Presentation at Drexel University Conference on future of legal education internationalization

1. Beyond Colonization—Programs of U.S.
Legal Education Abroad by Indigenous
Institutions
Larry Catá Backer
W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar
and Professor of Law ; Professor of International
Affairs, Pennsylvania State University
lcb911@gmail.com

2. Introduction
• Article explores the efforts at and
consequences of a nationalist model of
internationalizing legal education.
– the educational systems of a particular state
that is deemed desirable is exported to others
and achieves through this exportation a
multinational character
– national rather than international but with
transnational effect; globalizing domestic law.

3. Object of Study—Nationalist Globalizaiton
• Part II provides a brief discussion of context—focusing
on the nationalist globalization of legal education.
• Part III then examines the typology of efforts to globalize
legal education, distinguishing between internationalist
and nationalist models of education globalization.
• Part IV then examines nationalist globalization where
foreign law schools seek to develop an American legal
education model in their home territory.
• Part V then analyses these efforts to globalize legal
education as an exercise in American cosmopolitanism,
internationalism and nationalism

4. Issue
• Does the character of this nationalist
globalization change when foreign
institutions establish U.S. style law
schools teaching aspects U.S. style law
courses on U.S. law subjects outside the
territorial borders of the United States by
foreign institutions?

5. Focus on Nationalist Globalization
• An important element of internationalization
– Premised on the idea of legal commodification and competition
among jurisdictions for adherents
– It becomes powerful when naturalized within host states
– Consequences
• For the host state:
– Cultural imperialism
– Fracture within polity
• For the home state
– Loss of control over the development of law/
– Fracture between the polity and the host states

7. Globalization of Legal Education: Two Parallel
Models:
• Internationalist Model:
• Transnational and outward looking
• International, comparative, foreign and transnational law
into curriculum as a part of basic legal training of law
students.
• Nationalist Model:
• Domestic and inward looking.
• Market driven competition for influence among dominant
domestic legal orders.

8. Internationalist Model of Globalization:
• Blending legal studies from a variety of jurisdictions, creating a
curriculum that starts as essentially transnational.
• Models of Implementation:
• Integration
• Aggregation
• Segregation
• Immersion
• Multi-Disciplinary Department
• Complicated and expensive
• May require faculty to change approach to teaching and
research.

9. Nationalist Model of Globalization:
• Aggressively outward looking in its quest to dominate markets
for the provision of legal education.
• The extension of the influence of national law outside of the
national territory or jurisdiction.
• Rather than expanding international curriculum within national
law school, seeks to extend national law school internationally.
• Models of Implementation:
• Expansion of Accreditation Activities
• Joint Degree Programs
• Jurisdictionally Specific Specialty Programs

10. Implementation of Nationalist Models of
Globalization:
• Expansion of Accreditation Activities:
• ABA consideration of accreditation for foreign law schools modeled on
U.S. standards.
• Proposal rejected August 2012.
• Joint Degree Programs:
• Peking University School of Transnational Law
• Offers Chinese and U.S. law degrees.
• American curriculum, both substantively and pedagogically, taught in
English and by U.S. faculty.
• Jurisdictionally Specific Specialty Programs:
• University of Navarra Licentiate + Diploma in Anglo American Law
Program.
• Elective courses focusing on American law, taught in English, by U.S.
faculty.

12. Critical Analysis of the Nationalist Model of
Globalization:
• Nationalist model embraces form while subverting function of
globalization.
• Universalizes the substantive and pedagogical approach of a
single state.
• Seeks to project the reach of domestic law, and the education in
the domestic law and legal culture of a particular state, on a
global scale.
THE FEAR:
Harmonization  Subordination
Guidance  Domination

13. The Nationalist Model and Cultural Imperialism:
(displacement of local law)
Cultural Imperialism:
The sum of the processes by which a society is
brought into the modern world system, and how its
dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced,
and sometimes bribed into shaping social
institutions to correspond to, or even to promote the
values and structures of the dominant center of the
system.
Julia Galeota, Cultural Imperialism: An American Tradition, The
Humanist, 2004 Humanist Essay Contest Winners

14. The Nationalist Model and Cultural Imperialism:
•Preference for theoretical and philosophical curriculum over doctrinal
and practical curriculum.
•Declining utility of research to practitioners and increasing emphasis
on the theoretical.
•Ideological difficulty in the application of American law to foreign facts.
(i.e. rejecting separate but equal in Israel land administration).**
**The subjective and cultural rooting of a legal system is what
makes the globalization of legal education particularly
challenging compared to, for example, the globalization of medical
education.

15. Market Principles Suggest that Fears of Cultural
Imperialism May be Overstated:
• Student & Institutional Choice Shaped by Market
Demand:
• Value of curriculum to employers will influence the
choice to offer a foreign curriculum at all and the
content of the curriculum once implemented.
• I.e. Market demand may favor instruction in Delaware
corporate law. The same might not be true for American
tort law.
• Market principles will prevent the passive absorption
and acceptance of American legal theory in the
absence of some substantive demand for the

16. Nationalist Globalization and Multiple Law
Systems Within States
• Fracture
– Specialization within and between systems
• Polycentricity
– Domestic law is one but not necessarily the only governance
regime affecting behavior. The function of the lawyer at one
level of the social structure of the state is very different from that
of the lawyer at the other.

17. The Empire Strikes Back: Effects of Nationalist
Globalization on Exporting States When Host States
Control Legal Educaiton
• Export of national models of legal education can affect
the shape of national law in both the home and host
states.
1. Imperfections in Nationalist Exportation
2. Challenges to Legitimacy of Globalized National Law
1. Resistance and Revival of Indigenous Law
1. Exportation as a Two-Way Street

19. Conclusion
• This essay explored the ways in which globalization of
legal education, in particular, has begun to take two quite
distinct forms.
– Internationalizing
– Globalizing
• US Law schools have engaged in both forms fo
exporting legal education
• The use of U.S. law as the common foundation of global
transactions globalizes national law and elevates it into a
supra-national legal system.
– But the price of this transformation of U.S. law into an
international domestic legal system.

20. Thank You!!!