Interdisciplinarity and Clinical Legal Education: how synergies can improve access to rights in prison

Abstract

This article discusses the resistance experienced by the clinical legal education movement in Italy due to a widespread legal positivist approach which views law as a self-contained technical subject, and excludes interdisciplinarity from the law school curriculum.

The choice that the newly-born Italian CLE movement now faces is the option to either become a new socio-legal epistemology of law in action and a social change-maker, or to ascribe to a simple restyling of legal education to include certain practical activities aimed at introducing students to the profession. The future of the movement will depend on whether the rapid increase in the number of clinics will be matched by appropriate reflection on "how clinics might be consciously designed around exposing students to gaps between the law in books and the law in action".