how the law functions as an instrument of power and oppression. 30
Ultimately, the legitimation of harm does not begin with the statute and end with the courtroom. It is also taught, absorbed and reproduced in classrooms. Whether law schools choose to reinforce or challenge the assumptions that make such harm appear necessary depends not only on what is taught, but on how.
Methodology
This article adopts a hybrid methodological orientation. While its primary contribution is a conceptual and discursive analysis of legal education, it draws on qualitative interview material to illuminate how animal law educators navigate the pedagogical and institutional pressures discussed throughout. The interview data therefore enriches and contextualises the article’s broader argument about legal education’s public purpose, the limits of neutrality, and the constraints on justice-oriented teaching.
As part of a broader doctoral research project examining critical and transformative pedagogy in legal education, nine academics were identified as teaching standalone animal law units in Australian law schools in 2023. Five of these educators were actively teaching the subject that year and agreed to participate in structured online interviews. The resulting sample captures over half of the national cohort, offering sufficient depth for identifying recurring themes. 31 The research is grounded in a critical research paradigm, which seeks not only to understand educational practice but to interrogate the structural conditions that shape it. 32 A critical lens is particularly important in the context of animal law, where legal frameworks often render the harm of animals as natural, inevitable, and legitimate. 33 This approach enables analysis of how educators describe, justify and reflect on their teaching practices, both within and against traditional frameworks, 34 and has informed the design of interview questions aimed at challenging prevailing assumptions and surfacing the silences, tensions and constraints embedded in legal education discourse. 35
Interview transcripts were thematically analysed using inductive coding, with codes refined iteratively to capture key concepts, teaching tensions and structural constraints. 36 The resulting themes highlight both the complexity of teaching animal law and the power dynamics and pedagogical possibilities that shape, and may transform, legal education. Ethics approval was granted by the Bond University Human Research Ethics Committee (CJ00332).
While this article focuses specifically on standalone animal law subjects, the broader doctoral project includes interviews with legal academics who embed animal law content within core units. These educators employ critical and transformative pedagogies within more constrained doctrinal frameworks, offering further insight into the possibilities and tensions of justice-oriented legal education. Although outside the scope of this article, their perspectives will be explored in subsequent work. Their inclusion in the wider dataset reinforces the relevance and potential applicability of the themes discussed here to a broad range of legal subjects, including those within the core curriculum.
Exploring educator perspectives: Interview focus
To better understand how animal law is currently taught in Australian law schools, and the pedagogical choices that underpin it, the interviews explored not only teaching practices but also the beliefs, assumptions and institutional contexts that shape them.
Educators were invited to reflect on a range of interrelated themes, including their classroom objectives, the role of emotion, ethics and values in legal education, and how they framed their own influence as educators. They were also asked about how institutional expectations affected their pedagogy, how students responded to animal law content, and how their teaching aligned with broader debates about legal education. The group varied in experience, with four educators having taught animal law extensively and one in their second year of teaching. All were actively delivering the subject at the time of interview and offered meaningful reflections on their pedagogical choices, classroom dynamics and institutional settings.
The following section turns to the key patterns that emerged across these interviews, highlighting both the challenges and possibilities of teaching a justice-oriented subject within a pedagogical culture still shaped by entrenched norms of professional objectivity and neutrality.
Critical and transformative teaching in practice
A striking pattern across the five interviews was the tension between how educators described their teaching and how they enacted it. All educators described animal law as a critical subject concerned with contested values, legalised harm and social justice. However, they did not consistently identify their teaching as explicitly ‘critical’ or ‘transformative,’ and most described their pedagogy as neutral.
Despite this framing, their practices told a different story. Educators spoke of inviting activist guest speakers, assigning theoretical and philosophical texts, screening confronting footage from slaughterhouses, using reflective writing, and setting real-world law reform assessment tasks. These strategies align closely with critical and transformative approaches, which seek to unsettle dominant legal assumptions, foster ethical inquiry and cultivate active student engagement.
Educators often expressed ambivalence about their role in influencing students. Several distanced themselves from the idea of inspiring change or promoting a particular ethical view, instead emphasising balance and student autonomy. As one noted, ‘I don’t think it’s my role as an academic to create transformation’ – despite describing practices that supported deep ethical and emotional engagement.
