Comparing Legal Cultures in Europe - Bachelor

Objectives and Content

When coming as an exchange student to Bergen, we strongly recommend that you choose this course among the courses you will study in the spring semester. The course is taught during the first part of the semester and introduces Norwegian legal culture, while at the same time inviting you to reflect upon your own country's legal culture from a comparative perspective.

The primary aim of the course is to enhance your ability to understand, evaluate, discuss, and critically analyze foreign law and foreign legal cultures, in particular in comparison to your own legal cultures. Additionally, the course seeks to improve your academic reflection skills, including the use of proper references, stylistic choices, and the identification of research questions, designs and conclusions. You will develop the ability to critically review academic texts. Furthermore, the course offers foundational knowledge of the methods, aims, and functions of legal historical research, along with an understanding of the historical roots of contemporary legal cultures, particularly those of England, France, Germany, and Norway. Lastly, the teaching and the materials are in English, enabling you to acquire and use vocabulary in English within the context of comparative law. Most importantly, the course offers a unique opportunity to get in contact, interact and cooperate with Norwegian students. This will be facilitated by interactive learning experiences such as recording a conversation, designed and produced in the format of a podcast.

The course is co-taught with a course which is mandatory for the Norwegian law students, which means that around two thirds of the students in the classroom will be Norwegian, while one third will be international students from several different countries. There will also be social and cultural activities for the students on the course, so this course serves also as an introduction to your semester in Bergen, and to getting to know the local students and the legal culture of your host country.

In an era of strong internationalisation of law, lawyers need an understanding of both foreign legal cultures and comparative legal methods. By engaging in legal, historical and comparative studies of Norwegian and selected foreign legal cultures, you will gain knowledge and skills essential for contemporary lawyers, including new perspectives of law, understanding legal change and skills needed for cross-border cooperation. A systematic analysis of law in context requires applying an operationalised concept of legal culture which can provide knowledge and understanding of how the law is produced and applied in different legal orders. Comparing legal cultures will enable you to identify, explain and analyse similarities and differences among legal cultures.

Learning in multicultural classes, and planning and carrying out a conversation with a student from a different legal background, in a podcast-format, will contribute to a fertile environment for learning. This experience-based learning environment will enable you to communicate with lawyers from diverse legal-cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

In short, the goals of the course are to:

1. Learn to appreciate and actively use the legal cultural model as an analytical tool for legal comparative analysis.
2. Increase your understanding of selected legal cultures, among them the legal culture of England, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, France and Germany, from a comparative perspective.
3. Improve your ability to communicate with members from other legal cultures and critically evaluate legal cultural challenges, developments and changes both domestically and abroad.
4. Improve your skills in writing and communicating in academic English and identify and overcome potential challenges when working with lawyers or other professionals in an international environment.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

• identify the main structural elements and the subcategories of the Legal Cultural Model
• describe the difference between a narrow and a wide concept of legal culture,
• describe and explain changes within, and interaction between, elements of the legal-cultural model,
• describe the historical preconditions and developments of the Norwegian and other (selected) legal cultures,
• identify the central features of selected legal cultures,
• describe the merits and limitations of periodization, and the main features of legal traditions such as Civil Law and Common Law, and other forms of classifications and taxations, such as legal families and legal systems etc.
• explain basic concepts in legal comparative methods including the object of comparison, selection of jurisdictions studied, the comparative method and identification and explanation of similarities and differences,
• describe the basic requirements for producing, structuring, and evaluating academic texts, including when and how to make references to sources.
• cooperate with law students from other countries, and gain perspectives on common legal challenges, when interacting with students from legal backgrounds different than your own,
• contribute with perspectives from your own country and legal background.

In addition, you should be able to

• use the Legal Cultural Model in combination with the functional and historical approach to legal comparative research to
• identify,
• describe,
• categorise,
• explain
• and discuss both orally and in writing differences and similarities of institutionalised forms of norm production and conflict resolution as well as the prevailing ideal of justice, legal methods, the degree of and attitude towards professionalization and internationalisation of law and its impacts on selected legal cultures.
• conduct legal comparisons by identifying the object of comparison, selecting appropriate jurisdictions, selecting an appropriate method of comparison, identifying similarities and differences, and providing plausible explanations for the findings (cf. the COMPASS formula),
• discuss the merits and limitations of classifications particularly the distinction between civil- and common law, comparative methods, and selected key concepts in comparative law,
• write and critically assess academic texts in English.

You should improve your ability to

• appreciate the importance of historical perspectives on domestic and other legal cultures,
• appreciate law as a legal-culturally embedded phenomenon,
• critically evaluate the narrative of different legal traditions in Europe, and
• discuss possible challenges and solutions for, but also limits to, the harmonization of legal cultures in Europe
• interpret, discuss and develop legal domestic solutions based on value-based assessments and relevant policy considerations taking into account the specific legal cultural context in which the solution is meant to produce effects.
• communicate both orally and in writing in English
• critically apply established legal comparative terminology and methods and
• to work independently as well as together with another student
• present and evaluate legal analyses, comparisons and points of view in English, both orally and in writing