Presenting Paper "Beyond Colonization—Programs of U.S. Legal Education Abroad by Indigenous Institutions" at Drexel Law Review Symposium, Innovations In International Legal Education

On Friday, October 12, the Drexel Law Review and the Drexel International Law and Human Rights Society hosted a one day symposium on "Building Global Professionalism: Emerging Trends in International and Transnational Legal Education." The symposium was held at the Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, 3320 Market Street, Philadelphia. 

From the Program:

As the practice of many areas of law — including those conventionally regarded as wholly domestic — has come to have international and transnational dimensions, it has become increasingly important for graduating law students to have greater knowledge and understanding of international, comparative, and transnational legal perspectives as part of their basic legal education. While most U.S. law schools have not traditionally placed these aspects of legal education, legal practice, and the legal profession at the core of their pedagogical missions, a growing number of law schools have sought to more proactively develop the place of these global perspectives in their educational programs. This symposium examines and assesses a series of conceptual and practical themes at the leading edge of these developments, including innovative approaches to integrating international, transnational, and comparative perspectives into the law school curriculum; pioneering methods of bringing these perspectives into experiential and legal methods programs; and critical perspectives on all of these emerging ideas and trends.

This post includes program information; links to the video of the Conference and to my  paper and presentation:  "Beyond Colonization—Programs of U.S. Legal Education Abroad by Indigenous Institutions."

My Presentation:

My presentation was entitled  "Beyond Colonization—Programs of U.S. Legal Education Abroad by Indigenous Institutions." Its object was to unpack the concepts of globalization and internationalization in the context of legal education. Its focus was on the complex character of developing internationalized programs of study--contrasting the more usual efforts at creating a consensus based program of non-state based law study with the efforts to globalize national law, principally the law of the United States and its related frameworks of legal education, through its exportation to host states.  The issue becomes more complex still when foreign institutions take control of U.S. law and education pedagogies to establish U.S. style law school sin foreign (non-U.S.) jurisdictions.  For some, the effect is the transformation of U.S. law into something akin to Roman law before the 17th century (as a system of universalized legal principles).  For others the effect is the transplantation of U.S. national legal education systems (substance and form) as a formal system of global law with internal and external application).  

Here is the abstract of the paper (co-authored with Bret Stancil, a third year student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School):

This article will look at globalization in the context of higher education and, in particular, higher legal education. The object will be to think about the ways in which non-U.S. based law schools are now offering US style legal education to (1) supply the U.S. legal market or (2) produce U.S. trained lawyers in the home state market or for other legal markets outside the U.S. Specifically, this article will first discuss the history of higher education as a national project and more recent trends and efforts to globalize higher education. This conceptual framework is informed by cosmopolitan, imperial and national aspirations. Starting from a definition of legal education globalization, the article considers the history of legal education as a national and international project. It then examines recent efforts to globalize legal education as an exercise in American cosmopolitanism, internationalism and nationalism and will then critically assesses arguments that, in light of certain characteristics of legal systems and legal education, globalization of legal education may implicate notions of cultural imperialism, in whatever form it takes. It then turns to an examination of one of the more interesting manifestations of globalization abroad—nationalist globalization in the form of developing American law schools outside the U.S. by non-U.S. educational entities, concentrating on two examples, one from Spain and the other from China. Finally, after discussing the ways in which the globalization of American legal education may affect recipient cultures, this article will take the reverse perspective and hypothesize on how the American legal education system may be affected by the same export.

The POWERPOINT of the presentation at the Conference can be ACCESSED HERE. 

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The entire conference was recorded.  The video stream (including the PowerPoint slides of participants can be ACCESSED HERE.  (For those interested my presentation starts at marker 1.33 hours).
 
An article describing the symposium on the Drexel Law website: HERE.
 

Photos from the symposium: HERE.

 

The conference was organized on the faculty side by Anil Kalhan, Associate Professor at the Earle Mack School of law.  His  principal interests include immigration law, criminal law, U.S. and comparative constitutional law, and international human rights law and is an affiliated faculty member at the South Asia Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a faculty advisory board member for the Drexel University Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, and is a founding co-convener of the Drexel Summer Theory Institute. My thanks to him and the members of the Drexel Law Review and the Human Rights Law Society for an excellent conference.

The Conference Program:

The Program Schedule:

Schedule

• 8:00am - 8:30am
  Registration & Breakfast
• 8:30am - 8:45am
  Welcoming Remarks
  Dean Roger Dennis; Anil Kalhan
• 8:45am - 10:30am
  Models of Internationalization
  Larry Catá Backer; Jorge Luis Esquirol; Vasuki Nesiah; Fernanda Nicola
• 10:45am - 12:00pm
  Globalizing Experiential Education
  Sarah Paoletti; Elisabeth Wickeri; Rick Wilson
• 12:15pm - 1:30pm
  Lunch and Keynote Address
  "But for Wuhan?: Do Foreign Law Schools That Operate in Authoritarian Regimes Have Human Rights Obligations?"
  Martin Flaherty
• 1:45pm - 3:30pm
  Learning and Working Across Legal Systems
  Raquel Aldana; Kerstin Carlson; Alana Klein; Holning S. Lau
• 3:45pm - 5:00pm
  Global Professionalism
  Diane Penneys Edelman; Katherine Hall; Kimberly Kirkland; Leighanne Yuh
• 5:00pm - 5:15pm
  Closing Discussion
  Anil Kalhan; Pammela Quinn Saunders
• 5:15pm - 6:30pm
  Reception

The entire conference was recorded.  The video stream (including the PowerPoint slides of participants can be ACCESSED HERE. 

The presenters included:

KEYNOTE: MARTIN FLAHERTY Professor of Law and Co-Director, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, Fordham University School of Law

RAQUEL ALDANA Professor of Law and Founder and Director, Inter-American Program, Pacific McGeorge School of Law

LARRY CATÁ BACKER W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law and International Affairs, Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law

KERSTIN CARLSON Assistant Professor of Political Science, The American University of Paris

DIANE PENNEYS EDELMAN Professor of Legal Writing and Director of International Programs, Villanova University School of Law

JORGE LUIS ESQUIROL Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law

KATHERINE HALL Senior Lecturer in Law, Australian National University College of Law

ANIL KALHAN Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law

KIMBERLY KIRKLAND Professor of Law, University of New Hampshire School of Law

ALANA KLEIN Assistant Professor of Law, McGill University

HOLNING S. LAU Associate Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

VASUKI NESIAH Associate Professor of Practice, New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study

FERNANDA NICOLA Associate Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law

SARAH PAOLETTI Practice Associate Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Legal Clinic, University of Pennsylvania Law School

PAMMELA QUINN SAUNDERS Assistant Professor of Law, Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law

ELISABETH WICKERI Executive Director, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, Fordham University School of Law

RICHARD WILSON Professor of Law, Director of the Human Rights Law Clinic, American University Washington College of Law

LEIGHANNE YUH Executive Director, Korea Summer Program, Fordham University School of Law

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