English-Medium Legal Education in Continental Europe: Maastricht University’s European Law School - Experiences and Challenges

Abstract

Today’s law graduates are facing a world in which the law and the practice of law are undergoing constant transformation as a result of European integration and globalisation. These developments inevitably raise new challenges to legal education, and call for a new generation of European law graduates. This contribution will share the experiences and address the challenges of offering a European-based curriculum through the medium of English. Attention will be given first to the need to educate European law graduates and therefore for the need to ‘Europeanise’ legal education. This is followed by an overview of what a European-based law curriculum could look like. In this context, this contribution will take as a case study the European Law School of Maastricht University. On an individual institutional basis, Maastricht University has taken the bold step to introduce a fully fledged European-based law curriculum aimed at training truly European law graduates in its bachelor programme of the European Law School. This English language track of the European Law School teaches law from a European and comparative perspective from day one, entirely through the medium of English. The contribution will focus on the role of language in that programme, and in particular the experiences with and challenges of teaching an English-medium European-based law curriculum.

Keywords: English-medium legal education, Europeanisation of legal education, comparative legal education, European law graduates