A. Introduction

The Association of Transnational Law Schools [ATLAS] is a consortium of seven law schools from four continents that launched an annual academic summer program, called the Agora, for doctoral students this past July 2008. As the name of the consortium would suggest, the program focused on transnational law. The Agora is one of several multi-school initiatives aimed at furthering the study of the globalizing legal environment. The Agora both reflects and furthers a trend in legal scholarship, and as a consequence legal education, toward a focus on a set of interrelated concerns, which include globalization, international governance, transnational law, comparative legal studies, legal transplantation and the apparent conceptual challenges that these pose. In important respects these new conceptual challenges have a long pedigree in questions about the scope of legal pedagogy and theory. The pedagogical controversy is rooted in questions about the purpose of legal education, namely, whether it is trade training and should focus on practical legal skills, or whether it should be conceived of as broader than this. Intimately connected to this pedagogical controversy is a legal-theoretical controversy about the scope of legal theory (and thus the nature of law and its investigation). Does the word “law” designate the organizational instruments of state power, or should we think of “law” as referring to a more diverse set of social-organizational systems that may have greater or less affinity and connection with state law?

The paper has three sections. First, we outline the history of the creation of the Agora. Second, we describe, in varying degrees of detail, different elements of the Agora. Finally, we situate the Agora in the context of the scope issue, both as an issue within legal pedagogy, and as a broader question of legal theory generally.

B. History of the ATLAS Consortium

Law schools around the world have been seeking new ways to present themselves as global institutions, recruiting students from abroad, especially into graduate (LL.M. or equivalent) programs. Several schools...