Beyond the initial euphoria of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), tough choices will be needed for sustainability. Although the spirit of the NDIS is to deliver choice and control, the Australian government's objective is to ensure that rights and aspirations are proportionate to expectations of best practice, aptness of mainstream services and cost effectiveness. The position in this paper is that this test of ‘reasonable and necessary’ when determining funded supports, raises value dilemmas for government and citizens. The objective is to demonstrate this through a critical scrutiny of the reviews and decisions regarding reasonable and necessary funded supports of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). In this paper, a synthesis and critique of 35 appeals to the AAT and one Federal Court Appeal are used to make explicit the decisional ambiguities and contestations in the scheme and the values and priorities that are currently dominant in the allocation of reasonable and necessary support. This in turn is used as a basis for a discussion about the operation of rights in the scheme and what counts as legitimate support. The benefit is for scheme transparency and fairness but also broader debate about core principles and values to inform decisions about scarce resources in society.

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Lawyers have traditionally viewed law as a closed system, and doctrinal research has been the research methodology used most widely in the profession. This reflects traditional concepts of legal reasoning. There is a wealth of reliable and valid social science data available to lawyers and judges. Judges in fact often refer to general facts about the world, society, institutions and human behaviour ('empirical facts'). Legal education needs to prepare our students for this broader legal context. This paper examines how 'empirical facts' are used in Australian and other common law courts.Specifically, the paper argues that there is a need for enhanced training in non-doctrinal research methodologies across the law school curriculum. This should encompass a broad introduction to social science methods, with more attention being paid to a cross-section of methodologies such as content analysis, comparative law and surveys that are best applied to law.

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