Asian Legal Education in the Age of Globalization: A Comparative View

Abstract

Legal education around the globe may seem to many remarkably resistant

to fundamental change. In the United States, superficially at least, the

curriculum in most law schools has undergone little basic change over the

course of a half century. To be sure new courses have been added from

environmental law to feminist jurisprudence in response to changing social

concerns and values, but the staple subjects of judge-made, private lawcontracts,

torts, property-still dominate the first year curriculum in nearly

all American law schools. And we continue to emphasize our so-called Socratic

methods of instruction. So too in the Civil Law World of continental Europe,

Latin America, and East Asia neither the mode nor the substance of legal

education has undergone the transformation that one might expect in this age

of rapid economic, social, and political change. Again private law dominates

and the preferred method of instruction remains the lecture.

In my comments on a comparative view of Asian legal education today,

I would like to suggest that beneath the surface fundamental changes are

indeed taking place and that legal education is in fact responding, albeit at

a more gradual pace than many would prefer, to the global changes that

surround us. As legal educators we are thus challenged to adapt to these

changes and the opportunities they provide us both to broaden and deepen

our own understanding of law and its role and function in a world of

instantaneous communication and mutual interdependency.