I'm flying through Child Pornography & Sexual Grooming: Legal & Societal Responses (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2009) by Suzanne Ost. It is an exemplary work of legal scholarship that explores UK law, policymaking and arguments about moral panics in relation to online/offline criminal content and social interaction.
The book promises to be of substantial value in supervision of a student who is doing her LLB Honours dissertation on sexting, in particular the creation and dissemination of images by people under 18 using mobile phones.
I'm less impressed by A Public Life: The Memoirs of Zelman Cowen (Carlton: Miegunyah Press 2006). Despite advocacy from Susan Priest I just haven't warmed to the autobiography of the former Melbourne Law School Dean, Vice-Chancellor and Governor-General. It is very much a public life, with only a few flashes of fire or resentment: polished, marmoreal, an upmarket Rotary dinner speech that leaves me wondering whether there's anything under the suave exterior.
Tastes vary, and some may think that the book's tone - and the author's deportment - are admirable. I sought some indication of depths, of nights in which Jacob wrestled with the angel or even the humanity apparent in Mucking About: An Autobiography (Carlton: Melbourne Uni Press 1977) and The Chance of Politics (Melbourne: Text 1997) by Paul Hasluck. The bloodless nature of A Public Life appears inconsistent with the ferocity - or mere quirkiness - of faculty and university politics. Suavity may have justified Sir Zelman's appointment as GG but it would be interesting and instructive for him to unbutton and offer insights about how he operated or what drove him onwards. Life was surely more than a succession of emollient statements and effortlessly-managed committee meetings punctuated only by decisions on which appointment to accept (shall I bite the golden apple or the silver) and irritation over unruly student radicals.
