First up, Geoffrey Samuels on ‘What can law schools offer other disciplines?’ He gave an interesting summary of what since the glossators and commentators law offered to other disciplines in the early universities. Such a pleasure to hear the achievements of early jurists praised in this way – I wrote on this in Transforming Legal Education. Their work is astonishing, is the foundation of later Renaissance, European, and state law, and the monist concepts underpinning Roman & canon law. He draws the distinction between medieval and humanist views of textual and philological studies – Cujas, Bude.
Geoffrey quoted Matthew Siems’ chapter on ‘A world without law professors’ (in Methodologies of Legal Research, 2011) citing the critique of methodology there – in other words (if I have him right), that law now is a bit like modern English car firms – they make cars and export them, but import the parts and assemble them. In law, we import the parts, and it makes for stimulating debates. Can lawyers convince other disciplinary scholars of the utility of law’s methodologies? He sides with the pessimism of Toddington and Goodrich in Birks’ collection and says, probably not…
Next, Chloe Wallace on ‘Beyond the jurisdiction: law schools and global education’. I follow Chloe on Twitter and am always stimulated by her work. Here, she is talking about the dangers of legal education in imperialism; and citizenship in legal education, which must surely be global citizenship (Martha Nussbaum).
It’s a nice idea she agreed, but not strong enough to stand up to the current situations where migrants can have citizenship so swiftly remove, have to constantly prove their worth as citizens (which cricket team do they support, etc). This led Chloe to analyse the idea of universal humanity. After all, citizenship is created by boundariness and borders. She showed a webpage from Young Citizens that raised the questions of British values – as she pointed out, the values aren’t particularly British, whatever that means in our disUK.
In our legal education, the foreign jurisdiction is exotica according to her. There’s a failure to define what we own and where we differ from others. Often there’s the creation of a hierarchy where England comes out top. She quoted as part of her methodology in a study of intercultural integration, Bennet’s theory of integration, from denial to defence to minimisation to [paradigm shift here] to acceptance (which involves understanding one’s self through others’ eyes) to adaptation and finally to integration. Chloe believes that in English law schools not enough is done to follow through the stages of Bennet’s development model of intercultural sensitivity.
Periods of time living abroad are not enough according to her – there must be a change in pedagogy in the law school, too, she advocated. I entirely agree. As she went on to say, we have to understand our own legal systems as culturally determined. And frame our pedagogy accordingly.
Finally, Luke Mason on ‘Birks’ Tower? Legal science as the sine qua non of the law school’. For Luke, (if I have it right), we don’t need law schools for legal education. Is there a legal way of knowing, though? Law struggles to ‘earn’ a place in university, possesses deep epistemic uncertainty. Practitioners of legal education are sceptical about there being a scholarly basis for law; the professional shadow creates confusion; little agreement about what a law school is for… And yet, the law school is successful – new Business School & Classics, makes money scholarship is booming, epistemic openness means dynamic research, including on legal education.
Law as a discipline — we tell students lies that law is a social, historical & cultural artefact, but it isn’t a separate field of knowledge (the business school problem). That law is an identifiable profession doesn’t make it a field of knowledge worthy of university legel study and research (the accountancy problem). And law has no clear epistemology (the ‘right faculty’ problem).
Luke defined three approaches to writing on the law school – the Euclidian model, the Eclectic model, the Radical model. Euclidian model – law school as home to a particular form of knowledge and education. Blackstone, Dicey, Kahn-Freund, von Savigny, Langdell. Formalism, Doctrinalism, 19th century legal science. Produces the legal treatise, and law is the mapping of deductions from these principles. But there are problems of immanence – angels on a pinhead, the flattening of legal complexities. The method tells us little about how we generate these axioms. This is the dominant form of legal education practised today according to Luke.
The eclectic model – Feldman, Twining. Law is scholarship, no core. It’s not wedded to a particular vision of what law might be. But it looks like law here is ‘autonomous’ but empty, no identity. The radical approach. Goodrich, Kennedy, Unger. The questioning of law’s autonomy and the law school as the study of power in the context of ideas and society.
So, then, what is legal knowledge? Encountering the world from a normative perspective? Luke raced through ideas. Law is an autonomous way of knowing but not an autonomous field. Law is the relationship between the world, ideas and rules. This is a particular form of knowledge. The law school is for this.
Fascinating session – three excellent papers. From a personal standpoint I really liked this session because Geoffrey drew a line between English medieval law and Scots medieval law, and Chloe focused on England, not the UK. So refreshing.