Legal education and the profession in three mixed/micro jurisdictions : Malta, Jersey, and Seychelles

Abstract

Even when geographically isolated, the small populations-both general and legal-of micro-jurisdictions and small states typically require them to reach beyond, often far beyond, their shores. This doesn't mean that they are isolated intellectually. Instead, their necessary engagement with outside traditions and influences makes them crossroads of interaction between peoples, jurisdictions, and powers. This is especially true of so-called mixed jurisdictions where the legal tradition is an explicit, obvious hybrid. With these encounters in mind, this chapter explores legal education and training and the legal profession in three mixed/microjurisdictions: Malta, Jersey, and Seychelles. The three provide a useful focus for comparative analysis. Each jurisdiction is an island or archipelago. Both Malta and Jersey are within Europe, while Seychelles is a considerable distance away geographically, and arguably culturally as well. Jersey and Seychelles are particularly small jurisdictions with populations of less than 105,000 each. By comparison, Malta is significantly larger, with more than four times that number of people, though it is still well within common definitions of micro-jurisdictions. It is not unusual, for example, to limit that category to systems with fewer than 1,500,000 people. The legal traditions of both Jersey and Seychelles have important French influences. Malta has long had much in common with its Italian neighbour, both before and after the Risorgimento of the nineteenth century. As with much of Europe, it also drew inspiration from French developments in the same period. And Malta, Jersey, and Seychelles each have significant links, in both the past and the present, with Britain. The result is that comparison of these traditions provides us with the opportunity of observing their different responses to legal education and to the legal profession. Our intention is to (I) broadly lay out the patterns of legal education and training and the legal profession in these jurisdictions and (2) briefly examine the degree to which legal education and training and the legal profession in them is dependent on external influences. For the former, the three systems have adopted related, but distinct approaches to education and training that are usefully compared. We also consider how insiders in these jurisdictions look abroad to orient their studies and practice and investigate the internal use of legal actors and sources from outside: jurists and doctrine, judges and jurisprudence, legislators and legislation, as well as foreign-trained practitioners. The effect of such external influences in small jurisdictions is profound, perhaps especially in explicitly mixed traditions. Indeed, in the words of Sue Farran, such influences-she was writing specifically about the provision of legal education by outside institutions in foreign and hegemonic and neo-colonial traditions-have the potential to act as 'trojan horses' for a sort of 'legal imperialism' . Inevitably, our discussion will touch, if only lightly, on questions not only of self-government-indeed of legal purity, pragmatism, and pollutionism-but even of self-identity.