1. Introduction
Changes are the imperceptible tendencies to divergence that, when they have reached a certain point, become visible and bring about transformations. (Wilhelm and Baynes, Reference Wilhelm and Baynes1977, p. 229)
Change is often considered to be the only constant in life, which was famously paraphrased by Heraclitus as “[a]ll things move and nothing is at rest” (Ademollo, Reference Ademollo2011, p. 203). However, the perceived pace of change in the world is reported to have been accelerating since the beginning of the twenty-first century (Gleick, Reference Gleick2000, p. 6; Rosa and Scheuerman, Reference Rosa and Scheuerman2009, p. 1). This is also reflected in the characterization of the next epoch in Earth’s history—the so-called “Anthropocene,” which is also known as the “great acceleration” (Steffen et al., Reference Steffen, Broadgate, Deutsch, Gaffney and Ludwig2015, p. 81). The ever faster pace of change affects everything, from the individual to the community, from technology to the climate, and from the economy to politics. It certainly also affects, and possibly fundamentally challenges, law, both in how it is practised and in how it is taught. Already, the “omnipresence of change throughout all human experience” has been called a fundamental problem for law, and this can be expressed in the question “how can law preserve its integrity over time, while managing to address the newly emerging circumstances that continually arise throughout our history?” (Johnson, Reference Johnson2007, p. 845). Any acceleration of change will only aggravate this monumental task, given the expectation that the rule of law will provide legal certainty (Maxeiner, Reference Maxeiner2008, p. 30; Zolo Reference Zolo, Costa and Zolo2007, p. 49) and legal predictability (Maravall and Przeworski, Reference Maravall, Przeworski, Maravall and Przeworski2003, p. 2; Wolff, Reference Wolff2011, p. 553).
Overall, the noticeably disruptive effect on law of a faster pace of change is complex and multifaceted because of its cross-cutting and all-pervasive nature. The prospects seem dim, as it appears that threats to the existence and possible future role of law are coming from all sides simultaneously. It is almost as if a tipping point has been reached, as a result of which either a new paradigm will be found to improve the current one or law, at least as we know it, will end. Already, the danger of the decline of law and its replacement by the return of power and politics has been noted at the international level (Shaffer, Reference Shaffer2018, p. 37). Academically, too, the threat of a decline in law as an autonomous discipline, caused by a boom in disciplines that are complementary to law, such as economics and philosophy, was perceived as real a long time ago (Posner, Reference Posner1987, p. 767). Various other factors—among them the privatization of law, litigation reforms, a loss of substantive law from the public realm, and new technologies—have been named as causes of the possible coming of the end of law (Perschbacher and Bassett, Reference Perschbacher and Bassett2004, p. 2; Hildebrandt, Reference Hildebrandt2015, p. 226). If not the end of law itself, at least the end of law in the form of rules or standards has also been announced (Casey and Niblett, Reference Casey and Niblett2017, pp. 1417–22). With the end of law comes the “death” of the lawyer, the judge, and the entire legal profession too, which has more recently often been related to the danger of their replacement by technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of “robolawyers” and “robojudges” (Susskind, Reference Susskind2013–2017, p. 184; Markovic, Reference Markovic2019, p. 326; Hunter, Reference Hunter2020, p. 1202; Davis, Reference Davis2022, p. 1173). Tellingly, the recent introduction of Large Language Models, such as Chat-GPT, which some regard as a major threat to the future of both legal practice and education (Ajevski, Reference Ajevski2023, p. 356), share “LLM” as the same acronym as is used for the legal degree of a Master of Laws. Finally, if no more lawyers were needed, this would automatically also spell the end for law schools and legal education (Campbell, Reference Campbell2016, p. 97).
Thus, the principal question is whether the story foretelling the death of law is plausible and therefore whether it is necessary to write another obituary (Lucy, Reference Lucy2022, p. 134). In other words, has the global pandemic brought to the fore the latent disease that had befallen law, and delivered the final blow to law and its ailing international legal system (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2018, p. xiii)? So far, the pandemic has certainly negatively affected the global business of legal education by restricting the international mobility of students (Picker, Lixinski, Steel and Fitzsimmons, Reference Picker, Lixinski, Steel and Fitzsimmons2017, p. 162). Certainly, for law, the wind of change has blown incessantly and changed frequently, but this has merely resulted in transformations of law (Mattei, Reference Mattei1994, p. 200). Is it different this time and is it not a wind but a full-blown geomagnetic storm that is brewing?
It is hard for an individual or a single law school to answer this complex question, as it necessitates an inclusive global debate addressing, in a holistic way, the major challenges that law, legal practice, and legal education face today, as it is also reflected by the aforementioned notion of the Anthropocene, which it was argued also requires an active role of law schools in helping their respective societies to respond to its impacts (Liljeblad, Reference Liljeblad2022, p. 207). This debate would be shaped by the joint efforts of the entire community of jurists, on the one hand, and peoples around the world, on the other. To contribute to this important debate about the future of law, Section 2 of the present article first identifies some of the principal problems in law today that can be reduced to the limitations inherent in dualist thinking; such thinking is manifest in many fundamental but false dichotomies used in the conception of law.
Subsequently, Section 3 of the article aims to provide answers to these problems in law by carrying forward the academic debate about bijuralism and trans-systemic legal education that started with the introduction of a new “transsystemic teaching of common and civil law” at McGill University in Autumn 1999. Section 3 will do this by outlining the traits of polyjuralism, understood as the coexistence of two or more legal traditions within a single legal system, that are a reality in the present but are also an important part of plans for the future of legal education at the Faculty of Law at the University of Macau, which is the oldest law school in the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Section 4 first describes the many unique legal, political, economic, cultural, and even geographical characteristics of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) established in 1999 following its return to the PRC following centuries of Portuguese administration. These characteristics, and notably Macao’s polyjural, multicultural, and multilingual background, also inspire the past, present, and future of the legal education provided at the University of Macau.
