Building a European-Oriented Law Curriculum

Abstract

The Europeanisation of law and legal practice calls for the education of a new generation of law graduates; “European” law graduates who are comfortable with different jurisdictions, who can quickly understand a new legal system, who can identify the common European or international origins of divergent national laws and who can solve transnational legal problems. With its focus on national law, the traditional law curriculum is ill-suited to educating such “European” law graduates. Legal education therefore needs to undergo a reorientation, and requires the development of a European-oriented law curriculum taught from a comparative and European perspective. This paper aims to identify some of the building blocks of a European-oriented law curriculum and to illustrate how it can be implemented by looking at Maastricht University’s European Law School - English Language Track.

Keywords: Europeanisation of legal education, comparative legal education, European law graduates, European Law School