A Romantic Revolution in Legal Education

Dr Dawn Watkins

Learning in Law Annual Conference 2011

The caged bird sings with a fearful trillof things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hillfor the caged bird sings of freedom.

An extract from I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

On Romanticism

• Diversity of meanings

• European movement

• Late Eighteenth century

• Reaction against the accepted thinking of the era

• Art, literature, music

• Politics and philosophy

18th century art and literature

• “Invention is one of the great marks of genius; but if we consult experience, we shall find that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others that we learn to invent”

The concept of the artist

• Pre-Romanticism

• Artisan• Skill• Imitation• Rule bound

• Post Romanticism

• Artist creator• Talent• Imagination• Free

Application to Legal Education

• The caged bird

• ‘release’ of creative thinking and imagination

• Development of independent thinking and autonomy

creative thinking and imagination

• “this course is directed to you as an artist. There is no body of rules expressing the art of the lawyer any more than that of the sculptor or painter. You are as free as they, and as responsible for what you do…I am asking you not to follow direction and example but to trust and follow your own curiosity”

• James Boyd White Introduction to The Legal Imagination at xxv

independent thinking and autonomy

• Student-centred learning

• Problem based learning

Law as a ‘liberal arts’ education

• “Both professional knowledge and technical information have value but in a liberal education they are acquired, if at all, not for the value that they have in their own terms but because they can facilitate the wider learning that constitutes a liberal education”

• A Bradney, Conversations, Choices and Chances The liberal law school in the twenty-first century (Hart, 2003) p.41

are our students revolutionaries?

• “the Romantics with whom were are concerned were highly self-conscious: they were aware that they were doing something new”

• R Wilkinson ‘New Conceptions of Art and the Artist’ (Open University 2005) p.54