새로운 민법 교육의 체계와 방법

The System and Methods of the New Civil Law Education: In the Case of Seoul National University

In March, 2009, Korea has adopted the law school system and the universities that have introduced the new system are currently undergoing a transition to discontinue their colleges of law. Consequently, as the traditional national judicial examination will soon be abolished, the Judicial Research and Training Institute, which is responsible for the legal practice training for those who pass the exam, is facing a big change as well. The establishment of the law school system can be a turning point for the Korean legal education and an impetus for a new start. Especially, civil law, which constitutes a large part in law and legal education, is exposed to some problems of its education under the college of law system. As such, the matter of how to change the civil law education has become an issue, more of a task to be solved from the time when the law school opened. Also, Korea’s legal system is clearly distinguishable from the common law system by the fact that it belongs to the civil law tradition and has the civil code prepared according to the Pandekten system. Naturally, the introduction of the law school system which was created and developed in the United States leads to the inevitable question: How to change the civil law education? The structure and organization of civil law courses to be offered at Seoul National University School of Law is a lot different from the ones being taught in the College of Law now. Regardless of the system of the civil law and the organization of the civil code, the basic civil law courses are reorganized taking into account their applications on the real life situations. For instance, the Civil Law I (Contracts) includes the contents constituting the general provisions of the civil code and the law of obligations, and its system and content have been entirely rearranged in the way of looking into the ‘life of contract’ from its formation to expiration. This can be a revolutionary course showing how the common law reasoning and the continental civil law reasoning can combine successfully. The specific contents and methods of the lectures will be different from those of the civil law education in the College of Law. For teaching methods, professors may use either the lecturing method explaining legal theories and case laws or the Socratic method, or both. Various other methods including a problem-solving method may also be used. There is not only one superior method in education. Professors should use appropriate methods according to the situations. Only because, thus far, the traditional civil law courses have been lecture-oriented, it needs to recommend new methods of teaching including the Socratic method.