To illustrate the future plans for legal education in Macao, Section 5 outlines the concrete steps taken before and during the 2020 global pandemic for the future of legal education. These include, notably, the creation of a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) programme entitled “Chinese Law and Global Legal Studies,” which, as the first of its kind, is taught in the English language and aims to provide students in China and across the world with an opportunity to study Chinese law in a global context. Additionally, the creation of the new LL.B. means that the Faculty of Law of the University of Macao is now fully operational as a trilingual law school by offering undergraduate and postgraduate (master’s and doctoral) programmes in Chinese, Portuguese, and English. Finally, the conclusion will close with a short outlook on the future expectations and obstacles in legal education in Macao and the rest of the world.
2. The crisis of law globally: change in the wind or geo storm?
With more than 100 jurisdictions worldwide, each of them facing a unique set of legal conditions and challenges, it is difficult to give a complete general account of the crisis in legal education around the world. However, in the wake of the establishment of the modern international legal system under the aegis of the United Nations, the trend over the past decades of economic globalization, the resurgence of the lex mercatoria (law merchant) as “law without a state” (Teubner, Reference Teubner2002, p. 200), and anxieties related to the fragmentation of international law (Koskenniemi and Leino, Reference Koskenniemi and Leino2002, p. 553) or future challenges of AI of international security (Singh Gill, Reference Singh Gill2019, p. 171) provide just a few examples of the numerous fundamental challenges that are relatively homogenous and equally experienced by most legal-education institutions around the world.
To put it simply, the principal reason for the universal nature of the contemporary challenges experienced by legal education lies in the universality of the gravest problems and risks. Moreover, all the major problems identified globally are mutually connected in the form of “strange loops” or “tangled hierarchies,” meaning that the achievement of one goal may neutralize the realization of other goals or even lead to the achievement of the opposite goal (Hofstadter, Reference Hofstadter1979, p. 10). At a higher level of abstraction, these problems culminate in one major challenge that has been aptly summarized by David Held as follows: “The paradox of our times can be stated simply: the collective issues we must grapple with are increasingly global and, yet, the means for addressing these are national and local, weak and incomplete” (Held, Reference Held2010, p. 143).
In this example, it is not only the dichotomy of global versus local that has dominated and continues to dominate the conception of international law. As the use of “paradox” to describe the deficiencies inherent in this dichotomy indicates, it is possible that dichotomies in general are at the heart of the present crisis of international law and legal education around the world.
As a matter of fact, at least since the Westphalian Treaty, the dominant conception of international, and very often also of domestic, law is based on dualism (Turley, Reference Turley1993, p. 185; Beaulac, Reference Beaulac, Eriksen and Emberland2010, p. 17). In law, many reputed commentators have emphasized the dual nature of law: Bentham reduced it to the dichotomy of pain and pleasure, and Robert M. Cover expressing it on the basis of the legal nomos (Bentham, Reference Bentham1789, p. 1; Cover, Reference Cover1984, p. 4). Most generally, Robert Alexy elevates the dual nature of law thesis to something that is capable of addressing “all fundamental questions of law” (Alexy, Reference Alexy2010, p. 167). The fact is that legal debates and methodologies around the world widely concur in the dominant use of dichotomies to conceive of law. Albeit rooted in different contexts or causes, the most common examples in law are the dichotomies of public and private (international) law (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2000, p. 393; Yu, Reference Yu2014, p. 51), national (municipal) and international law (Björgvinsson, Reference Björgvinsson2015, p. 1; Owada, Reference Owada2015, p. 254), hard and soft law (Crawford Lichtenstein, Reference Crawford Lichtenstein2001, p. 1433), substantive and procedural law (Main, Reference Main2010, p. 801), law and fact (Isaacs, Reference Isaacs1922, p. 1), consent and coercion (Hunt, Reference Hunt1981, p. 47), treaty and customary law (Scott and Carr, Reference Scott and Carr1981, p. 347), positivism and naturalism (Priel, Reference Priel2023–2024, p. 31), legal theory and legal practice (as also paraphrased by the distinction between law in books and law in action) (Husa, Reference Husa and Peterson2011, p. 105; Edwards, Reference Edwards1992, p. 34; Pound, Reference Pound1910, p. 12), and the law as it is (de lege lata) and the law as it should be (de lege ferenda) (Virally, Reference Virally and Reuter1981, p. 519), to mention but a few. There are many more related dichotomies, such as those of politics and economics (Ripsman, Reference Ripsman2006, p. 1), the state and the market (Bruff, Reference Bruff, Shields, Bruff and Macartney2011, p. 80), or left and right (de Benoist, Reference de Benoist1995, p. 73). Even different legal traditions, such as those of civil and common law, are presented as dichotomies (Strong, Reference Strong2015, p. 1). Law is then subdivided and each specialized legal field features further dichotomies, such as the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law (Samuels, Reference Samuels1989, p. 321). Finally, there are also many false, obsolete, ill-fated, offensive, and even discriminatory dichotomies of little practical use that continue to linger although they should have been abandoned a long time ago, such as those of civilized and non-civilized nations (Article 38 (1) lit. c) Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)), modernity and tradition (Germond-Duret, Reference Germond-Duret2016, p. 1537), the First World and the Third World (Gainer, Reference Gainer1983, p. 1547), and developing and developed countries (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2016, p. 911). Two other principal but overly simplistic, false, or occasionally hegemonic dichotomies are those of East versus West and North versus South (Hendry and Wong, Reference Hendry and Wong2007, p. 1; Arrighi, Silver and Brewer, Reference Arrighi, Silver and Brewer2003, p. 3; Jordan, Reference Jordan1996, p. 216).
All these examples appear to testify to the finding that dualism universally constitutes a dominant mode of thinking (Webb, Reference Webb and Leeming2020, p. 702). To be precise, there is nothing wrong with dichotomous or dualistic thinking per se, as it is neither good nor bad. It only becomes a problem when it means the end of a continuous process of reasoning, because its underlying bivalence “trades accuracy for simplicity” (Kosko, Reference Kosko1993, p. 21). This was also exemplified, for the public/private (international) law dichotomy, in the argument that “the separation of public and private international law is historically contingent and has impoverished the practice and theory of international law” (Paul, Reference Paul1988, p. 177; Paul, Reference Paul2001, p. 290). Moreover, contemporary developments in capitalist production and finance have been listed among the reasons for the empirical decline of the public/private distinction, which is further aggravated by the “paradoxical exercise of public authority by private actors” (Cutler, Reference Cutler1997, p. 261).
