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2002 Annual Meeting Theme
Recommitting to Teaching and Scholarship
As the 21st Century unfolds, with all the uncertainties confronting us after September 11, it is extremely important to spend some time reflecting about what we regard as essential to our teaching mission and what should be the key ingredients of good legal scholarship—what they have been in the past and what they should be in the future. Technological revolution and the increasing interconnectedness of the world flowing from globalization require us to evaluate carefully how these two forces can and should affect our teaching and scholarship. More broadly, as the legal profession itself is changing to respond to society’s needs, we also must consider how legal education should adapt to ensure that our graduates are well-trained to enter an increasingly complex world. Only through such reflection will we be in a position to control how our legal education system ultimately evolves, rather than simply reacting to the forces about us.
To help start that process, the theme for the 2002 AALS Annual Meeting is “Recommitting to Teaching and Scholarship.” It is designed to encourage thinking and exchanges about what we do both in the classroom as teachers and in our research as scholars, as well as how we can do it better. To start the process, a special free-standing AALS Conference on New Ideas for Experienced Teachers, which is entitled “We Teach, But Do They Learn,” took place in June. Hopefully some of the things learned there also can be carried forward to the Annual Meeting to share with those who were not able to attend the Conference. Additionally, the all-day workshop at the start of the Annual Meeting is focused on the important issue of how we can reach the students of today’s generation and adequately prepare them to participate in the profession of tomorrow. Various aspects of scholarship will be the focus of the four concurrent sessions that will comprise the Plenary Session. They include: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning; Legal Scholarship on Trial: Alice's Adventure in Publications Wonderland; Technology and Scholarship: The World of E-Publishing; and The Role of Politics and Ideology in Legal Scholarship. All of these sessions are designed to spur a robust dialogue and sharing of ideas among faculty about our core values as teachers and scholars with the hope that this self-examination and exploration will provide the basis for developing and enhancing a vision of legal education for this new century.
Mary Kay Kane
AALS President and University of California, Hastings
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