In Search of a Modern Confucius for Effective Teaching in Law : A Trial Project to Promote Interactive Learning in Taiwan (松浦好治教授退職記念論文集)
This paper observes and reviews the progress of interactive learning in a Taiwan eConfucius Drama Classroom. Based on accumulated findings in a law classroom of blended learning, an innovative pedagogy is introduced to promote conversational teaching with passive students. The Socratic pedagogies may have led the western movements towards interactive learning. Given a different educational heritage in Taiwan, the constructivist teaching value may be realised with culturally situated methods to achieve Socratic ends. The ideas of “guided independent learning” are thus proposed with the back-up of filed findings. In the classroom of a modern Confucius, the teacher remains to be respected, yet learning-centred pedagogies are adopted to lead the students to become active and reflective learners.
Why the Japanese Law School System Was Established: Co‐optation as a Defensive Tactic in the Face of Global Pressures
In the face of pressures to expand the rule of law, in 2004, Japan introduced a new law school system in order to produce more and better qualified lawyers. This article explains why the new law school system solution was selected from among other alternatives such as reforming the national bar exam, abolishing mandatory legal training, reforming existing legal education, or redefining the jurisdiction of lawyers. I argue that the law school system was adopted because the legal establishment co‐opted pro‐law school scholars and other reformists. Although American‐style law schools have been introduced in Japan, power has not yet shifted entirely from the legal establishment to the pro‐law school scholars; while the legal establishment may no longer have absolute control of the Japanese judicial arena, it remains powerful because it successfully co‐opted pro‐American elites into judicial reform. By analyzing the case of the Japanese law school system, this article indicates that transplants of global institutions may often be more symbolic than practical due to co‐optation tactics used by powerful local actors.
From Law and Colonialism to Law and Globalization
The study of law's place in the colonial enterprise has finally come of age. The reissue of Martin Chanock's important study on law and colonialism in Africa is an opportune moment to reflect on the emergence of this field of scholarship over the 15 years since its publication. His richly detailed, innovative study of the making of customary law showed for the first time the centrality of law to the colonial process, tracing how it emerged out of intersections among British officials, African chiefs, Christian missionaries, urban migrants, and rural villagers. Law and colonialism is now a mature field with a rich variety of detailed case studies and a sophisticated theoretical understanding of the nature of customary law, the dynamics of legal pluralism, and the kinds of transformations that the legal transplants of colonialism engender. This is no longer understood as a simple process of imposition of law: instead there are spaces of resistance, struggles among colonizers, and forms of accommodation by colonized elites. Although this process was fundamentally one of transforming the colonized society to conform to that of the colonizer, all the while extracting labor, land, and mineral resources, it was never complete. Nor was it completely successful. The effort transformed the society at home as well as in the colony. It is continuing to do so as the former colonized now take up homes in the metropole.