Нунавутта заң білімі: Акцирақ құқық мектебінің тәжірибесі

Legal education program in Nunavut, Canada

Akitsiraq Law School is a legal education program designed to increase the number of lawyers in Nunavut and the Canadian Arctic, including a program leading to a Bachelor of Laws Degree (LL. B.) in Iqaluit, Nunavut. The Law School has no permanent classrooms, employees or assets, and the admissions process has no formal education requirements. The Akitsiraq Law School focuses on the practical abilities of potential students based on life experience and work history. The program is strongly supported by legal professionals and by members of the Nunavut Judiciary through in kind and volunteer services, developing effective programs and bringing legal resources from across Canada to teach each Akitsiraq cohort. Akitsiraq programs have provided legal training to residents of Nunavut and the surrounding Arctic region, leading to professional and para professional legal qualifications. The Akitsiraq Law School Society is a not for profit organization incorporated in Nunavut. Its board of directors and membership are drawn from the Nunavut judiciary, legal profession and supporting members of the public, along with nominees of supporting agencies. The cohort based, culture enhancing, learning in Nunavut format of the Akitsiraq Law Program has frequently been promoted as a prototype for training in other professions including accounting and education administration.

Despite the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement specifying that employment in the newly created Nunavut should be representative of the territory's demographics, people of Inuit descent were absent from the legal field. In the mid 1990s, six Inuit law students who had gone to the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law had all dropped out, isolated and short of money so far south. A program to train law students in the north gained support. A University of Victoria student working in Iqaluit on a co op program, persuaded her school join Akitsiraq as its law school partner. to residents of Nunavut and the surrounding Arctic region. This program accepted one intake of students in 2001 02 who graduated in 2004 05. The Akitsiraq I final report Lawyer Making in the Arctic ( [July 2007] Browne, Crawford and Tulloch), is an extensive record of this program, and includes seven appendices incorporating contracts, course selections, timetables, budgets and program evaluation by graduates. A planned Akitsiraq II program was announced by the parent society in conjunction with the University of Ottawa Law Faculty, using infrastructure and support from Nunavut Arctic College. The announced intention is to proceed with a second cohort of students in 2011. The recruiting and admission process for the 2011 cohort have been funded by Justice Canada, including Akitsiraq Law Days in Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, Iqaluit and Ottawa in the spring of 2010, but the program launch has been on hold since November 2009 awaiting a decision by the Government of Nunavut to provide core support. It did not go through after the Nunavut government declined to provide the funding. In June 2015, Nellie Kusugak, the Commissioner of Nunavut, promised a return of the Akitsiraq program in her commissioner's address. In September 2017, the new program launched in cooperation with the University of Saskatchewan College of Law.

Akitsiraq operates on a cohort model. Students are admitted in distinct cohorts, forming strong supportive units which learn and live together over the four years of the program. Only one cohort is in process at any time, with students moving together through the initial years and into the more advanced studies, relying on teaching from temporarily assigned professors from the judiciary, southern Canadian Universities, and the legal profession at large. In this way resources can be secured and opportunities developed appropriate to the cohort at each point in their learning and consistent with the small population based from which they are drawn. The program for Akitsiraq I was taught as a modified law curriculum. The focus in the first year was to ensure academic success for the students. The University of Victoria Faculty of Law developed a Legal Research and Writing Course, which included an enhanced study skills component. The first year also exposed students to contract, criminal law and Legal Processes courses. As of June 2009 nine of eleven graduates have been called to practise. This is consistent with or exceeds success rates in southern Canadian university law programs. Madeleine Redfern, one of the graduates became the first Inuk selected to article as a clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada, under Mme Justice Louise Charron. Others are engaged in Masters of Law programs, practising family and civil law, prosecuting, acting as counsel to aboriginal organizations, and government agencies, working in the RCMP and with Inuktitut language initiatives. Student admissions initiatives are still underway for Akitsiraq II. Forty five students have attended the introductory Law Day information sessions across Nunavut and the Society reports over eighty potential students on its waiting lists. There is the potential for student admissions from Nunatsiavik and Nunavik.