Introduction: a kaleidoscopic invitation to consider global legal education

Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen and Bryant G. Garth

A chapter in Research Handbook on Global Legal Education, 2026, pp 1-6 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter introduces the Research Handbook on Global Legal Education through a “kaleidoscopic” framework for understanding how legal education is shaped by overlapping global circulations and local institutional logics. It begins from the paradox that legal education remains largely national in structure even as it is increasingly oriented toward transnational models of legitimacy, modernity, and reform. Rather than assuming convergence or methodological nationalism, the chapter situates contemporary debates within longer histories of empire, postcolonial state-building, neoliberal governance, and professional stratification. Drawing on 14 national and 22 contextual vantage points represented in the volume, the chapter shows how global scripts—particularly those associated with US legal education—are selectively adopted, resisted, or reworked across diverse sites. These perspectives illuminate recurring tensions around marketization, access, hierarchy, and claims of social change, while also foregrounding how positionality and power shape what is recognized as “global,” “modern,” or “legitimate.” Across contexts, the proliferation of law schools, the rise of rankings and metrics, critiques of formalism, and the persistence of inequality emerge as shared concerns, even as they take locally specific forms.The handbook is organized thematically rather than geographically, inviting readers to identify symmetries, contrasts, and fractures across cases. Ultimately, this chapter positions global legal education not as a settled model or best practice, but as a contested and iterative process—one that reflects historical inheritances and ongoing struggles over the future of law, legal institutions, and legal subject formation.

Keywords: Global Legal Education; Legal Globalization; Professional Stratification; Neoliberalism; Postcolonial Legal Institutions; Institutional Reproduction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781788117005
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