LEGAL EDUCATION ABSTRACTS

"'Transnational Law' as Protoâ€?Concept: Three Conceptions" Free Download
German Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 7, p. 877, 2009
CLPE Research Paper No. 32/2009

CRAIG SCOTT, Osgoode Hall Law School
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The purpose of this article is to identify three understandings of transnational law, all of which have a certain integrity depending on one’s premises about the nature and institutional operation of law. The approach adopted is not to make an argument for the single best reading of the concept of transnational law but instead to outline three candidate conceptions of that notion. For purposes of the article, these conceptions are not assumed necessarily to be competing conceptions. Rather, their potential compatibility is left open for future consideration. In this sense, 'transnational law' is presented in the article as a kind of fuzzy or suggestive 'proto-concept.' After a scene-setting discussion of various caveats concerning the notion of “transnational� within 'transnational law,' the three conceptions - transnationalized legal traditionalism, transnationalized legal decisionism, and transnational socio-legal pluralism - are briefly discussed in turn. Alongside the conceptual discussion, the article uses the implications for legal education as one way of expressing the significance of each conception. The article ends with the contention that 'transnational law' is an idea that pushes the boundaries of the legal imagination in such a way that, at the very least, legal theory and legal education based entirely on ‘domestic’ (state) and ‘international’ (interstate) constructs of law must be open to developing in ways that might take all concerned out of current conceptual comfort zones.

"The Evolution of Legal Education: Internationalization, Transnationalization, Globalization" Free Download
German Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 7, p. 877, 2009
CLPE Research Paper No. 33/2009

SIMON CHESTERMAN, New York University - School of Law, Singapore Programme, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law
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This article examines the evolution of legal education as it has moved through international, transnational, and now global paradigms. It explores these paradigms by reference to practice, pedagogy, and research. Internationalization saw the world as an archipelago of jurisdictions, with a small number of lawyers involved in mediating disputes between jurisdictions or determining which jurisdiction applied; transnationalization saw the world as a patchwork, with greater need for familiarity across jurisdictions and hence a growth in exchanges and collaborations; globalization is now seeing the world as a web in more ways than one, with lawyers needing to be comfortable in multiple jurisdictions.

"Born to Be Wild: The 'Transâ€?Systemic' Programme at McGill and the Deâ€?Nationalization of Legal Education" Free Download
German Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 7, p. 889, 2009
CLPE Research Paper No. 34/2009

ARMAND DE MESTRAL, Faculty of Law, McGill University
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HELGE DEDEK, McGill University - Faculty of Law
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One of the major challenges legal education faces nowadays is that jurisdictional boundaries are losing significance in an internationalized, globalized and post-regulatory environment. This calls into question the very notion of “law� itself, at least as traditionally understood as a system of posited norms within a given jurisdiction, and the classic model of legal education based on such an understanding of law. While North American legal education has a longstanding tradition of self-reflection, the situation in Europe is different: there is little incentive for legal scholars to devote a considerable amount of time to a serious scholarly treatment of the issue of legal education. Whereas the challenge of internationalization, particularly in its emanation of “Europeanization,� has literally become omnipresent in legal discourse, legal education is still dominated by a traditionalist view of its primary goal: an almost exclusive focus on training lawyers (or judges) for the practice within the boundaries of a national jurisdiction. As a contribution to the debate on the challenges posed to the teaching of law we would like to offer the following brief analysis of the efforts made at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, situated in Québec, Canada to develop a new approach to the teaching of law. Ten years ago, in 1998, the Faculty undertook the effort to offer an integrated comparative three year curriculum, known as the McGill Programme, that teaches even first year introductory courses, such as Contracts and Torts, from a comparative perspective. The ultimate aspiration of this programme, however, is to transcend the fixation on the study of law as the study of “legal systems� - hence the label “trans-systemic� legal education.

"Turning the Curriculum Upside Down: Comparative Law as an Educational Tool for Constructing Pluralistic Legal Mind" Free Download
German Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 7, p. 913, 2009
CLPE Research Paper No. 35/2009

JAAKKO HUSA, University of Joensuu
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The argument in this paper draws inspiration from the pedagogical theory of so-called constructivism. An effective law curriculum is one which can stimulate students to learn legal thinking. The constructivist approach suggests that the learner is more actively involved in a joint enterprise with the law teacher of constructing new legally relevant, and perhaps competing, meanings. Comparative law and/or foreign law and even approximate knowledge of different foreign approaches to similar types of questions may be regarded as a valuable tool for the construction of a primary pluralistic legal mind.

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Solicitation of Abstracts

This journal announces papers on legal education, broadly defined, including teaching methods, curricular reform, learning styles, and other aspects of classroom teaching. It also covers all aspects of the broader enterprise of legal education including admissions issues, alumni issues, costs of legal education, law school administration, the task of fostering research, and the matching of law graduates with productive employment. We welcome abstracts and, where possible full-text of working papers, papers already committed for publication, and recently published articles.

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Directors

LSN SUBJECT MATTER EJOURNALS

A. MITCHELL POLINSKY
Stanford Law School, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Email: polinsky@stanford.edu

BERNARD S. BLACK
University of Texas at Austin - School of Law, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), Northwestern University - School of Law, Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management
Email: bblack@law.utexas.edu

RONALD J. GILSON
Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School
Email: rgilson@leland.stanford.edu

Please contact us at the above addresses with your comments, questions or suggestions for LSN-Sub.

Advisory Board

Legal Education

CHARLES R. CALLEROS
Arizona State University - College of Law

RICHARD MICHAEL FISCHL
University of Connecticut - School of Law

BARBARA GLESNER FINES
Ruby M. Hulen Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Faculty Development, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law

VICTOR JAMES GOLD
Loyola Law School - Los Angeles

ROBERT D. HARRISON
Lecturer in Legal Method, Yale University - Law School

DARCY KIRK
Professor of Law and Director of the Law Library, University of Connecticut - School of Law

LISA GABRIELLE LERMAN
Catholic University of America - Columbus School of Law

JAMES LINDGREN
Professor of Law, Northwestern University - School of Law

RICHARD ALLAN MATASAR
President, Dean and Professor, New York Law School

STEVEN R. SMITH
California Western School of Law

RENNARD STRICKLAND
University of Oregon - School of Law

STEVEN L. WINTER
Wayne State University Law School