Mapping lines of flight: a framework for comparative legal education in small jurisdictions

Macleod, Kryss ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8175-8336 and Maharg, Paul (2023) Mapping lines of flight: a framework for comparative legal education in small jurisdictions. Sortuz : Oñati Journal of Emergent Socio-Legal Studies. ISSN 1988-0847 (In Press)

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Abstract

Jurisdictional size has an important effect upon the legal educations that are designed and implemented across the jurisdiction. As regards small and very small jurisdictions or micro-jurisdictions, little is known beyond the jurisdiction about legal education in them. If we know little about the history and current status of legal education in small jurisdictions, we know even less about the sociocultural contexts in which law, justice and legal education is developed and practised. This article begins an exploration of the thesis that comparative approaches to legal education expressly focussing on small jurisdictions have much to offer the overall discipline, to enable us to better understand how systems around legal education shape and are shaped by social and systemic interactions and factors to develop richer and more inclusive theorisation within legal education. The article is a prolegomenon to forming a community of practice, and beginning a line of research, a line of flight across research literatures in search of identities and practices. We argue here that in comparative work the depth of the understanding and theorisation possible can be developed by learning from each other and making the familiar unfamiliar. We then propose an initial comparative framework for work on small jurisdictions, based on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, exploring the potential for such an approach to produce deeper and more inclusive theorisation within legal education, before ending with some suggestions for ongoing research in this area.