Generally, dichotomies or dichotomous thinking are considered to raise the possibility of the erroneous presumption that there are only two possibilities, in a false dichotomy in which “we forget the middle and think in extremes, missing important alternatives in the process” (Govier, Reference Govier2003, p. 31). One of these alternatives that is missed in the process is the failure to connect the contradictory with the complementary nature of opposites, which really highlights the origin of “false dichotomies.” This can be exemplified by the way in which perceived differences between legal systems nurture the dichotomies established between different legal traditions, such as civil law and common law, better known as the diversity of legal traditions, which is often, but falsely, presented as an obstacle on the path towards global law.
Not only has it been shown that “the transplanting of individual rules or of a large part of a legal system is extremely common” (Watson, Reference Watson1974, pp. 21, 95), but it has also been found that diversity in law is “compatible with all major legal traditions” (Glenn, Reference Glenn2007, p. 359). Thus, the shortcomings in a purely dualistic mode of reasoning lie in the resulting gaps it leaves, which are to a large extent causal of the current deficiencies in the present international legal system, such as the fragmentation of law (Koskenniemi, Reference Koskenniemi2006, p. 10), the lack of policy coherence and legal consistency highlighted by conflicts between norms or treaties (Jenks, Reference Jenks1953, p. 401; Jeutner, Reference Jeutner2017, p. 3), and many more problems that are manifest in “limping legal acts” (acts considered lawful and valid in one system but not in another) (Verhellen, Reference Verhellen2017, p. 433). These problems have been addressed by defragmentation techniques, the global constitutionalism debate, and many more arguments and proposed solutions (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2024, p. 12; Dunoff and Trachtman, Reference Dunoff and Trachtman2009, p. 5; Schwöbel, Reference Schwöbel2010, p. 612).
Hence, to fully unfold the useful effect of dichotomies, dualistic thinking must be complemented by paradoxical reasoning, also captured by the term dialetheism, which starts from the premise that there can be contradictions that are true, while there may be others that are false (Priest, Reference Priest1990, p. 388). Overall, paradoxes remind us of these limitations in our understanding and motivate us to continue the quest for a broader, or more holistic, understanding of the phenomena around us (Reference Kapur, Pascual-Leone, Manly, Cole and KapurKapur, Pascual-Leone, Manly and Cole, 2011, p. 1). This marks the principal lesson to be learned from the recent rise in oxymora and paradoxes that repeatedly produce the labels used about the present era such as the “Age of Paradox” (Handy, Reference Handy1995, p. x) with “perplexing tensions and profound paradoxes” (Rosenau, Reference Rosenau1995, p. 13), a “Time of Oxymora” (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2018, p. 3), or the “Age of Unreality” in which everything is said to be an oxymoron (Bennis, Reference Bennis2009, p. 403). These titles and characterizations constitute some of the principal problems and challenges that confront legal education in the present era.
3. Crisis of law or crisis of legal education?
The major problems and deficiencies in law today, many of which manifest themselves in the form of the numerous dichotomies prevalent in law, have not gone unnoticed by legal educators and law schools around the world. Legal-education crises occur frequently and likely have accompanied the history and evolution of law. Scholarly work suggests that every jurisdiction, from the US and the EU to Russia and China, is currently facing a crisis in legal education (Minzner, Reference Minzner2012–2013, p. 334; Maleshin, Reference Maleshin2017, p. 289; Moran, Reference Moran2019, p. 453; Schwartze, Reference Schwartze and Germelmann2021, p. 67). Thinking along the idea that the theory of today is the practice of tomorrow, and vice versa, it can be argued that most of the problems encountered in law outlined above have their origin in legal education in the past. This provides one more good reason to better connect legal theory to legal practice and to frame their dichotomous relationship as one of complementarity rather than contradiction. Such a different perspective has been put in practice by way of the complementation of legal knowledge with various lawyering skills, also discussed under the title of “clinical legal education,” which has been defined as “a legal teaching method based on experiential learning, which fosters the growth of knowledge, personal skills and values as well as promoting social justice at the same time” (Madhloom and McFaul, Reference Madhloom, McFaul, Madhloom and McFaul2022, p. 1).
In addressing the static and widely obsolete distinction between the different legal traditions, some law schools have embraced bijuralism and adopted bi- or trans-systemic teaching. Notable among these are McGill Law School in Canada, since 1999, and the Louisiana State University Law Center in the US, since 2002, both of which are aided by their location in a “bijural jurisdiction,” Louisiana or Quebec (Costonis, Reference Costonis2002, p. 1). This teaching approach means the “simultaneous teaching of the common law and civil law in a particular subject area” (Bedard, Reference Bedard2001, p. 237). In addressing the national-versus-international law divide, this approach has also been accompanied by a trend to “de-nationalize” and “transnationalize” legal education (Jukier, Reference Jukier2006, p. 775), or to transcend national boundaries in general, as a way “to alert students to the complexities of life that await them as jurists and lawyers in the future” (Dedek and de Mestral, Reference Dedek and de Mestral2010, p. 910). Later, in trying to break free from the territorial limits of the nation-state, numerous law schools, such as the Jindal Global Law School in India, established themselves as “Global Law Schools” (Badrinarayana, Reference Badrinarayana2014, p. 521). Many more offered “global law programmes” at either undergraduate (e.g. Tilburg University or Bocconi University) Footnote 1 or postgraduate levels (e.g. the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University Law School). Footnote 2 Put briefly, the internationalization of law curricula is both a growing trend and an urgent need (A-Khavari, Reference A-Khavari2006, p. 75).
