Legal Consciousness and Its Significance for Law and Society Teaching Outside Canadian Law Schools

Abstract

One of the recommendations made in Law and Learning is that “[t]he teaching of law in the liberal arts and other faculties should be encouraged.” Earlier in its report, the authors acknowledged the existence of legal studies programs outside law faculties in Canada and emphasized that in these programs legal doctrine exerts much less influence on the direction of study than in law schools. Law teaching in these programs, the Consultative Group explains, “has many attractions. It relieves the subject of its professional training connotations, facilitates integration of legal study and research with parallel activities in other disciplines, and recognizes that law ought to be understood by and subject to the critical scrutiny of as many citizens as possible.”Although the praise in Law and Learning for legal studies programs outside law faculties and especially in faculties of arts and social sciences in Canadian universities is considerable, it is significant I believe that the report does not explain why the teaching of legal doctrine – legal rules – is not central to these legal studies programs, and in particular law and society undergraduate programs. Indeed, the demand from incoming undergraduate students and ordinary citizens is overwhelmingly for these programs to offer courses on legal doctrine. And some programs in Canadian universities comply. Why not teach legal doctrine in these programs? Why should the study of law in these programs be so different from that found in Canadian law schools?