Producing, Analyzing, and Evaluating Legal Visualizations: A Pioneering Course at the Department of Law, University of Basel, Switzerland
Colette R. Brunschwig
2012-01-29 16:36Occasionally, some academic institutions offer courses on certain areas of multisensory law. One branch of multisensory law is visual law. Last year, an important area of visual law was taught at the Department of Law, University of Basel, Switzerland. Lic. iur. Lukas Musumeci and Ref. iur. Mareike Schmidt, LL.M. developed a course entitled "Recht besser verstehen durch Schemata im OR AT" [Better Understanding the Law through Schematizations of the General Provisions of the Swiss Code of Obligations]. The course "addresses students in the second semester. The students learn how they can use schemata / charts to promote better understanding of the subject matter. Apart from critically evaluating existing schemata, the students will, as a team, produce and evaluate their own schemata" [my translation] (<http://vorlesungsverzeichnis.unibas.ch/index.cfm?Action=1&LID=14&ID=14&act_int=0&PeID=2010005&actualpage=2&DID=106766>).
From the perspective of visual law, Basel law students were thus taught how to analyze and evaluate a certain kind of legal visualizations (schemata / charts), and how to produce such legal visualizations (for more on this methodological topic, see, for instance, COLETTE R. BRUNSCHWIG, Legal Design und Web Based Legal Training: Evaluation von Visualisierungen im Web Based Training der Credit Suisse, in: Erich Schweighofer, Thomas Menzel & Günther Kreuzbauer (eds.), IT in Recht und Staat, Aktuelle Fragen der Rechtsinformatik 2002, Erich Schweighofer & Friedrich Lachmayer (eds.), Schriftenreihe Rechtsinformatik, Vol. 6, Vienna 2002, 297-308, and FLORIAN HOLZER, Rechtsvisualisierung im Strafrecht: Ein Beitrag zur Steuerung der visuellen Rechtskommunikation (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Munich, Germany), Munich 2011, 111 sqq. and 127 sqq.).
I was pleased to read that the two law teachers received the "Credit Suisse Award For Best Teaching:" "The 'Credit Suisse Award For Best Teaching' is endowed by the Credit Suisse Jubilee Foundation [see <https://www.credit-suisse.com/responsibility/en/jubilee_fund.jsp>; my insertion] in order to advance academic teaching and education, and to strengthen Switzerland as a place of knowledge and research. The Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching is conferred upon individuals who have excelled at promoting and fostering student learning and development. At the University of Basel, it is awarded to especially innovative teaching projects. The 2011 Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching is hereby conferred jointly upon Herrn lic. iur. Lukas Musumeci and Frau Frau Ref. iur. Mareike Schmidt, LL.M. in recognition of their course 'Recht besser bestehen durch Schemata im OR AT', delivered at the Faculty of Law, University of Basel. Mr. Musumeci and Ms. Schmidt have devised a teaching programme that helps law students visualise legal issues. Course work promotes the students' own construction of knowledge, and is designed to promote a different, namely, primarily visual approach to the law [my emphasis] (<http://www.unibas.ch/index.cfm?uuid=CFF55A16987D89D7C65CD7CAD142FF29&&IRACER_AUTOLINK&&&&o_lang_id=1>).
I would be pleased if such and similar courses were offered on a regular basis, also at other universities and universities of applied sciences teaching the law.
In various previous postings (see, for instance, <http://community.beck.de/gruppen/forum/visual-law/visual-and-audiovisual-legal-literacy-and-what-bernard-j-hibbitts-calls-neteracy-0>, and <http://community.beck.de/gruppen/forum/audio-visual-law/legal-education-films-for-law-students>), I have suggested that legal and legally relevant visualizations and audiovisualizations are gaining more and more significance both within and outside the legal context. On this account, it would be necessary for practicing and future lawyers to be able to deal professionally with such visualizations and audiovisualizations (visual and audiovisual legal literacy). They would need to be able to do so, for instance, in legal consultation(s) and in court, to illustrate and explain legal or legally relevant contents to their present or future clients (mainly lay persons). L. Musumeci and M. Schmidt's course is one among many "bricks" existing particularly in the English-speaking world to develop visual and audiovisual legal literacy.
(Please note: all websites were last accessed on January 29, 2012.)
Hinweise zur bestehenden Moderationspraxis
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Kommentare als Feed abonnierenThanks for sharing with us this useful and interesting information, Colette. Next semester (from March to July, 2012), I am going to teach a course on legal methodology for PhD and LLM law students at the Federal University of Paraiba (Brazil), and the program will be basically on law and visuality. In other words, we will discuss how visualization is changing our perception of law, its production and particularly of legal arguments. The course will start with exploring the history of the relationship between law and image. We will then study contemporary legal design and finish with some applied visual issues (charts, schemata, films, pictures etc). The course will span 60 hours. 25 law students will attend.