Reflections on Legal Education and Philosophy: The Critical Role of Theory in Practice
Abstract
An application-focused, commercial-utility-driven approach to legal education can seriously undermine the law’s potential and produce students insensitive to the significance of questions they are called upon to ask in legal practice. A mature curriculum will not eschew a survey of the great debates of philosophy in the history of ideas nor insulate students from considering the influence of other subjects bearing an impact upon the law. The law’s necessarily inter-disciplinary nature requires its practitioners to possess at least an appreciation of extra-legal learning from areas such as philosophy, logic, history and economics.