Abstract
AbstractBilingualism is a national cornerstone in Finland due to the fact that Finland has two constitutionally recognised national languages: Finnish and Swedish. Finnish is spoken by approximately 90% of the population and Swedish by little over 5%. This chapter explains how the concept of bilingualism is understood from a national perspective and how the legal education is structured with regard to the existence of two national languages. The focus is specifically put on the structure of the legal education at the University of Helsinki, including the Vaasa Unit of Legal Studies, as the University of Helsinki is the only bilingual university in Finland and the only provider of a full law degree (Bachelor’s and Master’s degree) in both national languages. The Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki has a national responsibility to provide legal education in the minority national language Swedish. In addition, the legal education has been permeated with an international perspective over the years as a result of cross-border projects and research collaborations. In consequence, legal education programmes are today in fact tri- or multilingual, albeit the officially degrees in Finland are still only mono- or bilingual.
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