The crises in legal education
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Date
2014
Authors
Modiri, Joel
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
This article reflects on recent debates on legal education in South Africa. I argue that
the value of legal education should not be indexed by how well it serves the needs
and expectations of the legal profession and judiciary, but rather how it contributes
to a new jurisprudence suited to the legal, social and political transformation of South
Africa. I therefore argue against a reading of the crisis of legal education as one that is
instrumental and economical (the inability to produce efficient legal professionals) and
focus rather on the jurisprudential crises that lie at the heart of law and jurisprudence,
namely the crisis set in motion by the shift from a general jurisprudence, centered on
the ideal of justice, to a restricted jurisprudence, focused merely on the coherence
of the positive law. I argue that what is needed as a response to this crisis is a critical
legal education, or an approach to the study and teaching of law grounded in a critical
jurisprudence. The turn to a critical legal education suggested in this article is then
further linked to an understanding of law as a humanities discipline and to the humility
that this will require of legal academics, lawyers and judges.
Description
Keywords
Legal education, Social transformation, Legal transformation, Political transformation
Citation
Modiri, J. (2014). The crises in legal education. Acta Academica: Law as a humanities discipline: transformative potential and political limits, 46(3), 1-24.