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Redressing Romanian Legal Education (in Comparative Garments)

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Comparative Law and Multicultural Legal Classes: Challenge or Opportunity?

Part of the book series: Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law ((GSCL,volume 46))

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Abstract

This report addresses the question of multiculturalism in law teaching from two perspectives: the teaching of foreign law to Romanian students and the teaching of national law to foreign students. As regards the first matter, this report concludes that comparative law teaching is insufficiently developed in Romanian legal education as a tool of critical thinking and puts forth a normative vision of comparative law’s role in the legal curriculum. In respect of the second aspect, one must note that Romania is a culturally homogenous state where problems related to the teaching of law to multicultural classes arise mostly because of the so-called ‘internalization at home’ that is currently taking place in general in higher education. While systematic empirical data is lacking, evidence points to language barriers as the most significant obstacle in the efficient teaching of law to culturally diverse students in Romania.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The text of Sects. 2 and 3 is an excerpt in English, with adaptations, from a translation of my text in German: Mercescu (2019c).

  2. 2.

    Reboul (2010), p. 43.

  3. 3.

    Furedi (2009), pp. 6–7.

  4. 4.

    Dewey (2004), p. 106 [original emphasis] and 106–107.

  5. 5.

    See, e.g., Post (2012), p. 27.

  6. 6.

    See, e.g., Barro (2013) and Glewwe et al. (2014).

  7. 7.

    Schofer and Meyer (2005).

  8. 8.

    Wolf (2002), p. xiii.

  9. 9.

    See the literature review of Glewwe et al. (2014), pp. 379–393.

  10. 10.

    Wolf (2002), p. xiv.

  11. 11.

    Ibid. [original emphasis].

  12. 12.

    Caplan (2018), p. 507.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    Palfreyman and Temple (2017), p. 86.

  15. 15.

    Wolf (2002), p. 3.

  16. 16.

    Ibid.

  17. 17.

    Schofer and Meyer (2005), p. 903.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 912.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 901.

  20. 20.

    Ibid.

  21. 21.

    See the Council Recommendation [2013] on Romania’s 2013 national reform programme for 2012–2016, available at http://bit.ly/1jGo0lU.

  22. 22.

    See Eurostat (2016), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Tertiary_education_statistics#Participation. Statistics show that only 26.3% of the Romanian population aged 30–34 has tertiary education whereas the average in the EU is 39.9%: European Commission (2016), Monitorul Educației și Formării 2016, European Commission (2018), Monitorul Educației și Formării 2018, https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/document-library-docs/et-monitor-report-2018-romania_ro.pdf.

  23. 23.

    Macaci (2016), p. 28.

  24. 24.

    More exactly 3.7% as compared to 4.7%, the European average: https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/document-library-docs/et-monitor-report-2018-romania_ro.pdf.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 45.

  26. 26.

    Curaj et al. (2015), p. 5.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 5.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.

  29. 29.

    Institutul Național de Statistică, http://www.insse.ro/cms/files/publicatii/pliante%20statistice/04-recensamantul%20populatiei.pdf.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    The ethnical distribution is as follows: Hungarians 3.7%, Roma 0.2% and Germans, Turks, Tatars and Serbs 0.1% each. Institutul Național de Statistică, http://www.insse.ro/cms/sites/default/files/field/publicatii/sistemul_educational_in_romania_2017_2018.pdf.

  32. 32.

    Deca et al. (2015), p. 134.

  33. 33.

    Ibid., 136.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    European Commission – Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (2017), p. 37, available at https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/519aa03d-1f0b-11e9-8d04-01aa75ed71a1/language-en/format-PDF/source-search.

  36. 36.

    Bojin (2017), p. 1624.

  37. 37.

    Gorea et al. (2010), p. 2928.

  38. 38.

    The text that follows is an adapted excerpt from Mercescu and Stambulski (2019). The full database lies with the authors.

  39. 39.

    This paper only presents the aggregated data for Romania, Poland and Slovakia. As of the date of the writing, the data from Russia has not yet been analysed.

  40. 40.

    73.52% of Romanian students think that good classes rest on the method of conducting them; method represents indeed the first-ranked factor among a list of possible factors, followed by the personality of the teacher (60%).

  41. 41.

    Public speaking: 45.79%, Working in groups: 5.30%, Being a leader of a group: 7.17%, Negotiating: 16.51%, Critical thinking: 47.35%, Presenting your thoughts clearly: 43.30%, Being empathic: 3.12%, Dealing with pressure and stress: 36.14%.

