Report Regarding the Pacific McGeorge Workshop on Globalizing the Law School Curriculum

Abstract:     
On August 3rd and 4th of 2005, the Pacific McGeorge Center for Global Business and Development sponsored a workshop at which professors from 31 law schools in the United States and Canada met to discuss how to introduce international, transnational and comparative law issues into the core curriculum. The participants at the workshop were invited based upon two criteria: They are leading professors in one of the seven subjects traditionally considered to make up most of the core law school curriculum - Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Corporations, Criminal Law and Procedure, Property and Torts - and (or) they have expertise in international, transnational or comparative law.

This Report provides a summary of the discussions at the workshop. The Report follows the four-part organization of the workshop. The first part addresses the goals for introducing international, transnational and comparative law issues into the core curriculum. The second part considers implementation strategies for introducing such issues into the core curriculum - including both the broad curricular question of whether to introduce such issues through a separate course, or through coverage in what traditionally have been domestically focused core courses, as well as exploring what international, transnational and comparative law issues could be introduced into core courses. This part of the Report provides specific examples of international, transnational and comparative law issues, which teachers of Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Corporations, Criminal Law and Procedure, Property and Torts can introduce into their classes. The third part of the Report identifies, and considers ways to overcome, challenges to implementing the strategies suggested in the second part. The fourth part lists concrete steps that participants are to take to follow up on the workshop.

Keywords: Global, International, Transnational, Comparative, Curruiculum

Accepted Paper Series