Annotation: The article, focuses on the evolution and reform of legal education in Uzbekistan. The article details significant changes in Uzbekistan`s legal education, including the adoption of a credit-module system, modern teaching methods like case studies, and alignment with international standards.
Comparing American and European legal education systems, the article reflects on the importance of applied legal disciplines and competencies. It highlights Uzbekistan’s efforts to incorporate innovative and international standards in legal education, revising educational standards and curricula, and establishing a regulatory framework. Despite these advancements, challenges such as the orientation of legal education towards judicial bodies, a shortage of specialists in narrow legal fields, and an aging lawyer population persist.
The article proposes solutions to these challenges, emphasizing the need for continuous legal education, alignment with employer expectations, strengthening interdisciplinary connections, implementing dual legal education, and updating training standards. These measures aim to address the disconnect between legal upbringing and education, the lack of practical skills among graduates, and outdated education standards.
Key words: legal education, Uzbekistan, human rights, legal reforms, educational standards.
Law has a significant value for society as it serves as a norm of conduct for individuals. The effectiveness of law enforcement directly influences the establishment of a just society and a genuinely legal state. In this regard, legal experts, or lawyers, play a crucial role in society, especially in maintaining the legal system and upholding the rule of law. The legal community serves as a guarantor of social justice and contributes to addressing systemic issues. The role of a lawyer primarily revolves around safeguarding the rights and interests of individuals, society, and the state.
Today, ensuring and guaranteeing human rights have become the cornerstone of ongoing reforms in Uzbekistan. The head of state, addressing the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September of this year, emphasized that “we will resolutely continue the policy of building a New Uzbekistan as a legal, secular, democratic, and social state.” Lawyers play a significant role in achieving this goal. Therefore, legal education is closely tied to the state’s legal policy and the formation of legal culture in society. Throughout history, lawyers have been the “elite” of society, active participants in civil society. Currently, there are more than 20 million practicing lawyers with higher education worldwide, excluding court personnel and law enforcement officers, which is a relatively low figure.
During the formation of the national education system, a series of reforms have been implemented in all areas, including legal education. It can be said that legal education has become the driving force behind reforms, serving as a platform for testing innovations. Over the past period, state educational standards, curriculum, and programs related to legal training have been revised. In order to develop students’ skills in systemic analysis and management of relevant legal spheres, a transition to a credit-module system of education and the implementation of modern forms of teaching (such as case studies, scientific presentations, teamwork, etc.) were introduced for the first time in legal education. This experience has proven effective, leading to a phased transition to the credit-module system in all universities across the country.
International standards and the experience of foreign countries indicate the necessity of harmonizing and unifying legal education, taking into account national traditions. One of the fundamental distinctions of the American higher legal education system is that only individuals who have completed university and hold a bachelor’s degree (regardless of the specialization) are eligible to attend law school in the United States. It is noteworthy that both the American Bar Association and the Association of Law Schools have developed and approved minimum common standards that law schools must adhere to. This ensures a relative similarity in curriculum, with a focus on the mandatory inclusion of applied legal disciplines. European standards emphasize the importance of competencies. In France, for instance, legal education is designed to provide students with a comprehensive set of diverse knowledge and competencies, including:
– disciplinary competencies in jurisprudence;
– language competencies reflecting the ability to use legal “language”;
– generic competencies such as analytical and synthetic skills, written and oral expression, individual and collaborative work, project execution, finding and using documentary resources, as well as data processing management;
– pre-professional competencies based on knowledge of various areas of professional legal activities.
Overall, the global trend in legal education can be summarized in the following directions:
- Strengthening the influence of legal education and science on enhancing the legal culture of the population.
- An integrated approach to the educational process, maximizing its alignment with the requirements of employers and legal practice.
- Flexible definition and updating of specialties, reinforcing interdisciplinary connections.
- Enhancement of the prestige of the legal profession and legal education.
- Limited societal control over legal education.
In recent years, the Republic of Uzbekistan has undergone significant improvements in its higher and professional education system, particularly in legal education. Innovative and international educational standards have been incorporated into the educational and pedagogical process, and scientific research on current legal issues has been conducted. A proper regulatory framework has been established. From 2017 to the present, 98 decrees and resolutions of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan and 234 resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan have been adopted in the field of education, with 7 acts of the President and 11 decisions of the Government directly related to legal education.
Currently, legal professionals are trained in 26 higher educational institutions, including 9 specialized military and militarized universities (Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Academy of Public Administration, State Security Academy, University of Public Security, Law Enforcement Academy, Customs Institute, Fiscal Institute, Armed Forces Academy, Higher School of Judges), and 1 non-governmental university (Academy of Labor and Social Relations).
The system of training scientific personnel in jurisprudence is also being improved. From 2017 till October 2023, 111 Doctors of Juridical Sciences (DSc) and 312 Doctors of Philosophy (PhD) in Juridical Sciences have been approved
The achieved results underscore the importance of the ongoing reforms. However, legal education tends to be oriented towards meeting the needs of judicial and investigative bodies. Unfortunately, the number of specialists in narrow legal fields (such as insurance law, securities law, environmental law, etc.), particularly lawyers, remains insufficient. There are currently 4,625 registered lawyers, of which only 51 (1.10%) are under 30 years old, and 2,619 individuals (56%) are over 50 years old. Overall, there is one lawyer for every 7,600 residents.
