Workshop: Legal Education in Crisis? Bringing Researchers and Resources Together to Generate New Scientific Insights

研讨会：危机中的法律教育？

• 批准号: 1650057
• 负责人: Elizabeth Mertz
• 金额: $ 4.59万
• 依托单位: American Bar Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-15 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1650057&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Workshop; Legal; Education; Crisis; Bringing

U.S. law schools have recently become the focus of intense criticism and increasing economic pressure. Books, newspapers, blogs, and other media have announced a growing crisis in legal education. Despite all this publicity, the nature and causes of this crisis remain poorly understood. Certainly, the number of jobs for law graduates has dropped along with the number of students applying for admission. At the same time, in the wake of a critical report by the Carnegie Foundation, pressure on law schools to change how they train students has been mounting. The American Bar Association itself has moved to alter its requirements, pressuring law schools to add more practical training to the core curriculum. Some attribute the crisis to straightforward economic causes, while others argue that a crisis in confidence has long been building because law professors and law schools have failed their consumers (students). While a number of researchers are currently studying different aspects of U.S. legal education, they have not coordinated with each other. As a result, it has been difficult to develop an overarching, systematic view of the changes in legal education and the causes of those changes. This workshop will assemble researchers studying changes in legal education together and bring social science evidence to bear on the perception that legal education is in crisis and on recommended reforms. This will not only help us understand the current crisis better, but will also allow researchers to pool data and avoid duplication of research efforts. At a time when there are urgent calls for reform, along with external pressures on the legal education system, coordination of research efforts will help reformers assess how best to allocate increasingly meager assets.There is a vast array of different kinds of law schools in the U.S. alone -- and increasingly, U.S. law schools are being drawn into networks involving law students from around the world. Social science theories regarding differentiated institutional structures and cultures, markets, global legal influences, and effects of race, gender, class, and historical trajectories in legal education have not yet been put to effective use in analyzing what is happening in legal education. Working together across disciplines, workshop participants will generate a sophisticated picture of law schools and their impacts on differently situated students (as well as of different segments of the public and of the market for legal services). Such scientifically based research is essential to understanding whether the myriad currently proposed solutions to perceived problems in U.S. legal education can address the actual situation (or whether such solutions are likely to have the hypothesized effects).

美国法学院最近成为激烈批评和日益增加的经济压力的焦点。 书籍、报纸、博客和其他媒体都宣称法律的教育危机日益严重。 尽管进行了所有这些宣传，但对这场危机的性质和原因仍然知之甚少。 当然，法律毕业生的就业机会也随着申请入学的学生人数沿着下降。 与此同时，在卡内基基金会（Carnegie Foundation）的一份批评报告发布后，要求法学院改变学生培养方式的压力越来越大。 美国律师协会本身也改变了要求，迫使法学院在核心课程中增加更多的实践培训。 一些人将这场危机归因于直接的经济原因，而另一些人则认为，由于法学教授和法学院辜负了他们的消费者（学生），信心危机早已形成。 虽然许多研究人员目前正在研究美国法律的教育的不同方面，他们还没有相互协调。 因此，很难对法律的教育的变化以及这些变化的原因形成一种全面、系统的看法。 该研讨会将聚集研究法律的教育变化的研究人员，并将社会科学证据用于法律的教育处于危机中的看法和建议的改革。 这不仅有助于我们更好地理解当前的危机，还将使研究人员能够汇集数据，避免重复研究。 在法律的教育体系受到沿着外部压力，迫切要求进行改革的时候，协调研究工作将有助于改革者评估如何最好地分配日益微薄的资产。仅在美国就有各种各样的法学院，而且越来越多的美国法学院被吸引到包括来自世界各地的法律学生的网络中。 社会科学理论关于不同的制度结构和文化，市场，全球法律的影响，以及种族，性别，阶级和历史轨迹的影响，在法律的教育还没有被有效地用于分析发生了什么事，在法律的教育。 跨学科合作，研讨会的参与者将产生法学院及其对不同位置的学生（以及公众和法律的服务市场的不同部分）的影响的复杂画面。这种基于科学的研究对于理解目前针对美国法律的教育中的感知问题提出的无数解决方案是否能够解决实际情况（或者这些解决方案是否可能具有假设的效果）至关重要。