American Legal Education Abroad

NYU Press has published American Legal Education Abroad: Critical Histories, edited by Susan Bartie and David Sandomierski.  

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the export of American power—both hard and soft—throughout 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.

An endorsement:

This fascinating collection of essays by eminent legal scholars and historians examines the global influence of American legal education. The essays are by no means formulaic, as the impact of American legal education is considered in the light of each country’s varied historical and political context, whether it be decolonization in Nigeria or post-Soviet experience in Estonia. The essays also eschew the simplistic and one-dimensional view that American legal education was accepted without question, as there was actual resistance on the part of France, for example, and Japan regarded it as irrelevant." ~Margaret Thornton, Professor of Law Emerita, The Australian National University

–Dan Ernst