Introduction [The moral imagination and the legal life: beyond text in legal education - Volume 2]

Abstract

This present volume is one of two volumes of papers flowing from a project, ‘Beyond Text in Legal Education’, hosted by the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh. The aim of the two volumes as a whole is to contribute to the reinvigoration of legal education, primarily in law schools but also extending to law firms. We attempt this reinvigoration by introducing the importance and usefulness of pedagogical resources that go beyond text, i.e. resources from the visual and movement arts. Taken as a whole, the two-volume work explores the use of these non-textual resources for legal education and legal scholarship. It is not restricted to any area of law or to any particular form of going beyond text. It includes contributions that explore different ways of visualizing legal knowledge, different ways of designing and interacting with spaces for exploring legal issues, as well as different ways of performing a variety of legal problems. The premise of the work is that the teaching and research of law can be experienced in ways that do not depend exclusively on text, but that have recourse to the full range and diversity of the sensory capacities of teachers, students, professionals and scholars. In that sense, we also recognize that different persons all have different sensory strengths and weakness, that is, that we all experience in different ways and thus also learn via different sensory pathways.