Classroom Law: The Early Development of University Legal Education in England, the United States, and Germany.

The early development of university legal education in England, the United States, and Germany is examined. Focus is on: (1) the different historical and social processes that have brought law and higher education together and (2) examination of a more general, comparative nature about the institutional transformation of legal education in these countries. Depending on social, economic, and political realities within each country, the development of the relationship between law and university education are established. Similarities are noted between England and the United States in that legal education consisted in its early beginnings within a well-established system of apprenticeship training. In Germany, it is noted that legal training has always been associated with the universities. These tendencies are shared amonq all three nations: (1) there is a general movement toward the differentiation of traininq and practice functions within the profession; (2) as professional training grows more distinct, it becomes a function of higher education; and (3) when universities do gain control of the training function, they do so only after convincing themselves that law is "rational" or a "science", that law really belongs in their curricula. (LC)