Madly off in one direction: McGill's new integrated, polyjural, transsystemic law programme.

• Author: Arthurs, Harry
• Position: Canada

In 1994, the McGill Faculty of Law organized a two-day faculty retreat, seeking to lay the foundations of a new curriculum. This desire was in part a response to the contradictions inherent to the faculty, but also stemmed from a deep-seated preoccupation with "polyjurality", non-state normativity, transnational legal systems, and legal theory--a preoccupation that dates back to its origins, over 150 years ago.

The author, while praising McGill's efforts at reinventing itself, laments a certain reserve toward interdisciplinarity. He conjectures that at least some understand the teaching of polyjurality and transsystemic law as a project that is largely concerned with interactions amongst recognized legal systems, as opposed to a way of exploring the parallel normative universe that exists alongside such systems. Even though challenges of recovery, contextualization, and fundamental rethinking stand in the way of transsystemic teaching, the author believes that McGill's Faculty of Law, with clearly defined objectives and a curriculum designed to meet these objectives, provides a laudable alternative.

En 1994, la Faculte de droit de McGill organisait une retraite de deux jours pour les membres du corps professoral, cherchant a jeter les bases d'un nouveau cursus. Ce desir etait a la fois une reponse aux contradictions inherentes a la faculte, mais etait aussi issu d'une preoccupation profonde pour la "polyjuralite", la normativite non etatique, les systemes juridiques transnationaux et la theorie du droit--un souci datant de ses origines, il y a plus de 150 ans.

L'auteur, tout en saluant les efforts de McGill a se reinventer, denote une certaine timidite envers l'interdisciplinarite. Il deplore que certains concoivent l'enseignement de la polyjuralite et du droit transsystemique comme un projet qui se preoccupe avant tout des interactions entre les systemes juridiques reconnus, plutot que comme une maniere d'explorer l'univers normatif parallele qui existe au cote de ces systemes. Bien que des defis de recuperation, de mise en contexte et de reconceptualisation fondamentale fassent obstacle a l'enseignement transsystemique, l'auteur est d'avis que la Faculte de droit de McGill, avec des objectifs clairement definis et un cursus concu pour atteindre ces objectifs, propose une alternative digne de louanges.

Introduction I. The Process of Curriculum Review II. Necessity's Child: McGill in Quebec, Canada, the World, and History III. Interdisciplinarity: The Love that Dare Not--or Need Not?--Speak Its Name Conclusion Introduction

In 1998, after several years of intense deliberation, extensive consultation, vigorous debate, and careful preparation, the McGill Faculty of Law launched one of the most unusual curriculum experiments in the annals of legal education. The underlying assumptions, practical details, and hoped-for results of that experiment are set out in the law school calendar, (1) have been described and dissected in publications by several faculty members, (2) and of course are the focus of this special issue of the McGill Law Journal. In summary, McGill's former "National Programme" enabled students to take a three-year degree in either civil or common law and then at their option to acquire the "other" degree after a further year of study. The new, integrated "McGill Programme" exposes all students to courses that integrate civil and common law, that encompass both public and private law themes, that consciously link domestic and international law, that offer theoretical perspectives on law's social, cultural and political context, that deploy a variety of pedagogic strategies and learning experiences, and--seemingly as an afterthought--that do all of this in Canada's two official languages. It almost seems anti-climactic to note that students normally spend a maximum of four years (3) pursuing this exhilarating (perhaps exhausting) new curriculum and, at the end, receive (merely) two degrees, a B.C.L. and an LL.B.

Stephen Leacock, a McGill polymath of an earlier generation, famously described how one of his fictional characters, Lord Ronald, "flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions." (4) His latter-day successors in the Faculty of Law have done him one better: they have flung their diverse and disputatious selves: their intellectual baggage and political proclivities, and their engaged and ambitious students on this amazing curricular steed and ridden madly off in one direction. That one direction--as described in official documents and scholarly commentaries--is toward "integrated", "polyjurar", or "transsystemic" legal education.

Galloping off in one direction is no mean feat for any academic unit--and near astonishing when it occurs in a law faculty. To ensure the appearance of coherence and unidirectionality, McGill has made a number of wise choices: it has given its new programme a generic formal name--"the McGill Programme"'--, unencumbered by descriptors such as "transsystemic", "integrated", or "polyjural"; it has conceptualized its curriculum at a very high level of abstraction--"a way of being alive", according to one faculty member; (6) it has embraced intellectual heterodoxy as its orthodoxy; and it has accepted that while encounters with mixite in individual courses is preferable, there is room for system-specific courses so long as they form part of an overall student experience that is polyjural. But McGill has gone well beyond appearances. It has taken practical steps to make good on the promise of the new programme: many courses and seminars are offered with appropriate transsystemic labels, descriptions and syllabi; they are taught by professors--some recruited for the purpose--whose scholarly writings attest to their commitment to the transsystemic ideal; and several institutional supports have been put in place to ensure that transsystemic or polyjural legal education remains an evolving concept rather than a shibboleth or slogan. (7)

How, then, does the new McGill Programme operate in practice? This critical question is difficult to answer for both evidentiary and conceptual reasons.

As to evidence, I have seen no documentation that suggests that McGill is tracking the actual experience of students, faculty members, and relevant others with its new curriculum, assessing professorial performance and student learning outcomes, evaluating whether the shift from sequential bijurality (the old National Programme) to integrated polyjurality (the new McGill Programme) has altered students' conceptions of law, or calibrating the law school's ability to attract good students and place its graduates in appropriate jobs. While insiders no doubt have their own informed opinions on such matters, bolstered by anecdotal evidence, it is difficult for an outsider to say whether the programme is a success or, indeed, whether or to what extent it actually exists.

Judgments about the operation of the programme run up against a fundamental conceptual problem as well. The architects of the McGill Programme approached curriculum reform as "a complex, interactive and evolutionary process, best described as one of adaptive learning." (8) Consequently, proponents, critics, and reviewers of the new programme must ask not simply "what was recommended and what was implemented?" but "has the programme continued to evolve?" and "have the various constituencies of the law school continued to adapt?"

In other words, the standard of judgment the programme has defined for itself is not how it functions at any given moment, but rather how it evolves over time. For the new curriculum to become a living reality in McGill's classrooms, common rooms, and faculty offices, the professorate must radically revise many pedagogic practices--and then revise again; students must consciously opt to study under the new programme, and remain committed to its values even as those values manifest themselves in a changing array of courses, pedagogies, and learning environments; law faculty and university administrators must keep finding new funds and new people to implement it--a Sisyphean task; law firms and professional bodies must support it, or at least accept it, long before its premises are understood or its promises realized; and the rest of the legal academy must acknowledge the validity and importance of what McGill has undertaken even while other law faculties are redefining legal education quite differently through their own evolutionary or radical reforms.

1. The Process of Curriculum Review

   McGill's characterization of curriculum...