Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
Abstract
In its first 25 years, the Clinical Law Review (CLR) provided a ground-breaking foundation to build a scholarly field inspired and informed by clinical work and to legitimate that scholarship within the academy. The CLR broadened the window for clinicians to put their work in a wider context of other clinicians' experience, and with that context and comparison, to build theory from this common body of endeavor.
As Part I describes, 12 of the CLR's 404 works in its 25-year history include voices from outside the United States. While some countries' clinical education history is as old, or older, than that of the United States, clinical education did not have a foothold in many parts of the world when the CLR was born in 1994. Even where programs existed, clinical writing elsewhere, as in the United States, could be described as fledgling. The last 25 years, though, have seen a tremendous expansion of clinical education worldwide. With the clinical world's enlargement, scholarship arising outside the United States has blossomed and is growing at an accelerating pace. The CLR has had both direct and indirect effects in inspiring the body of international clinical writing.
Part II inventories recent books and journals from around the globe that document the spread of clinical education and explore alternative models and ways of thinking about it. Hearing voices from outside our home country and culture enables us to see our own experience differently and gain a more critical and conceptual perspective. Busy CLR readers would be helped by some gateways to work of interest from outside the United States. In addition, if the CLR is to be a journal of more than the U.S. clinical experience, it needs a lens that looks beyond U.S. borders now that clinical experience and scholarship elsewhere are burgeoning.
Differences in language, cultural knowledge, and scholarly style complicate cross-national endeavors. The CLR's role in publishing a top academic journal and nurturing U.S. clinicians' writing will continue to take significant resources in time and otherwise. Part III seeks to open a brainstorming process among U.S. and international clinicians and organizations supporting clinical education about initiatives that various actors could take to enhance the richness of clinical writing and accessibility of our mutual experience. Part III suggests roles that the CLR might play in that process but also considers contributions individuals can make, roles for other entities, and types of cooperation that could enhance the quantity, quality, and diversity of international scholarship.
Recommended Citation
Leah Wortham, Strengthening the International Clinical Scholarly Community: Opportunities for the Clinical Law Review and Beyond, 26 CLINICAL L. REV. 393 (2019).