Article by Peter Linzer
I have always been fond of what is sometimes called transnational law, and I have colleagues and friends who have an even greater devotion to public international law and comparative law. Because we all like these subjects, we would love an excuse to teach more aspects of them, to teach them to more students, and to proselytize for them. But courses should not be instructors' hobby-horses, and students do not sign up just to amuse their teachers. And in addition to justifiable questions about relevancy, there are emotional issues involved. We Americans have always been distrustful of ideas (and sometimes of people and things) from across the seas: to some lawyers and to many law students, there is something vaguely “goo-goo” about the whole business of foreign and international law, just as a “Real American” talk show host I listen to speaks derisively of foreign athletes as “Euros.” The real question, then, is how we can justify—to those not already in the choir—teaching “non-American” law in the core curriculum.
About the Author
Peter Linzer. Law Foundation Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center. A.B. Cornell, 1960; J.D. Columbia, 1963.
Citation
72 Tul. L. Rev. 2031 (1998)