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Towards A Comparative Rhetoric of Argument: Using the Concept of “Audience” as a Means of Educating Students about Comparative Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2015

Helena Whalen-Bridge
Helena Whalen-Bridge*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
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Abstract

Are Asian law schools adequately preparing law students to handle problems raised by cross-border disputes? Preparation has generally been limited to courses in conflicts of law, international law and comparative law, but the successful presentation of a legal position in a foreign legal system arguably requires more than an understanding of legal rules. Studies in legal culture suggest that participants in different legal systems think about the law in radically different ways. Comparative examples from the criminal justice systems of the United States and Japan demonstrate that some knowledge of a comparative rhetoric of argument - which arguments are appropriate in different legal systems - is required. Legal Writing Programmes can play a role in teaching comparative argument by expanding the concept of “audience” to include foreign legal systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Comparative Law , Volume 1 , 2006 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore 2014

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References

1 See the articles published in this volume.

2 See, e.g., Valcke, Catherine, “Global Law Teaching” (2004) 54 J. Legal Educ. 160 Google Scholar, and Glenn, H. Patrick, “Integrating Civil and Common Law Teaching Throughout the Curriculum: The Canadian Experience” (2002) 21 Penn. St. Int'l. L. Rev. 69 at 69–70 Google Scholar, where the author states that producing lawyers capable of thinking and working in terms of more than one national legal system, or more than one legal tradition, is the “major challenge” facing legal education in the 21st century.

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11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

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16 Ibid.

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29 Ibid.

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33 Ibid.

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50 See Valcke, supra note 3 at 177.

51 Ibid. at 168.

52 Ibid. at 169.

53 Ibid. at 177, where didactic teaching is defined as providing students with “an outside observer's description of the new thought processes.”

54 Ibid. at 170.