Posted on 10/25/2006 12:17:43 PM PDT by Paul Ross
Shift in Harvard Curriculum Reflects Larger Trend Toward Global Law
Leigh Jones
The National Law Journal
10-24-2006
Harvard Law School's recent announcement that it is making the most sweeping changes to its first-year curriculum in 100 years heralded a major shift in legal education, including a new emphasis on global law.
But some of its competitors say that they already have revamped their programs in similar ways.
Harvard will begin requiring first-year students to take three new courses, including a class on legislation and regulation, another covering global legal systems and a third focusing on problems and theories.
The school's Oct. 6 announcement created plenty of buzz for the institution, which historically was instrumental in establishing the basic law school curriculum of torts, contracts, property and other first-year classes required at almost every law school across the nation. And while some competing schools say they welcome the changes at Harvard, they also are a bit perturbed by all the fuss.
"When Harvard does it, it becomes news," said Evan Caminker, dean of the University of Michigan School of Law.
Since 2001, Michigan's law school has required its students to complete a three-credit "transnational" course, Caminker said. They have the option to take the course during any one of the three years in law school, he said, adding that about half of the school's first-year class takes the course.
"While we thought it was critically important that every law student take the course, it wasn't critical that it come in the first year," Caminker said.
Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer said his school also has similar requirements. But it has decided to follow a more traditional approach in its first-year curriculum and to leave the other courses for the second and third years of law school.
"The first year is the one year that works," he said. "It is rather bizarre that, in general, law schools have focused on reforming the first year when the problems and failures in the curriculum are all in the second and third years."
Harvard decided to modify its first-year curriculum because of the "imprint" that the initial year of study has on law students, said Martha Minow, a Harvard Law School professor who spearheaded its curriculum reform project.
"To postpone introduction to legislation and regulation is to communicate to students that it's an add-on. To postpone introduction to international law is to say 'that's for later,' " she said.
Minow also said that the changes at other schools influenced Harvard's revisions. "We are simply enacting what a lot of people have talked about and what a lot of people have done in pieces," she said.
Although Northwestern University School of Law recently altered its first-year legal research and writing course to include a broader communications and legal-reasoning component, it does not plan to change markedly its 1L curriculum, said the school's dean, David Van Zandt.
"I'm not a big fan of what Harvard's done," he said.
Harvard's new course on legislation and regulation will focus on the separation of powers, the legislative process, statutory interpretation, administrative agency practice and more. For the global legal systems course, students will choose one of three classes: public international law, international economic law and comparative law.
Students will take the problems and theories course after they complete their first term. It will include solving problems from simulated case studies. Harvard will accommodate the changes by reducing the number of class hours in torts, contracts, civil procedure, criminal law and property, and by adding a new January term for first-year students for the problem-solving course. It will implement the changes over the next three years.
It's a VERY bad move, away from common law and precedent, and toward international law and regulation.
The common law tradition is one of the most important supports of freedom and citizens' rights. Undermine that, and you lose the very basis on which freedom is built. You move away from the long rise of freedom going back to Magna Carta into the world of the Eurosocialists.
I'm pleased to see a law school head say he doesn't like what Harvard is doing. But regretably Harvard has often been a pioneer of curricular changes. Let's hope this time they don't get away with it.
I can understand the early introduction of legislation and regulation (maybe they should cross-pollinate with some con law and see where there might be some significant conflict), but the introduction of international law has an obvious agenda...like let's see who is being more "progressive" and "humane" than we are.
Oh...my...gosh! That phrase totally gives me the creeps.
Screw world government, and anyone who supports it!
Indeed, these actions necessarily dilute and reduce the focus of the students on their case law studies...and do constitute a "move away from common law and precedent, and towards international law and regulation."
Which is inevitably destructive of our liberty, by its unavoidable infringements on our self rule.
You move away from the long rise of freedom going back to Magna Carta into the world of the Eurosocialists.
Agreed.
Is there an accrediting association for law schools ?
That is typically the heinous ABA. Non-accredited insitutions flourish in California, I believe.
"Is there an accrediting association for law schools ?"
several
The problem is that the most left wing members of the legal profession dominate them.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Harvard, once a great university, has become a worthless exercise in leftist cronyism.
Sovereignty is the big issue. This is what they discuss at Harvard and within the UN-affiliated NGOs. Who gets it? Who deserves it? How much sovereignty? The United States is in their way because of people like us FReepers. They don't like us much at all. We are a stumbling block for everything they want to accomplish.
ping
Now, I'm still trying to cure her of some of the strange ideas she picked up there.
Regards, Ivan
Is there any hope? For your sister?
I was thinking of something like the North Central Association...
If my family's plot to get her a position in a merchant bank also works, the transition will likely be accelerated.
Regards, Ivan
Good Luck! ;-)
He came to the conclusion that the people who live there are insane. I quite agree.
Regards, Ivan
"That was my whole first year curriculum except for Legal Research and Writing!"
As it was for me if you toss in an intensive introductory seminar on Constitutional Law. Every other area of law branches off these fundamentals. The nation will be poorer for illiterate attorneys.
I can recall my Criminal Procedure prof (who was a graduate of Harvard, come to think of it) downplayed the procedure part and stressed a text called "Rethinking Criminal Law", which is a little difficult for those who haven't really thought about it in the first place. At any rate, at the end of the semester, he explained that the reason he didn't teach the nitty-gritty of criminal procedure was he figured the vast majority of us would never practice criminal law and there was more a chance of our becoming judges than criminal lawyers. We didn't appreciate it. Eighty percent of our classmates learned the nitty-gritty from a former Ventura County, California prosecutor while we philosophized about the theory of punishment and studies on recividism wiht a young Harvard egghead. I don't know that it has helped me much.
This is an attempt to legitimize the movement towards binding international agreements which will supercede national sovereignty. It's a bad idea and kids introduced into it in Year 1 of law school will be little prepared to filter the information correctly.
None of this is a big deal. You don't memorize the law in law school...you really learn how to apply law to fact. It's really 3 years of intensive problem-solving training.
"Global law," "Comparative Law" whatever you want to call it...has been offered at law schools since the beginning of time...
We all know what this is all about...I'm catching hell from many people, on this site, LF, and in the street trying to talk about the implications of the one world government. It's beginnings as far as the average person can understand it....ie...when you go past WWI period you lose even the most intelligent, yet naive; person due to denial, fear, arrogrance, or "I could care less types"....
They are going to crash the stock market in about 3-5 years; as the stock market goes up, inviting investors, gas prices down, to give the average family or investor a chance to try their luck for a fast buck...then, just like in October 1929, which was in fact planned, it WILL crash...
The World government is being supported by an incredible network of corporations, lawyers, educators, etc.......you know the story, it's only a matter of time....
I have come to the conclusion that most of these are non-practicing jewish secularists, and they are really self-loathing, but don't want to admit it. They have "Stockholm Syndrome" on a scale unimaginable. If an Arab accuses them of anything...no matter how insane or ridiculous...these self-loathers get a guilty conscience over it...and need to kick their fellows in Israel to salve it.
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