A New System of Legal Education and Political Theory's Place in It

Abstract

I go to the library in the early morning and immerse myself in the atmosphere of contemporary jurisprudence and its problems. I read, ponder, and read again. Much of it is interesting and original, especially in the realm of theory, but it is still somewhat disordered and chaotic. A thought occurs to me. Is it not time for us to catch our breath, to take a little rest from innovative legal theory, to bring theory into line with practice and teaching into line with jurisprudence? I search feverishly through piles of recently published law books, newspapers, and periodicals to find legal scholars' proposals for improving the effectiveness and quality of teaching law, especially in my own course—political theory. Unfortunately, the picture is not very reassuring: I find hardly any original ideas in contemporary literature that can genuinely be used in teaching. True, the question of the quality of a university law education has been raised, and directly! Evidence of this is the recently published material of the Russian Conference on Legal Reform and the Development of University Law Education in Russia, held at the Law Faculty of Moscow State University in February 1996. After the conference came the publication of a federal program for developing a system of legal education in Russia and a state educational standard in the specialty of "jurisprudence." These documents—let us speak frankly—are fateful both for us lecturers and for our students.