A critical history of the Americanization of legal education in fourteen countries

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the export of American powerboth hard and softthroughout the world. What role did US cultural and economic imperialism play in legal education?American Legal Education Abroad offers an unprecedented and surprising picture of the history of legal education in fourteen countries beyond the United States.

Each study in this book represents a critical history of the Americanization of legal education, reexamining prevailing narratives of exportation, transplantation, and imperialism. Collectively, these studies challenge the conventional wisdom that American ideas and practices have dominated globally. Editors Susan Bartie and David Sandomierski and their contributors suggest that to understand legal education and to respond thoughtfully to the mounting present-day challenges, it is essential to look beyond a particular region and consider not only the ideas behind legal education but also the broader historical, political, and cultural factors that have shaped them.

American Legal Education Abroad begins with an important foundational history by leading Harvard Law School historian Bruce Kimball, who explains the factors that created a transportable American legal model, and the book concludes with reflections from two prominent American law professors, Susan Carle and Bob Gordon, whose observations on recent disruptions within US law schools suggest that their influence within the global order of legal education may soon fall into further decline. This book should be considered an invaluable resource for anyone in the field of law.

Susan Bartie (Editor)
Susan Bartieis Lecturer in Law at the University of Tasmania. She has won a number of awards and prizes including a Deans Commendation for Doctoral Thesis Excellence for her PhD, a Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning from the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training (national award) for her teaching and she was awarded a British Chevening Scholarship to complete a Masters in Law at the University of Cambridge.Her recent book, Free Hands and Minds Pioneering Legal Scholars, reveals the central ideas that underpinned the birth of modern Australian university legal education.

David Sandomierski (Editor)
David Sandomierskiis Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law at Western University. He holds an SJD from the University of Toronto, where his doctoral dissertation received the Governor Generals Academic Gold Medal. He also holds degrees in civil and common law from McGill University, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Law Journal. In 2008-09 he served as law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada, Beverley McLachlin. His recent book, Aspiration and Reality in Legal Education, examines the relationship between realism and formalism, and theory and practice, in contemporary legal education.