법학교육에 대한 새로운 방법론

A Proposal of Teaching Methodology in Legal Education : Focusing on Socratic Method

According to Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr., “The life of the law has not been logic. It has been experience.” However, Korean people have never had experiences concerning the new legal education system - law schools, which are supposed to start on March, 2009. It is totally new institutions to Koreans. Especially a large number of Korean Civil Law professors have not experienced the US style law schools. When a new system is adopted, many things are necessary to be discussed. However, it is hard to find discussions as to how to teach in a new legal education system, because Korean legal academiae only have been concentrating on how to prepare their colleges of law to be admitted into Korean law schools by Korean government. In this respect, this author attempts to mention his experiences how to adopt Socratic Method to the newly coming Korean law schools or current colleges of law. In this article, this author writes about American legal education and Socratic method in II. And then this author mentions cases and materials for texts to be used in US Socratic teaching ways in III. In IV, this author explains how Socratic methods have been used in American law school classes. In V, this author attempts to speak of how the Socratic methods would be adopted in upcoming Korean law schools and current colleges of law, showing this author’s teaching experiences for three semesters. Finally this author suggests that the Socratic methods could be used for Korean law schools as well as Korean colleges of law as a potentially competitive teaching way.