ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen the spread of a litigation culture in the UK education sector, with members of the public increasingly seeking recourse to the law to appeal, complain, or achieve compensation. The increasing tendency of people to resort to litigation suggests that recourse to the law is seen as a more immediate form of taking education services to account. While in theory an effective accountability tool, this development has unfortunately produced some less than desirable consequences in educational institutions, most notably the avoidance of risk. This paper argues that such consequences need to be understood as a reflection of the limits placed on legal regulation, once it encounters the already highly regulated world of educational institutions. To flesh out this argument, this paper examines these limits as a set of consequences relating to the following: increasing juridification; the intersection of law and mechanisms of accountability, judgement and professional discretion; and the relation between risk and trust. The argument draws on the ‘law in context’ literature, as well as recent debates over the pathologies of legal freedom.

摘要

近年来，诉讼文化在英国教育部门蔓延，公众越来越多地寻求诉诸法律来上诉、投诉或获得赔偿。人们诉诸诉讼的趋势日益增加，这表明诉诸法律被视为将教育服务考虑在内的一种更直接的形式。虽然在理论上是一种有效的问责工具，但不幸的是，这种发展在教育机构中产生了一些不太理想的后果，最明显的是规避风险。本文认为，一旦遇到已经高度监管的教育机构世界，这种后果需要被理解为对法律监管限制的反映。为了充实这个论点，本文将这些限制视为与以下相关的一系列后果：增加司法化；法律与问责、判断和职业自由裁量机制的交叉；以及风险与信任之间的关系。该论点借鉴了“语境中的法律”文献，以及最近关于法律自由病态的辩论。