More on "Rethinking Legal Education"

Like Gene, I was at the AALS plenary session on "Rethinking Legal Education for the 21st Century," and found it quite fascinating.  My notes largely track his reflections in the posting below.

As usual, though, some of the real fireworks went off during the question-and-answer period.  Several of the presenters had emphasized a beefed-up curriculum in international law, properly noting that law has become globalized, and that this must be reflected in our classes.  A questioner, however, posed this challenge:  Have we gone to positioning our students among global communities while jumping right over the minority communities in our own country?  I thought it was a provocative question that still deserves a thorough answer.  I’m not sure that I have a good one, though I do see the questioner’s point.  Within my home state, legal practice in largely Hispanic South Texas is often very different than in Dallas, but that is not a topic which fits into any of our classes in a whole and real way. 

One thought I did have after the session was that there is the possibility of bridging these issues in some (but not all) cases.  The different legal cultures in Texas, for example, are in large part an extension of, and linked to, international migration and interaction.  For those situations, at least, it might be worthwhile to consider these issues by broadening the idea of international law to include distinct communities within our nation-- perhaps we should be thinking about inter-cultural law as much as we do inter-national law.  I suspect that one reason we are loath to do so may be that such a project would force us to recognize the segregation that continues to pervade our society at many levels.

-- Mark Osler