To deal with the deficiencies inherent in many more legal dichotomies, alternative methods have also been pondered and implemented, such as “problem-based learning” in law (Kurtz, Wylie and Gold, Reference Kurtz, Wylie and Gold1990, p. 797). Such problem-based learning is said to “start with problems rather than the exposition of disciplinary knowledge,” which overall promises several advantages (Sylvester, Hall and Hall, Reference Sylvester, Hall and Hall2004, p. 44). Combined with clinical legal education, this approach certainly also has advantages in dealing with the growing complexity and parallel blurring-of-lines of the distinction between different legal fields as well as between law and other sciences. These different approaches are nowadays accompanied by various innovative teaching methods and the use of technology in legal education, such as “blended learning” and “flipped classrooms,” the latter being understood as consisting of “pre-recorded lectures (video or audio) followed by in-class activities” (Wolff and Chan, Reference Wolff and Chan2016, p. 9). Most recently, and largely due to the 2020 global pandemic, another new topic of global relevance is, more broadly, distance learning through “online legal education,” which also transcends the dichotomy of the physical and virtual world (Nottage and Ibusuki, Reference Nottage and Ibusuki2023, p. 1; Neuwirth, Ramaswamy and Svetlicinii, Reference Neuwirth, Ramaswamy, Svetlicinii, Nottage and Ibusuki2023, p. 159).
These are but a few of the principal cornerstones in legal-education reform efforts in Asia and beyond. There are many more, as legal education has to respond to many different pressures, some of which were outlined in a symposium held in 2016. For China, for instance, two types of pressure have been identified: pressure from international competition and pressure resulting from the low employment rate of law graduates (Ji, Reference Ji2016, p. 237). For Taiwan, the pressure results from the need to solve transnational legal disputes and tackle legal issues regarding developments in technology and changes in society (Lin, Chin and Liu, Reference Lin, Chin and Liu2016, p. 247). In South Korea, the emphasis of reform efforts was on practical training as a way to “effectively prepare students for practice in the real world” (Oh, Reference Oh2016, p. 227). In Japan, the efforts were pursuing three major objectives, namely to offer continuous legal-education programmes for practitioners, to enhance community service and supporting career development of graduates, and to internationalize the curricula (Sato, Reference Sato2016, p. 213). These efforts, and especially those related to the globalization of legal education in Asia, are also conducive to fostering co-operation between law faculties around the globe (Miyazawa, Reference Miyazawa2016, p. 209).
Over the past decades, the rich debate in legal education has shown that the following are the key components that legal education must have and the related skills that legal education must provide to its graduates.
First, legal education must be “glocal.” In other words, it must teach both local and global awareness, as well as have the ability to transcend territorial and jurisdictional boundaries to reflect the current reality in which most jurisdictions operate. To give but one example, this has been confirmed for the jurisdictions of all 164 World Trade Organization (WTO) members, as WTO law has been found to have—in spite of its basis in international treaty law—“assumed features of a transnational legal system, resisting the dichotomy of international and municipal law” (Tuori, Reference Tuori2016, p. 301).
Second, the glocal aspect of education entails a sound knowledge of comparative law, or, better, of the comparative method. The comparative aspect of law is undisputed, but it has constantly evolved in the past. While it was, in a way, born from the domestic versus foreign law dichotomy, the different taxonomies have also changed and will have many different functions to play in the future, especially in legal education (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth, Singh and Kumar2019, p. 45). Essentially, comparative law has been called the “science of tomorrow” (Örücü, Reference Örücü2004, p. 205) and there may be many new tasks for comparative law in the future, such as assisting in the pursuit of greater regulatory harmony through greater transdisciplinarity (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2020, p. 1).
Third, legal education must successfully bridge the gaps left by the dichotomy of legal theory and legal practice. It must combine basic legal knowledge with the necessary practical skills by incorporating clinical legal education and problem-based learning. This also matches the general shift from a knowledge-based to a skill-based economy, which requires that students be equipped with different skill sets, such as academic, professional, and technical skills (Klein and Green, Reference Klein, Green, Barabasch and Rauner2011, p. 123). In the field of law, this can be realized by learning through doing so-called “experiential learning,” such as through mooting or field trips, which also add to problem-based skills (Lynch, Reference Lynch1996, p. 78; Higgins, Dewhurst and Watkins, Reference Higgins, Dewhurst and Watkins2012, p. 165). This fourth skill set also becomes more important in light of disruptive technologies, such as blockchain or AI, as lawyers need to be equipped with the necessary skills “to operate effectively in the new world of disruptive innovation in law” (Fenwick, Kaal and Vermeulen, Reference Fenwick, Kaal and Vermeulen2017, p. 351). Particularly, the recent introduction of LLMs has intensified the debate about their impact on legal education in China and elsewhere (Yu, Reference Yu2023, p. 220; Ajevski, Reference Ajevski2023, p. 352).
Fourth, and more generally, there are additional skills required, which can be summarized in the notion of transdisciplinarity, understood as a methodology for creating knowledge by striving toward a greater unity between different disciplines (Augsburg, Reference Augsburg2014, p. 234). In law, these skills can equally be framed by the many “law and …” issues, including all kinds of pairs such as the well-known “law and literature,” “law and technology,” and “law and economics,” but also more exotic and no less important ones, such as “law and love” or “law and magic” (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2015, p. 139). As a result of the creeping expansion of law, many new connections between law and other fields, such as that between law and neuroscience known as “neurolaw,” have emerged and continue to emerge (Petoft and Abbasi, Reference Petoft and Abbasi2019, p. 15). This means that the need for lawyers to find a common language in order to communicate with stakeholders in different fields or areas has increased. In this regard, the semiotics of law as the study of signs, and other approaches, are also called to play an important role in legal education (Broekman and Mootz III, Reference Broekman and Mootz2011, p. viii).
Fifth, when combining the glocal and comparative aspects of legal education, there are additional skills required, including foreign language skills, which are closely related to cultural skills. This is reflected in the “ability to work in a multicultural setting,” which is often required in job advertisements and is particularly important when working in foreign jurisdictions (Faulconbridge and Muzio, Reference Faulconbridge and Muzio2009, p. 1343). Another related set of skills involves ethics, emotional intelligence, and creativity, to mention but a few (Silver, Reference Silver1999, p. 1198). Overall, lawyers should at all times keep an open mind with regard to future problems and the creative ways in which they can be solved (Weinstein and Morton, Reference Weinstein and Morton2003, p. 873). It could even be said that predicting the future, as much as creating the future by regulating it, is a lawyer’s task (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2022, p. 5).
