06 Oct Harvard 1L Curriculum to Include International Law
06.10.06
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2 Comments
The story here, without many details. (HT: Orin Kerr at VC.) This adds Harvard to Michigan and Hofstra as schools that require IL in the first year, but Harvard’s move obviously increases the probability of a cascade (look at what’s happened in the wake of Harvard College’s decision on early admissions). Several others schools include IL-related courses as part of a limited menu of 1L electives. If readers know of other ways in which IL is being brought into the 1L universe, it would be interesting to hear about them.
Update: The details are found here. Note that students will be given a choice of public IL, international economic law, or comparative law, a contrast to Michigan’s unified transnational law 1L requirement.
Peter– This is indeed an interesting development. BTW, Osgoode Hall has been experimenting with a transnational law course in the first year (I don’t know if they have retained it permanently). And of course many law courses of study in Europe require international law. From the commentary at VC, one can glean a range of views on the alternatives for the placement of IL in the American JD curriculum in addition to the required first-year course: 1)elective first-year course (offered as a 1-credit survey course at Stanford when I was there); 3) required upper-level (I’d be interested to know if any schools have experimented with this); 4) elective upper-level (the dominant model). As I have written before, I am not yet convinced IL needs to be a required course — at least not everywhere. At a 2004 AALS conference on transnational/international legal education the point was made that globalization requires two kinds of lawyers: the “global internationalists” who offer broad strategic counsel to their clients and the “local functionaries” who serve on the ground within local, regional or national legal systems. Although I don’t entirely agree with the stark two-level construct, it does suggest that the top tier law schools… Read more »
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