The Global Challenge in Common and Civil Law Contexts: A Canadian Perspective

Abstract

The Canadian chapter brings together two reports, covering Quebec and the common law provinces of the country. In Quebec, a mixed jurisdiction, there has always been a particular awareness of the challenge of how to train students in both the common law and civil law, a history, the Quebec report finds, that has facilitated and furthered an internationalisation of legal education beyond the exigencies of Canadian bijuralism. The report on the common law provinces, however, diagnoses a lack of a similar mindset in common law Canada. Beyond this difference, in both common and civil law provinces, more and more opportunities are opening up for Canadian law students to add international components to their educational experience. The unified conclusion of the authors is that internationalisation should not only be perceived as including more inter and supranational topics in the curriculum or offering a more intense training of the skills necessitated by ‘global lawyering’. Properly understood, internationalisation would also include the creation of awareness of the economic and cultural implications of the phenomenon of ‘globalisation’ and of an understanding of legal pluralism as a manifestation of the phenomena of globalisation and migration in a domestic context.