  42. 42.

    See among others Schlag (1990) and Orsoni (2009).

  43. 43.

    At the Faculty of Law in Iassy the comparative law course, offered in the second year, is compulsory. The Faculty of Law in Bucharest offers an ‘Introduction to American Contracts Law’ (in English) as an optional course in the third year and, facultatively, a ‘Comparative Law’ course in the fourth year. The Faculty of Law in Sibiu offers no less than five comparative courses during its bachelor programme, all in the form of optional disciplines. The Faculty of Law in Timișoara, in addition to its two comparative law courses, has a Research Centre for Comparative Law and Interdisciplinarity.

  44. 44.

    Posner (1990), p. 1663. The Faculty of Law in Cluj-Napoca offers a master programme (in French) in Comparative Private Law.

  45. 45.

    Legrand (2001a) and as a translation, Legrand (2001b).

  46. 46.

    See Mercescu (2018).

  47. 47.

    Mercescu (2015) and along the same lines, Bojin (2016).

  48. 48.

    Winterton (1975), p. 97.

  49. 49.

    Sereni (1951), p. 771.

  50. 50.

    Winterton (1975), pp. 69–118.

  51. 51.

    Ibid., 107.

  52. 52.

    Ibid., 106.

  53. 53.

    Schlesinger (1954), p. 496.

  54. 54.

    Winterton (1975), p. 109.

  55. 55.

    See in this volume Varga (2020), Section 5.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., Section 4.

  57. 57.

    Seidam and Thome (1968), p. 362.

  58. 58.

    Sandra O’Connor’s speech at Southern Center for International Studies, available at http://www.southerncenter.org/OConnor_transcript.pdf, [3]. Accessed 15 March 2019.

  59. 59.

    For a discussion of Romanian communist legality, see Cercel (2018).

  60. 60.

    Kennedy (2003).

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 373.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., 346.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., 433.

  64. 64.

    Not unlike experiencing interdisciplinarity. Mercescu (2019a).

  65. 65.

    Indeed, to suggest that law is inextricably connected to place is to acknowledge that place (or, otherwise, culture) imprints a specific trajectory on legal matters that is not without its inconsistencies, gaps or tensions. Thus, to see law as culture is not to maintain that there is a perfect match between one given society and one given law. Legrand (2009).

  66. 66.

    Mańko (2013).

  67. 67.

    Mercescu (2019b).

  68. 68.

    Cercel (2018).

  69. 69.

    Legrand (2014), p. 349. See also Kühn (2011).

  70. 70.

    Mercescu (2019b).

  71. 71.

    Beiser (2011), p. 215.

  72. 72.

    Yntema (1956).

  73. 73.

    This is the main reason why I translated Pierre Legrand’s (2009) book chapter La comparaison des droits expliquée à mes étudiants, a text which the author has conceived as an exercise in simplicity, meant to be an accessible working tool for students: see Legrand (2015). Also, together with Raluca Bercea, I published A Short Introduction to Law with one of the leading Romanian general publishers (Humanitas)—Bercea and Mercescu (2019)—with a view to presenting law from a critical perspective, in a manner accessible to students. The last chapter, on law as culture, could be useful for students studying comparative law.

  74. 74.

    Schlesinger (1968), Introduction, 2–64.

  75. 75.

    Schlesinger (1954), p. 500.

  76. 76.

    Husa (2009), p. 923.

  77. 77.

    Edwards et al. (2008), p. 145.

  78. 78.

    Deca et al. (2015), p. 142.

  79. 79.

    Ibid., 141.

  80. 80.

    Selejan-Guțan (2016).

  81. 81.

    Deca et al. (2015), p. 143.

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  1. West University of Timișoara, Department of Public Law, Timișoara, Romania

    Alexandra Mercescu

  2. Wrocław University, Centre for Legal Education and Social Theory, Wrocław, Poland

    Alexandra Mercescu

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  1. Philosophy of Law Department, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary

    Csaba Varga

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Mercescu, A. (2020). Redressing Romanian Legal Education (in Comparative Garments). In: Varga, C. (eds) Comparative Law and Multicultural Legal Classes: Challenge or Opportunity?. Ius Comparatum - Global Studies in Comparative Law, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46898-9_7

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