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Legal Consciousness and Its Significance for Law and Society Teaching Outside Canadian Law Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Lesley A. Jacobs
Lesley A. Jacobs
Affiliation:
Director, Law & Society Programme, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto (Ontario)CanadaM3J IP3, jacobs@Yorku.ca
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Extract

One of the recommendations made in Law and Learning is that “[t]he teaching of law in the liberal arts and other faculties should be encouraged.” Earlier in its report, the authors acknowledged the existence of legal studies programs outside law faculties in Canada and emphasized that in these programs legal doctrine exerts much less influence on the direction of study than in law schools. Law teaching in these programs, the Consultative Group explains, “has many attractions. It relieves the subject of its professional training connotations, facilitates integration of legal study and research with parallel activities in other disciplines, and recognizes that law ought to be understood by and subject to the critical scrutiny of as many citizens as possible.”

Although the praise in Law and Learning for legal studies programs outside law faculties and especially in faculties of arts and social sciences in Canadian universities is considerable, it is significant I believe that the report does not explain why the teaching of legal doctrine – legal rules – is not central to these legal studies programs, and in particular law and society undergraduate programs. Indeed, the demand from incoming undergraduate students and ordinary citizens is overwhelmingly for these programs to offer courses on legal doctrine. And some programs in Canadian universities comply. Why not teach legal doctrine in these programs? Why should the study of law in these programs be so different from that found in Canadian law schools?

Type
Dossier
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , April 2003 , pp. 61 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2003

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References

1 Consultative Group on Research and Education in Law, Law and Learning (Ottawa: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, 1983) at 156.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. at 58.

3 Constable, M., Commentary presented at the Law in the Liberal Arts Conference, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, April 2002.Google Scholar

4 Ewick, P. & Silbey, S., “Conformity, Contestation, and Resistance: An Account of Legal Consciousness” (1992) 26 New Eng. L. Rev. 731–42.Google Scholar

5 See e.g. Cohen, G., History, Labour, and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) c. 2.Google Scholar

6 Supra note 4 at 731.

7 Ewick, P. & Silbey, S., “Common Knowledge and Ideological Critique” (1999) 33 Law & Soc'y Rev. 1027.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Ewick, P. & Sibley, S., The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), c. 2.Google Scholar

9 Supra note 7 at 1027–28.

10 See also Nielsen, M., “Situating Legal Consciousness” (2000) 34 Law & Soc'y Rev. 1059.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Umphrey, M., “The Dialogics of Legal Meaning” (1999) 33 Law & Soc'y Rev. 395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See for example my discussion in Jacobs, L., Pursuing Equal Opportunities: The theory and practice of egalitarian justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) c. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Supra note 7 at 1026.

14 Supra note 10 at 1059.

15 Supra note 7 at 1028–1033.

16 Supra note 10 at 1061.

17 Dworkin, R., Law's Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986) at 410.Google Scholar

18 The other outsider perspective worth noting is the viewpoint that looks at legal phenomena from one of the social sciences. See Macaulay, S., Friedman, L. & Stookey, J., “Introduction” to Macaulay, S., Friedman, L., & Stookey, J., eds., Law and Society: Readings on the Social Study of Law (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995) at 1Google Scholar, and Dworkin, supra note 17 at 13–14.

19 I have, for example, discussed this in the context of health care reform in my forthcoming book. Jacobs, L., Canadian Health Care Policy: Values, Rights, Law (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2004).Google Scholar