Legal Education: A Matter of Motivation? An Overview of Aspects of Legal Education for Officers

Abstract

Military law covers several branches of law, which implies that an officer has to apply military law in each aspect of his work, either working his day to day office job, applying administrative law or disciplinary law to his subordinates, or being in the field applying humanitarian law or operational law as well. Consequently, law is a subject that must be taught throughout the career of any member of the armed forces, not only during initial education, but also at later stages. Furthermore, it implies that it is of importance to give officers a solid foundation of knowledge in law before they start their careers. Additionally, there is a legal obligation to include law in the program of military instruction, an obligation that is laid down in international treaties. From a didactical point of view, legal education needs a very practical approach, applying the law on cases to clarify the theoretical aspects, whilst at the same time maintaining a strong academic basis. This also has implications for the way legal courses are set up. Using the pyramid of Bloom, the learning objectives can be set on the level of ‘applying’ the learned theory on actual situations.