These are but a few of the basic qualities that future lawyers will need if they are to be able to respond to the deficiencies inherent in the existing dichotomies that characterize law today. As in psychology’s understanding of the Gestalt, so, in legal education too, the whole appears to be greater than the sum of its parts, and ideally lawyers will avail themselves of all of these qualities and also be able to combine them creatively depending on the context. The multidimensional challenge for lawyering skills has, for instance, been exemplified by the skills related to time management (Bartholomew, Reference Bartholomew2013, p. 917). In this sense, and against a backdrop of major changes in the architecture of the global legal arena, the current and recurrent crisis in legal education resembles a geo storm more than a mere change in the direction of the wind.
4. A new paradigm of legal education, or polyjuralism meets polylingualism
Louisiana and Quebec—as examples of so-called “bicameral” mixed or hybrid jurisdictions—were the ideal cases for introducing bijuralism with regard to the common law/civil law divide. The diversity of legal traditions, having shaped the Macao legal system, also provide serious challenges that can be metaphorically described as a “geo storm.” These challenges, however, can also bring an important component to the future of legal education and practice in Macao, if it manages to extract the greatest of its many unique characteristics, which can be best described as polyjuralism and polylingualism. This also requires the ability to adopt a new form of legal thinking—one that questions its premises and possibly also infiltrates a more flexible logic—which is arguably necessary to be able to transcend the many artificial boundaries inherent in the dichotomies mentioned above (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher1985, p. 1292; Dewey, Reference Dewey1924, p. 26).
To begin with the glocal aspect of legal education, Macao’s current legal status qualifies it as a “glocal”—that is, both a local and a global—actor (Neuwirth, Reference Neuwirth2011, p. 108). The reason is that, since the return of Macao in 1999 to the PRC after centuries of Portuguese administration, Macao has been established as a SAR of the PRC, governed by the Macao Basic Law (MBL) as its principal constitutional text. According to the MBL and in line with the PRC’s Constitution and the principle of “One Country, Two Systems,” the Macao SAR is “an inalienable part of the PRC.” Footnote 3 This means that it enjoys a high degree of autonomy in most policy areas, except foreign and defence matters (Article 2 MBL). Thus, the Macao SAR is equally entitled to adopt its own laws, enjoying wide independent legislative and judicial power, and there are only a few national laws of the PRC in force in its jurisdiction (Liu, Reference Liu and Trigo2014, p. 25). However, this applies not only to domestic, but also to international affairs, where it is authorized to “maintain and develop relations and conclude and implement agreements with foreign states and regions and relevant international organizations in the appropriate fields” (Article 136 MBL). As a concrete example, Macao is a member of the WTO, along with the PRC and the neighbouring Hong Kong SAR.
In relation to comparative law, the Macao legal system offers a rich variety and has aptly been described as a “mixed” or “hybrid” legal system (Castellucci, Reference Castellucci2012, p. 665). The fact is that, over the course of history, it has had many influences, as is well exemplified by its Commercial Code, which was inspired by numerous legal systems, including but not limited to the Portuguese, French, and German ones, as well as important features of European Union law and the common-law system (Teixeira Garcia, Reference Teixeira Garcia2018, p. 314). Evidently, there are also influences of Chinese law. As a result of history and geography, there are also traces of common law, which are explained by the ties with and proximity to the Hong Kong SAR, as well as the importance of the gaming industry and the number of US operators that are active in Macao (Rose, Reference Rose2013, p. 393). Overall, Macao’s unique features can also be explained by the “unique geographical position and strong cultural and economic ties that Macao has with the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and beyond, in Southeast Asia” (Tu, Reference Tu2010, p. 90). In sum, it has rightly been stated that Macao’s legal tradition has—for centuries—been shaped by “the socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, in a context of globalization and regional integration” and therefore has the potential “to become a laboratory of research on comparative law and international law” (Wei, Reference Wei2014, p. 249). These diverse ties and the various laws and practices that have been adopted also testify to a long-standing tradition of not considering theory as being separate from practice, but instead using legal theory and comparative study for the purpose of putting it into practice by seeking to adopt the optimal legislative solution.
In this regard, Macao’s polycultural (Bernardo, Reference Bernardo2019), multi-ethnic (Clayton, Reference Clayton2019, p. 145), and polylingual (Young, Reference Young2009, p. 412) characteristics are also of assistance, particularly in communicating with the Lusophone world and the rest of the global arena. As for the last, Article 9 of the MBL stipulates that “in addition to the Chinese language, Portuguese may also be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Macao Special Administrative Region.” However, the term “Chinese language” includes spoken Cantonese and Mandarin-based Standard Written Chinese. Macao Creole Portuguese (called “Patuá” in Portuguese or “Macanese” in English) adds to the already rich linguistic diversity of Macao (Li and Tong, 2021, pp. 142, 144). Last but not least, as Macao is a glocal metropolis, the English language too plays an important role in daily life and the work of public authorities, with the government offering many services in the English language as well. The use of English has increased even farther because of “Macau’s modernization, through education, the casino world, and the media” (Botha and Moody, Reference Botha, Moody, Bolton, Botha and Kirkpatrick2020, pp. 531–2; Meierkord, Reference Meierkord, Klöter and Söderblom Saarela2021, p. 80). Equally, English is the working language of the University of Macau and, most of all, it has a growing role in legal education as well, in which English now complements the traditional bilingualism of the legal system and legal education, and is increasingly a medium for communicating with the rest of the world (Cheng, Reference Cheng2020, p. 196).
As far as transdisciplinary and other skills are concerned, Macao also provides fertile soil for various other policy challenges, such as the regulation of the creative or experience economy (Mok, Reference Mok, Kong and O’Connor2009, p. 135), AI (Migliorini and Neuwirth, 2023, p. 138), traditional and conventional medicines, and tourism. Most importantly for policy coherence, and possibly one of the strongest qualities of Macao, is its diversity, which has also earned it the name of “cultural Janus” (Cheng, Reference Cheng1999, p. 4) and a place where “East meets West” (Zhang, Yankholmes and Morgan, Reference Zhang, Yankholmes and Morgan2022, p. 1). The East/West dichotomy has not only been seen as the result of the difference between the concept of rights in a natural law tradition and the concept of duties in Confucian culture (Tang and Wen, Reference Tang and Wen2020, p. 32), which results in descriptions of Western people thinking in terms of the rights of the individual or personal liberties whereas their eastern counterparts think more in terms of duties or obligations, order, and harmony (Dionisio, Reference Dionisio2014, p. 62), but also been noted at the level of cognition and logic (Nisbett, Reference Nisbett2003, p. 8). In this regard, it is helpful to remember the limitations inherent in dichotomous thinking. For Macao, this also is a constant reminder to build on its traditional quality as a place where apparent opposites not only meet, but are also transcended and “get reconciled” (Videira Pires, Reference Videira Pires1988, pp. 213–5).
