First Cameron Fellow in residence

JIM RYAN, a US specialist in constitutional law, as well as law and education, is at the University of Auckland Law School until late April as the inaugural Cameron Visiting Fellow. The William L Matheson and Robert M Morgenthau Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia arrived with his family in January.

While here, Ryan will help teach two intensive courses in the LLM programme and deliver two public lectures. His Fellowship is funded by Tim Cameron, an Auckland alumnus who is a litigation partner in the leading New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, and his wife Kathy.

The aim of the Fellowship is to expose students and staff here to top American legal academics. In turn, Ryan is absorbing himself in the intellectual life of the Law School. “I am trying to get to know as many people as I can, formally and informally, and learn about the work they are doing. Faculty members have been incredibly welcoming and accommodating. There has been no shortage of invitations to lunch and barbecues.”

He has also been enjoying the warmth of a sublime Auckland summer and indulging his passion for rugby thanks to the Super 14. It was our national sport, so unfashionable in the US, that first brought him to New Zealand 20 years ago on a rugby tour with a team representing colleges and universities across New England. Playing at fly half (first five eighth), he remembers being well beaten by sides in Auckland and Rotorua.

The opportunity to take up the Cameron Fellowship came at exactly the right time for Ryan. He was due sabbatical leave, was seeking an English-speaking country for his four school-age children, and he knew of the Auckland Law School through the student exchange agreement between his university and Auckland. He contacted the Dean, Professor Paul Rishworth, found they have similar academic interests and it went from there.

One challenge of his visit will be teaching, with Rishworth, intensive LLM programmes in comparative constitutional law and comparative education law, each lasting a week. “I’m not used to that style of teaching and feel I should be working out to build up my stamina.”

Ryan’s main scholarly interest lies in exploring the ways that law shapes educational opportunity. For him, equal opportunity in education is “more complicated” than equal funding. “Schools, for example, where most kids are poor, rarely succeed, regardless of funding levels.” The answer, said Ryan, lies in integrated — meaning diverse — schools. He recognises, however, that “how you achieve that is a difficult question”.

“There are opportunities to increase integration that do not require the courts to become involved. Court-ordered integration is no longer a viable option in the United States, but that does not mean that integration itself is a lost cause.  “All across the United States, suburbs are becoming more diverse, economically and ethnically, while we are seeing more white, middle-class parents returning to city centres, or remaining there, and sending their children to local elementary schools. Both demographic shifts, in suburb and city, offer unprecedented opportunities for integration; the big question is whether school and district leaders will take advantage of them.”

NZLawyer, 19 March 2010