Reappraising American Legal Education through a Comparative Study

The current ferment in American legal education has been stimulated mainly by the American realists and a recent offshoot of that school, called policy science. The thrust of their reproof is that law to be studied is not to be found in the casebook and the law library, but is to be found in "law in action" in the context of economic, moral, political, psychological and social forces that shape law and the process of decision. Some have stressed the role of the lawyer as policy maker, or as counsel or adviser to policy makers, and have developed a suggested curriculum "to promote the adaption of legal education to the policy needs of a free society." A recent consensus of legal educators is that the aim of American legal education is to develop lawyers who shall assume the role of "legal statesmen" as well as developing even better "legal craftsmen." The following comparative study will provide valuable insights into how foreign legal education attains balance between academic and cultural training in law as a learned discipline, and professional and practical training for law as a learned art.