Some were wary of being seen as ideological or unprofessional, while others implied that critical teaching needed to be balanced with doctrinal rigour, suggesting a perception that the two might be in tension. While none explicitly referenced critical pedagogy theory, their classroom strategies reflected its core tenets – cultivating critical reflection, encouraging ethical inquiry and challenging dominant legal frameworks. The result is that many are teaching critically and in a transformative way, often intuitively, and without a shared language or institutional recognition.
The tension between pedagogy and perception
Educator reflections demonstrate that critical and transformative approaches are already being used in Australian animal law education, even when not explicitly named as such. While all participants saw animal law as a subject deeply engaged with justice and moral complexity, their teaching was often described in cautious or neutral terms. This reflects broader tensions in legal education, where justice-oriented pedagogy may be seen as politically risky or in conflict with dominant expectations of neutrality and doctrinal authority. In this context, subjects like animal law are particularly vulnerable: when pedagogy is framed around values, ethics or emotion, it may not only be viewed as insufficiently robust but also as dispensable, making the continuation of such electives more precarious within traditional law school structures.
This cautious framing appears shaped by professional norms that equate legal rigour with emotional detachment, and by the absence of pedagogical training or vocabulary in law school teaching. Educators reported using innovative and emotionally resonant teaching strategies, yet hesitated to describe these as transformative. This perhaps signals not a lack of critical pedagogy, but a lack of institutional support and shared frameworks to name and value such work.
Nonetheless, the impact on students was evident. Educators described students undergoing moments of ethical reckoning, reevaluating personal beliefs, and shifting career trajectories. These outcomes suggest that when students are invited to engage with law as a site of contested meaning, rather than as a fixed system of rules, they respond with intellectual and emotional investment. These reflections also reinforce the value of teaching strategies that integrate critical reflection with doctrinal knowledge, rather than positioning them as oppositional.
Animal law emerges as a productive context for this pedagogy. Its content inherently provokes questions about justice, harm and the boundaries of legal protection. Teaching it critically not only enhances student learning but also reconnects legal education to its broader public function.
To fully realise this potential, structural and cultural shifts are required. Acknowledging and supporting critical and transformative pedagogy does not diminish doctrinal integrity – it enriches it. Formalising pedagogical support, creating space for educator dialogue and valuing justice-oriented teaching as academically rigorous are crucial steps towards reclaiming legal education as a space of ethical inquiry and social responsibility.
Recognising and supporting change
Animal law education reveals both the failures of traditional legal pedagogy and the transformative possibilities that emerge when law is taught as ethically and politically charged. It shows that the classroom can function not merely as a site of knowledge transmission, but as a space where students are invited to grapple with injustice, confront uncomfortable truths and imagine new legal futures.
The educators interviewed for this study described practices that disrupted the conventions of doctrinal teaching, foregrounding ethical reflection, exposing law’s complicity in harm and encouraging students to think beyond the boundaries of existing legal frameworks. While all identified animal law as a critical subject, many continued to describe their own teaching in neutral terms, expressing discomfort with the idea of shaping students’ values or advocating for change.
This contradiction is not a failing, but a reflection of the cultural and structural constraints that continue to shape legal education. Even so, the student outcomes described – intellectual dissonance, emotional engagement, ethical reconsideration – demonstrate that critical and transformative pedagogy is not only possible but already present in our law schools. What is missing is the institutional courage to name it, value it and support it.
While grounded in the context of animal law, the analysis speaks to wider debates about legal education’s public purpose. The pedagogical dynamics identified here, such as tensions around neutrality, the marginalisation of justice-oriented teaching and the transformative potential of critical engagement, arise across the curriculum. They matter because the classroom shapes not only academic understanding but the ethical orientations of those who will go on to serve as lawyers, policymakers and community leaders.
As Giroux reminds us, every educational act is political, and every political act is pedagogical. To deny this is to abdicate responsibility. A legal education that confronts power, exposes injustice, and cultivates ethical imagination is not a radical ambition – it is a necessary one. It is how we reclaim justice as the purpose of legal education. And it begins in the classroom.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
The author wishes to thank the law academics who generously gave their time to participate in interviews for this research. This article forms part of a PhD thesis undertaken at Bond University. The author is also grateful to her supervisors, Professor Nick James and Assistant Professor Maria Nicolae, for their invaluable guidance and support throughout the research process.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
