Dealing with uncertainty Values as threshold concepts in legal education

1
Dealing (with) uncertainty Values as
threshold conceptsin legal education

• Julian Webb
• IISL/IISJ
• OÑATI
• 23-24 April

2
Why values (and why now)

• Rise of liquid modernity (Bauman)
• Loss of trust in social institutions
• Disintegration of traditional social networks
• Technologies of distantiation
• Disengagement of power from responsibility
• Ontological uncertainty (value pluralism/value
  scepticism) (Jonas)

3
Liquid education

• Internationalization
• Massification
• The knowledge explosion
• Performativity
• Production of moral uncertainty
• Changing academic identities

4
vs solid law?

• Law is responding/adapting to, even driving
  social liquidity
• Legal education remains dominated by
  state-centred solid law it seeks to deal
  certainty
• Uncertainty bounded
• Restricts troublesome knowledge to the realm of
  the technical-rational
• Instrumental problem-solving
• Value neutrality

5
Values as threshold concepts(Meyer and Land)

• Transformative
• Integrative
• Irreversible
• Bounded
• troublesome

6
Bringing values home

• What values?
• What skills?
• What attributes?
• What methods?
• How assessed (challenge of constructive
  alignment)?

7
The opportunity

• Making legal education a more (positively)
  transformative experience for students (Dewey)
• To reconnect with the moral dimension of the
  academic role the moral interest in shaping
  ones discipline so that it serves and improves
  society and human life (Nafstad, 2005)