EULysses – new frontiers for legal teaching and training Erasmus Project

Project Title

EULysses – new frontiers for legal teaching and training

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The rule of law in the EU is a multi-faceted principle implemented in a multi-layered process. It is embodied in the manifold jurisdictions of its member states, the growing number of EU legislative acts and eventually in the intricate net of cross-references between these bodies of law. Legal training should enable students to understand, navigate and play an active role in this multi-layered and highly interdependent network-structure. Yet this is not happening, as curricula are often exclusively focused on national jurisdictions and legal systems. Even when EU law becomes part of teaching, it often appears as a legal-subfield of its own, with little focus on the interdependencies with and between national jurisdictions. This is exacerbated by the fact that in law the exchange of academic personnel in Europe is still in its infancy. As a result, the “transmitters”, who could contribute different legal perspectives to teaching and research, are missing. Equally detrimental, topics of crucial importance to the understanding of Europe and its legal settings – such as European Governance and Identity – have been absent in legal training so far.
In the light of these challenges, five leading universities in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris and Rome have decided to use their experience in conducting a joint-European study program in law, known as the European Law School (ELS), to develop a role model of how to comprehensively Europeanize legal teaching. In this respect, their Strategic Partnership EULysses – new frontiers for legal teaching and training has 3 major objectives:

1. Improve “Europeanization at home” – in terms of topics of particular importance to Europe
2. Improve “Europeanization at home” – in terms of academic personnel and
3. Realize the potential of digital means for cooperation and outreach

To reach these objectives the SP will
1. Implement joint teaching activities, particularly on topics of overarching importance for Europe and embedded in joint research on law and social sciences
2. Establish a scheme for mobility and embeddedness of academic personnel, and
3. Set-up a Joint Digital Platform (JDP).

These actions address students and academic personnel (professors + young researchers) alike. Students benefit from new course offers, held jointly by home and visiting academics. This is especially the case with – but not restricted to – the joint-seminars on topics of particular relevance for Europe. They also involve academics from other disciplines to ensure the contribution of as well as the engagement with other disciplines’ insights, concepts and methodological approaches. As these seminars are taught every year at all locations, each student at all of the 5 universities has the possibility to attend several of these courses during her or his studies – without having to go abroad.
Academic personnel benefits from an innovative exchange scheme, which sees them fully embedded in research and teaching activities of their hosting faculties. Each institution sends and receives a maximum of 3 exchange academics per year.
Academics not taking part in the exchange scheme equally profit from the SP through the exchange with incoming colleagues from the other ELS institutions and through the planned JDP, which creates an up-to-date “map” of the academic profiles and activities of researchers in the ELS member institutions – to be opened to all EU academia in a second step. Furthermore, academics inside and outside SP’s partner institutions gain from the concepts and training-materials developed for the joint-seminars on topics of overarching importance for Europe, such as the governance and identity of Europe, which are available on the JDP free of charge.
All actions are based on a distributed and equally connected approach of responsibilities. For each objective (and derived activities) one institution bears main responsibility, with Berlin in all cases assuming the role of being co-responsible. This ensures strong coherence and equal engagement as well as different perspectives and methodological approaches to be incorporated in the conceptualization and implementation of each action.
The SP’s impact and longer terms benefits cover areas within the SP’s partner institutions as well as beyond. Within the SP, it will lead to a significant broadening as well as deepening in the level of cooperation, with tangible results and new opportunities for students and academia alike. It will be a major boast for the Europeanization of these institutions’ legal training in terms of subjects (courses with new topics), people (exchange scheme) and information infrastructure (Joint Digital Platform). At the same time, the SP will serve as a role model of how to “Europeanise” legal study programs in general and in particular of how to a) introduce new topics in legal teaching and b) use digital means for these ends in the most effective manner.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 356615 Eur

Project Coordinator

HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITAET ZU BERLIN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITE PARIS II PANTHEON ASSAS
• KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
• UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA