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Mainstreaming Foreign Law in the Asian Law School Curriculum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2019

Maartje DE VISSER  and
Andrew HARDING
Maartje DE VISSER
Affiliation:
Singapore Management University, Singaporemdevisser@smu.edu.sg
Andrew HARDING
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore, Singaporelawajh@nus.edu.sg
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Abstract

Exposure to foreign law is immensely valuable as it expands students’ argumentative and analytical terrain. More pragmatically, there has been a discernable shift towards rule-of-law thinking in furthering regional integration and a flurry of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) involving Asian countries. Law schools ought to capitalize on this reality. The preferred educational strategy to adopt, we argue, entails systematically integrating foreign law across the traditional components that make up undergraduate curricula. Asian law schools should simultaneously offer general comparative courses that train students in comparative methodology and theory, enabling them to become discerning consumers of and sensible contributors to comparative research, including in the context of domestic law reform. In advocating such mainstreaming of foreign law, we further suggest a broad understanding of this notion as encompassing all rules that do not have their origins in the municipal legal order, including those produced by regional organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Unlike Europe's law schools, which have been laggards in adapting law school curricula to changes in their wider regional environment, Asia's law schools have the opportunity to anticipate the growing relevance of foreign law in practice and thereby ensure that they remain germane to the legal industry and society at large.

Type
Article
Information
Asian Journal of Comparative Law , Volume 14 , Supplement S1 , October 2019 , pp. S149 - S172
Copyright
Copyright © National University of Singapore, 2019 

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Footnotes

±

Associate Professor, School of Law, Singapore Management University. We would like to thank participants at the Conferences on Comparative Law in Asia (27 and 28 September 2017, National University of Singapore) for their helpful comments and observations.

*

Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.

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9. The same applies to Macao.

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52. cf eg the ASEAN International Mobility for Students (AIMS) Programme which allows students to spend one semester in a university in another ASEAN Member State, with the exception of Cambodia and Myanmar for now, but with the addition of Japan and South Korea.

53. Siems (n 48).

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