In sum, the many unique and defining aspects of Macao can help it in its daily policy decisions, but also regionally, in order to play a wider role in its relationships with the PRC and Hong Kong, for instance through the “Closer Economic Partnership Arrangements” Footnote 4 and notably in the context of the Guangdong/Hong Kong/Macao Greater Bay Area, abbreviated as “Greater Bay Area” (GBA). The GBA covers the three different jurisdictions of the PRC, namely those of the SARs of Hong Kong and Macao and the province of Guangdong, all of which are located in the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region facing the South China Sea. The project of the GBA was officially launched with the signing of the GBA Framework Agreement (GBAFA) on 1 July 2017, which aims to fully implement the principle of “one country, two systems” as a way to improve and innovate the co-operation between the GBA members in order to develop the GBA into a more dynamic economic region. Footnote 5
The diverse aspects of the legal system are equally useful for Macao’s relationships with the rest of the world, as cities will perform a greater role in the emerging global legal order (Blank, Reference Blank2006, p. 875). Based on its Portuguese language being also an official language, Macao has an important supportive role to play in the PRC’s relationship with the Lusophone countries. To this end, it has established the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries to promote the commercial relations between the PRC and Lusophone world (Dos Santos, Reference Dos Santos, Duarte, Albuquerque and Lopes Tavares2024, p. 535). As a concrete example from the education sector for its role in the relationship between China and Lusophone countries, Macao has entered two alliances focusing on Portuguese- and Chinese-language teaching and learning resources in 2021 (Pun, Reference Pun2022, p. 4).
The same also applies to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) announced in September 2013, which builds on the ancient Silk Road networks with “the aim of strengthening the cooperation between China and other countries along the old Silk Road on a wide range of issues, in particular the fields of trade and investment” (Zhao, Reference Zhao and Zhao2018, p. 1). In this context, the unique role of Macao was also noted given that more universities have been reported to have started to open Portuguese-language majors in order to respond to China’s playing an increasingly proactive role on the international stage (Cai and Xue, Reference Cai and Xue2022, p. 5). The changing role of China was described as shifting from selective adaptation to selective reshaping with its influencing factors of perception and conception, complementarity, and legitimacy (Wang, Reference Wang2020, p. 583). If Macao were to play an active role in this changing global environment, then it must maintain its status as a free port and generally remain open to receiving inspiration from abroad in order to build bridges over the gaps left by existing or future false dichotomies. To fulfil these expectations, legal education in Macao, by embracing its polyjural and polylingual qualities, is called to play an important role.
5. Polyjuralism plus polylingualism: past experiences and future strategies
An important role in the current domestic, regional, and global context is reserved for education in general, and legal education in particular. The unique legal tradition and strategic position of Macao determine that the legal education in Macao should be given a special mission. On the one hand, it should fulfil the two functions of being a professional education and an academic education, which any law school will normally do. At the same time, it should create a platform for legal cultural exchange by taking full advantage of Macao’s unique legal culture in order to respond to its mission in the development of the rule of law in China. In this regard, the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau has adopted a set of strategies on the basis of its past experience. These include in particular the launch of a new undergraduate programme in the English language entitled “Chinese Law and Global Legal Studies.” The aim of the new programme is not only to enrich the provision of Macao’s legal education, but also to respond to the context of China’s growing economic power and steady rise in an increasingly multi-polar world, and the ensuing geopolitical implications (Shenkar, Reference Shenkar2006, p. 313; Tunsjø, Reference Tunsjø2018, p. 1), in parallel with the growing importance of the role of contemporary Chinese law (Kwan, Reference Kwan2021, p. 51).
As a result of the developments in Chinese law, many renowned universities have inaugurated courses or established research centres for Chinese law or China studies; these include the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies of Harvard University, Footnote 6 the Centre for Chinese Law and Policy at Durham University, Footnote 7 and the University of Oxford China Center. Footnote 8 The growing attention paid to Chinese law around the world can be explained as a consequence of two important trends: first of all, the increase in the volume of China’s global economic and trade activities led to an increase in the application of Chinese law to international commercial contracts and disputes; second, China’s role in the practice of international law and participation in global governance too has been growing in importance. In addition to its participation in various multilateral fora, such as the WTO since 2001, the PRC has negotiated a number of bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and has entered numerous regional partnerships, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP) and the China-ASEAN FTA. Footnote 9 Moreover, broader co-operation projects, such as China’s BRI or the co-operation between the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), have also contributed to the export of China’s legal regime (Neuwirth, Svetlicinii and De Castro Halis, Reference Neuwirth, Svetlicinii and De Castro Halis2017, p. 1; Zhao, Reference Zhao and Zhao2018, p. 1). The growing influence of China in global governance is also reflected in the establishment of international or regional institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or the New Development (or BRICS) Bank. Footnote 10
The growing global influence of Chinese law in the world has also increased the need for legal professionals who are proficient in both Chinese law and international law. In this regard, President Xi Jinping warned in spring 2021 that “China is facing a crisis of legal talents for protecting its growing interests,” which is why the cultivation of foreign-related professionals is one of the important national strategies. Footnote 11 In response to this crisis, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education of the PRC jointly issued a notice regarding the training of lawyers with knowledge of foreign law, to enhance the study of international law in English at the postgraduate level. Footnote 12 Even before the government’s initiative, several postgraduate programmes focusing on Chinese law were being offered by some of the most highly reputed law schools of China, including the law schools of Tsinghua University and Peking University. At the undergraduate level, a few Chinese universities offered double-degree programmes in law as a way to study both Chinese law and the law of a foreign jurisdiction. Footnote 13 There are also several co-operation programmes offering platforms for the study of both Chinese law and international law. Footnote 14
From the perspective of Macao, these programmes have some limitations, which are found in the general restrictions imposed by Chinese higher-education laws, the fact that the teaching language for Chinese law is mostly Chinese, and the fact that the study period is usually less than four years. This reduced study period is not deemed to be long enough to acquire a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the Chinese legal system and its application in China. Such an understanding is necessary for those who aim to pass the Chinese bar exam or the “national judicial examination,” which “is the qualifying exam for the legal profession organized by the state to select from the most qualified to be candidates for junior judges, prosecutors, and lawyers” and has therefore been termed “the only route to a legal career” (Ren and Lu, Reference Ren and Lu2020, p. 231).
