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250 MANITOBA LAW JOURNAL |VOLUME 35 NUMBER 1
professional teachers and Dean determine the shape of the programming and you
would be informed but not necessarily involved
DJM: I think for the most part the faculty ran the school. There was an
association of law students, who had some participation on some issues but
generally it followed the culture of that day, which was pretty hierarchical.
BPS: In terms of what you would find in the classroom, were a lot of teachers
using the Harvard model of case law and Socratic teaching at that point
DJM: Very little Socratic teaching, very much a lecture approach. As we do
now, the school relied heavily on practitioners from downtown to supplement the
Faculty’s teaching. I would say overall the full-time faculty were better at their craft
and I guess one would hope that would be the case. I think that when I look at
how law is taught today there is more of a practical, clinical approach overall. But
there was not that much of a difference, Bryan, between how law was taught then
and how law is taught today.
BPS: From your point of view as a lawyer who spent much of her time in the
policy-oriented departments, would there be discussion of broader policies behind
the law in areas like constitutional and family, or was the classroom more
doctrinal and analytical Or was it more like today, where you get some policy and
some reflection
DJM: I think the slant was somewhat in favour of the doctrinal approach, less
questioning, less probing. There were definitely aspects of my public law work that
were developed later in my career rather than in the classroom.
BPS: Another part of your career was doing a tremendous amount of writing
with the Manitoba Law Commission. Did you get much practice at writing and
research in law school
DJM: It was pretty much hundred-percent final exams for all the courses. So
the capacity to write clearly and those kinds of skill-sets weren’t developed too
much at the law school.
BPS: I am of such vintage that I started law school before there was a Charter,
as you did, and in those days we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about human
rights and the balance between governmental interest and individual minority
rights.
DJM: Yes, I don’t recall a conversation of that sort [laughing].
BPS: Another revolution that came to the law school is that now you find
close to 50% of the faces in the classroom are women. Were there women
teachers at the time, women students Or were you very much a minority at that
time
DJM: I started law school in 1974. We were the first law class to have a
significant percentage of women in our class – I think something like 25-30
percent of the class were women. Two years before us I think there were around 7
or 8 women in the class. In terms of the Faculty, Linda Vincent was on the
faculty, as was Janet Baldwin, but there were very few other women. We were just