Dr Audrey Guinchard (University of Essex)
Legal Education's Response to Globalization: the Case of Criminal Law
More than any other legal subject, the teaching of criminal law has been the least responsive to globalisation and new technologies. Yet it is under increasing pressure to rethink its structures. International criminal law, with its ultimate step of creating, a few years ago, an international criminal jurisdiction, challenges the very idea of criminal law being the expression of State sovereignty. Cybercrime also questions the notion of crime expressed in physical terms, not only because cyberspace is a cross-border space, but also because cyberspace involves virtual communities such as Second Life which have no physical equivalent. The teaching of criminal law as a mandatory module remains oblivious of those challenges and it is only options, which are not normally available in a law faculty, that introduce them. Is it not time to (re)map the curriculum, (re)define the learning objectives, and redefine the institutional setting in which the teaching takes place?
A starting point could be to adopt a multi-disciplinary approach. A systematic use of history, philosophy, sociology, politics, linguistics and economics could put into perspective criminal law, its specificities its raison d’ętre and the challenges it faces with globalisation and the new technologies. Comparative law and international law could only reinforce this new vision of the subject. To a certain extent, such an approach is not unknown in legal education. Some courses in joint degrees, like LLB English and French laws, have had to be reduced to the core by using comparative law, history, philosophy and/or politics. The experience showed that not so much is lost as one may fear, and that the students are better prepared to face issues raised by globalisation. Yet to implement such an approach throughout the curriculum would be breaking with the tradition of a legal education at university being very much centred on one legal system isolated from others and from other disciplines. Should one take the risk? As the paradigm of the law emanating from the State, criminal law could be an example of a multi-disciplinary approach to legal education in order to extract the essence of a subject and present it in a new light. Collaboration between universities could bring expertise on specific aspects of the subject, with the help of new technologies to improve communications.
But can a multi-disciplinary approach, engrained in the presentation of legal contents, still deliver an adequate training to lawyers of the 21st century? Or would this new organisation of knowledge dilute national law so much that legal education would become meaningless? Even if this danger were avoided, should we rethink the current divide between a university education and the later stage of professional training?