In this regard, Macao’s own particular legal status as a SAR of the PRC offers additional space for practising novel approaches to legal education. Moreover, with the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, the operation of educational programmes in Macao does not need to comply with the relevant laws and policies of China. The higher-education law of Macao grants its higher-education institutions more academic freedom and broader administrative and financial autonomy. Footnote 15
5.1 Macao’s unique legal system: opportunity and potential
The creation of the Macao SAR with the return of Macao from Portuguese administration to the PRC in 1999 was premised on the basis of the unique concept of “One Country, Two Systems.” In the initial years, the challenge was the transition from the pre-existing Portuguese legal system and the adaptation of the new constitutional reality created by the MBL. The need to guarantee a smooth functioning of the legal system meant that the arrangement had to operate in a new environment, which also faced a linguistic challenge with Chinese being the official language, although Article 9 of the MBL also maintained Portuguese as an official language to be used by the executive authorities, legislature, and judiciary. Even in the period before the handover, a situation emerged in which it was necessary to embark on a massive project of translating all the existing laws into the Chinese language in order for them to be adopted in the Macao SAR. With limited know-how and expertise, the translation project presented enormous difficulties at the beginning but, with each translated law, the quality of the translations improved. The enormous challenge faced by the government in the context of the changing legal context was aggravated by the fact that only a small fraction of the population were proficient in the Portuguese language and thus able to work for the legislature, the judiciary, and the government as a whole (Cheng, Reference Cheng2020, p. 188).
For a legal system to operate and develop healthily, it has to be supported by a high-quality professional legal culture. However, the predicament for Macao law lies in the separation of Eastern and Western legal cultural elements under the bilingual legal system; people use different languages and are thus unable to communicate with each other (Cheng, Reference Cheng2015, p. 15). The Portuguese canonicalization resulted in a lack of the Macao citizens’ own legal concepts, and also separated legal vocational education from society (Cheng and Yanni, Reference Cheng and Yanni2012, p. 611). The legal education of Macao plays a very important role in the localization of Macao law and jurisprudence, and in the formation of the unique Macao legal culture (Cheng and Yanni, Reference Cheng and Yanni2012, p. 654). In this regard, the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau, as the oldest law school in Macao, has rich experience of adopting Portuguese law teaching into Chinese. It has been offering law courses since the academic year 1982/83. It offers law degrees and master’s programmes conducted in Chinese and Portuguese, which are adapted to the bilingual Macao, and provides support for Chinese citizens in Macao’s society to participate in legal practice. Footnote 16 Additionally, the faculty offers master’s and PhD programmes in the English language, as an indicator of a positive response by the Macao legal-education system to the new trend of globalization, and a recognition of the need for international integration.
For reasons related to the challenges faced by legal education in China, and in Macao particularly, against the backdrop of a challenging global environment, the management of the Faculty of Law has decided to launch a new LL.B. programme entitled “Chinese Law and Global Legal Studies,” with English as the teaching language for the first time in the academic year 2023/24. Generally, this programme has been set up by trying to carefully combine the local and global elements of law in the twenty-first century, and by using comparative and interdisciplinary methods for teaching, legal research, and problem-solving. Aided by Macao’s multicultural and multilingual environment that characterizes the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau, the programme aims to demonstrate the rule of law with Chinese characteristics in a global context. With proven experience in the translation of texts from different legal systems, a polylingual setting, and a strong polyjural expertise aided by the diverse backgrounds of its staff, it is deemed a necessary precondition to run the new LL.B. programme.
5.2 The curriculum of the LL.B. in detail
The point of departure for designing the scope and content of the curriculum was the principal requisite for taking the national judicial examination of the PRC. To this end, the curriculum was designed in such a way that the completion of all the major courses included in the LL.B. corresponds to the basic requirements for a bachelor’s degree in law offered in the PRC. In this sense, the national standards for academic quality in legal education that are prevalent in China were strictly followed in the design of the new programme.
A second set of considerations regarding the curriculum related to the expectations of graduates and their potential employers in the labour market. In this respect, the curriculum of the new LL.B. programme was drafted with the goal of meeting the various needs of high-level legal talents. To ensure these expectations are met, the programme consists of a total of 40 compulsory major courses plus six elective courses that need to be successfully completed.
As an innovative element, the LL.B. curriculum combines local legal content with various global elements that characterize law in the twenty-first century. This objective shall be realized by offering the legal knowledge necessary for the national judicial examination in the PRC while—at the same time—placing this knowledge in the wider global context. The global aspects are taken into account first by adding various courses focusing on specific global aspects of law, such as courses on public international law, the law of the WTO, and the Law of the Sea, and then by complementing these with various novel courses covering the “Belt and Road Initiative” and the co-operation between the BRICS countries, to mention but two of them. As an additional element, the teaching of all individual courses shall benefit from the polyjural background of the teaching staff, which guarantees that local and global aspects are simultaneously considered, critically compared, and ultimately integrated against the background of the respective legal historical evolution and the inspiration they received at different times and from different legal traditions.
Equal attention is given to transdisciplinary elements, which are reflected in courses such as those entitled “Law, Economics and Society,” “Law, Science and Technology,” “Personal Rights and Cyberspace,” or “Law, Language and Logic.” The principal objective pursued by the inclusion of these courses is to complement legal knowledge with diverse cutting-edge theoretical and practical issues covered by related disciplines, with a view to enabling students to become interdisciplinary, application-oriented, and versatile professionals with a global vision.
