This year, Philip Bryden, Dean of the Faculty of Law, was invited to participate in a review of the Faculty of Law at prestigious Oxford University. The two day review was held in St. Cross Building on the Oxford campus in mid-June.
Q. Tell us a little about your trip to Oxford?
A. It was an honour to have the opportunity to participate in an external review of Oxford's Faculty of Law. Our role was to examine the Faculty with a friendly but critical eye and give them advice on how they might best meet the challenges they are facing now and in the future.
Q. Who were the other members of the review committee?
A. The committee was chaired by the Head of Oxford's Social Sciences Division, Professor Roger Goodman, and it included two representatives from the University, one representative from the Faculty, and three external members. In addition to myself, the external members were Professor David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law and Chair of the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University, and Dr. Timothy Macklem, Head of the School of Law at King's College London.
Q. How were you selected?
A. My understanding is that the University was looking for someone who had experience as an administrator in a North American setting as well as experience of legal education at Oxford. I had studied law as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford from 1976-1979. I think it was an advantage to be a Canadian (both the Dean of Oxford's Faculty of Law, Dr. Timothy Endicott, and Dr. Macklem were born in Canada and did part of their legal education here). Finally, the strong academic reputation of the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta enhanced my attractiveness for this role.
Q. How did it feel to return to Oxford?
A. A lot about the place was very familiar. Oxford is steeped in tradition and the look and feel of the place was very much as I remembered it from my days as a student. The United Kingdom is very much part of the modern world and Oxford's students are just as likely to use laptop computers as our students. On the other hand, Oxford's history operates on a different time scale than ours. We are proud of being western Canada's oldest law school and celebrating our centenary during the 2012-13 academic year. I studied at Balliol College, one of Oxford's oldest colleges, which reckons the date of its foundation as 1263, so they will be celebrating their 750th anniversary when we are marking our 100th.
Q. What, if any, differences did you notice between Oxford's Faculty of Law and our own?
A. Oxford is structured on a collegiate system, so that most education for undergraduate law students takes place in colleges rather than at the university level. Moreover, their basic system of undergraduate education is based on the tutorial, in which one faculty member will typically have a weekly tutorial with two or three students studying a single subject during the course of an eight-week term. This is an academically challenging environment because students are expected to analyze and critique each other's ideas in front of a scholar who is likely to be a leading expert in his or her field. Although there is a great deal of individual feedback in the tutorials, grades are based entirely on two sets of three-hour closed book exams taken at the end of the student's second term in first year and the end of their third year.
This system is very resource intensive and has a number of limitations from a pedagogical standpoint. The people at Oxford acknowledge that nobody could construct a system like this today. Nevertheless, they see these characteristics as distinctive elements of a system of education that has proved remarkably successful for a very long time, and they are committed preserving it.
Q. Are there things that Oxford's Law Faculty is doing that we should consider implementing here at the University of Alberta?
A. Oxford's model of legal education is so different from ours that it is difficult to imagine successfully transplanting elements of it into our setting. Some issues that are subjects of passionate debate for them are of no relevance to us. There are, for example, heated disagreements over whether Roman law can be eliminated as a compulsory subject to make room to increase the number of elective courses open to students from two to three. I don't see our Curriculum Committee engaging in that debate any time soon.
On the other hand, I think Oxford has been doing a good job recently in taking advantage of their connections in the legal and financial community in London to create a graduate program in law and finance in collaboration with the Said School of Business. Obviously we are not located an hour away by train from one of the world's financial centres, so we are not in a position to imitate this particular program. On the other hand, I think we can draw inspiration from Oxford's willingness to take advantages of the resources available to them elsewhere in the University and in the community to strengthen particular aspects of its program.
Oxford College - Balliol College
Founded 1251
Garden near Rhodes House