The effectiveness of implemented measures largely depends on addressing the following issues, directly or indirectly influencing legal education:
1. The disconnect between legal upbringing and legal education, leading to insufficient effectiveness in efforts to enhance legal culture and awareness among the population, hindering the formation of the legal community as an institution of civil society.
2. The challenge of combining theoretical education with the development of practical skills, the imperfect involvement of practitioners in organizing the educational process, causing dissatisfaction among employers with some graduates of legal educational institutions
3. Lack of flexibility in forming specialties for legal personnel training, weak organization of opening new in-demand specialties.
4. Insufficient development of applied learning, the ineffectiveness of the current system of student internships and practical training.
5. The presence of outdated education standards hindering the formation of qualitatively new and unified requirements for higher legal education.
Considering the modern development of the state and law institutions, widespread adoption of information and communication technologies, digitization, and the crucial importance of effectively ensuring human rights, attention should be directed towards the following prospective areas for improving legal education:
Firstly, ensuring continuous legal education and harmonious integration of legal education with legal upbringing is crucial. In the Republic of Uzbekistan, a system for training legal professionals with secondary, vocational, and higher education has been established. The main emphasis is placed on higher legal education. However, there is a weak connection between legal education and school education. The experience of Scandinavian countries demonstrates the effectiveness of widespread education of children in “Law” through the lens of societal rules, the necessity of state regulation of certain issues, and the importance of respecting the rights of others. To ensure the continuity of legal education, it is advisable to develop a Strategy for the Development of Legal Upbringing and Continuous Legal Education. This strategy should define further priorities for the development of the education and upbringing system, I encompassing the combination of legal upbringing with legal education at the stage of personnel preparation and continuous enhancement of legal upbringing at all education stages, starting from school. This will help foster a culture of respect for human rights and freedoms, and intolerance towards violations of the rights of others.
Secondly, there is a need for maximum alignment of the educational process with the expectations and requirements of employers. Currently, the preparation of legal professionals requires students to master a range of disciplines, including general education, general legal, specific, and applied legal disciplines. Considering the importance of acquiring competencies and practical skills, it is necessary to improve the involvement of future employers in creating educational programs and plans for specific and applied disciplines. For example, the curriculum for the “Labor Law” discipline can be developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Employment and Poverty Reduction, “International Public Law” with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Tax Law” with the Tax Committee, “Criminal Procedure Law” with the Supreme Court, General Prosecutor’s Office, Ministry of Internal Affairs, “Legal Practice” with the Chamber of Lawyers, and so on. This collaboration could serve as an excellent platform in the future for combining final exams with initial exams for employment in legal specialties. In particular, the final state certification of master’s students in “Legal Practice” could serve as a substitute for the qualification exam for obtaining the status of a lawyer.
Unfortunately, today, the curricula of universities that prepare legal professionals in specialized areas do not fully cover the necessary disciplines. For example, the undergraduate program “60420100 – Jurisprudence (International Transport Law)” at Tashkent State Transport University does not include essential disciplines for the specialty, such as Transport Law, International Transport Law, Aviation Law, Customs Law, Contract Law, and Financial Law.
Thirdly, strengthening interdisciplinary connections in the training of legal professionals is essential. Currently, law is transforming considering the development of our life and the digitization of relations. In this regard, it is expedient to establish a practice of training specialists in narrow fields and introduce modern, globally demanded disciplines into the educational process. For instance, given the dynamic growth of cybercrime worldwide, the existence of legal gaps, as well as real risks and threats to the violation of personal rights in virtual space, there is a need for a fundamental review of programs and methods for training and retraining specialized personnel in this field. Consequently, the organization of training for legal professionals – specialists in the disclosure, investigation, prevention, and counteraction of cybercrimes is proposed. Similarly, future lawyers need to be educated on issues related to the relationship between Internet law and freedom of speech, legal support for virtual commercial relationships, etc.
Fourthly, there is a need for widespread implementation of dual legal education instead of the practice and internship system. In our view, it is advisable to transition to a form of legal education where the theoretical part of the training takes place within the educational institution, and the practical part occurs in relevant state bodies, courts, law enforcement agencies, legal practices, and other organizations. This should be accompanied by the establishment of a dual assessment system – by the university (based on theoretical sessions) and the respective organization (where the practical sessions take place). The gradual implementation of this mechanism should be accompanied by the creation of practical departments in legal educational institutions within relevant organizations, the announcement of grants by organizations for education in legal educational institutions, and providing students with opportunities to engage in work activities in corresponding institutions.
Fifthly, updating and improving the standards for training legal professionals is crucial. Ongoing changes in legislation and legal practice, as well as innovations in education legislation in the Republic of Uzbekistan, necessitate the refinement of corresponding educational standards. The current standard was developed based on the State Educational Standard of Higher Education, approved by the Cabinet of Ministers on August 16, 2001, which is no longer in force. Over the past twenty years, there have been fundamental changes, necessitating a revision of the standards. Considering the requirements of the Presidential Decree of the Republic of Uzbekistan dated April 29, 2020, No. UP-5987 “On Additional Measures for Radical Improvement of Legal Education and Science in the Republic of Uzbekistan,* it is deemed necessary to develop an updated State Educational Standard for the field of “Law” by the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Special Education in consultation with the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Uzbekistan, with the direct participation of higher legal educational institutions. This standard should define the general principles of organizing the training of legal professionals and uniform requirements for the legal education system regardless of the departmental affiliation of the educational institution. Specific features will be determined by each university.