Last, great care was taken to evenly distribute the workload of students over the four-year study period by allocating a similar number of credits (37–39 credits) to each academic year. While introductory or basic law courses as well as language courses are concentrated in the first two years, various elective courses will be offered in Years 3 and 4 to allow students to explore their individual interests and to prepare them for the specific needs related to their planned future career. In this regard, problem-based or experiential learning methods are applied through clinical law courses, such as “Mooting, Mock Trials and Advocacy Skills.” These courses are combined with a flexible structure of seminars and tutorials to enhance lawyering skills and improve students’ motivation through autonomous learning (Scarnecchia, Reference Scarnecchia1998, p. 674).
In sum, as the heart of the LL.B. programme, the curriculum was designed to serve students with a richer cross-cultural learning experience, a broader international perspective, and a more comprehensive system of global law, so as to cultivate bi- and possibly polylingual legal talents with global competitiveness and responsibility.
5.3 Objectives for the future of legal education in Macao
In order to future-proof the content of the LL.B. programme in “Chinese Law and Global Legal Studies,” feasibility studies were carried out prior to the formulation of the details. To this end, the planning committee conducted several surveys, the first around targeting high-school students, undergraduate students in their second year or third year of studies, and postgraduate students enrolled in the university. Later surveys included alumni now working in different legal roles in public administration, prosecution, the judiciary, law firms, and academia, as well as other non-legal industries. More concretely, the respondents were asked: (1) whether they would agree that a systematic study of Chinese Law in English (rather than in Chinese) over four years would give graduates more competitiveness and access to a broader job market; (2) whether they would agree that launching the Bachelor of Law programme in English in Macao would help to strengthen the level of international academic exchanges in the field of law in Macao SAR and promote dialogue between Macao SAR and the world; and (3) whether they would agree that the University of Macau, with its cultural diversity, could offer a rich English-language learning experience, provide a more international learning platform, and give students a broader global and trans-cultural perspective.
As for the results of the survey, a total of 779 questionnaires were completed and received. Of these, 371 questionnaires were from second-year students and 259 were from third-year students in senior high schools, and there were 20 from undergraduate students and 38 from postgraduate students. A total of 91 responses were received from employed people. Generally, 384 respondents said that they would be willing to apply for this programme while 127 respondents said that they would be willing to recommend the programme to their friends, colleagues, or families. Moreover, 41.46% (33.12%) of the respondents (equivalent to 323 (258) respondents) agreed (strongly agreed) that the University of Macau, with its cultural diversity, is in a position to offer an English-language learning experience in this area, provide a more international learning platform, and give students a broader international and trans-cultural perspective. This reflects the fact that English teaching and the global, international, and trans-cultural perspective in Macao are two elements that may increase students’ interest in applying for the proposed programme.
Another survey specifically targeted potential employers, including government departments, courts, law firms, schools, and private companies. In this survey, 97.2% of the respondents (35 respondents) strongly agreed that the establishment of the new programme could play a positive role in cultivating the country’s foreign-related legal talents and meeting the increasing market demand, as well as fulfilling the needs of the wider community and the demands of industry.
Overall, the support received from the surveys conducted for the LL.B. programme was encouraging. It remains to be seen how the various expectations, such as to strengthen Macao’s role in higher education, will be achieved. It will still take four years for the first batch of students to graduate in order to verify whether a sound knowledge and mastery of Chinese law in the English language leads not only to a competitive advantage in the local labour market, but also to greater opportunities in the wider market, both in mainland China and beyond. It will also be interesting to observe whether the offer of a law degree in Chinese law in the English language will also open the door to foreign students either enrolling in the programme or taking selected courses as visiting students. Lastly, the prospective value of the programme will be measured by its ability to nurture talented students from China and all around the world, and to prepare them for a greater variety of global careers in top law firms, multinational companies, government authorities, and regional as well as international organizations in a rapidly changing world.
6. Conclusion
The changes China has undergone over the past three decades are so fundamental that virtually no aspect of social life has remained unaffected. Higher education is no exception. (Ma, 2007, p. 164)
Against the backdrop of constant change, the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote that “[N]o sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be” (Asimov, Reference Asimov and Holdstock1978, p. 5). The need to perceive and behold a vision of how the world is and how it will be confronts the law with serious challenges, but also provides it with great opportunities. A rapid pace of change, emerging disruptive technologies, climate change, and many more factors contribute to a growing complexity of all aspects of life and to a current crisis of law in the world. For the law to be successful in tackling the most urgent local and global problems combined, as formulated by the Sustainable Development Goals, it needs new ideas, visions, and strategies. The realization of these ideas largely depends on legal education, considering that the theory of today constitutes the practice of tomorrow.
In both identifying and solving these problems, Macao, mindful of its special legal status, its hybrid or sui generis legal system, and other legal characteristics, can help by functioning as an innovative laboratory for the enhancement of the law in books and in action. Macao, like most legal systems today, are faced with a complex combination of local, regional, and global regulatory challenges, which call for innovative responses. In these responses, legal education is called to play a particularly important role. More concretely, this means addressing the need for legal education to be “glocal,” meaning that it cultivates legal professionals with a local and global awareness using the comparative method and a transdisciplinary approach. At the same time, it marks an approach that regards various dichotomous pairs, such as those of theory and practice or municipal and international law, as complementary and not as mutually exclusive. In these multiple tasks, the polyjural and multilingual settings of the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau can be considered to provide an advantage. This is because Macao is known as a place of considerable diversity and one in which multiple opposites not only meet, but also often become reconciled. This quality of Macao has been nurtured by a long history of trade and culture, of relations between the East and the West. It should be put to good use to address the challenges that Macao faces locally, regionally in the GBA, and nationally as a Special Administrative Region, as well as globally in the context of the BRI or the WTO. Last but not least, legal education in Macao is believed to be able to help to accommodate the changing role of China in the world by building global bridges between the Chinese legal system and the world’s other legal systems. This may eventually also contribute to the establishment of a more inclusive and coherent global legal order in the future.
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