SERVICE ORIENTATION AND SUBJECT INNOVATION OF LEGAL EDUCATION IN A NEW ERA

Li Gang & Zhang Yuqing

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. SERVICE ORIENTATION

A. Serve the People’s Needs

B. Serve the Governance of China

C. Serve the System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

D. Serve the Reform and Opening up Policy

E. Serve the Modernization Drive

II. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF RURAL REVITALIZATION

A. Rural Revitalization Puts forward the New Mission of Tackling the Immaturity of Law

B. Rural Revitalization Relies on New Knowledge about Good Laws Related to Rural Affairs

C. Rural Revitalization Requires the Exploration of New Local Resources of Law-based Governance

D. Rural Revitalization Pushes the New Path of Training Law Talents

III. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE

A. The Belt and Road Creates a New Era for the Legal Culture of the Silk Road

B. The Belt and Road Breaks a New Path for Global Law-based Governance

C. The Belt and Road Urgently Needs New Products for High-end Legal Talents

D. The Belt and Road Injects New Energy for the Cooperation of Legal Education

IV. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A. Artificial Intelligence Puts up New Demands for Technological Legal Service

B. Artificial Intelligence Starts New Legal Education Pattern

C. Artificial Intelligence Causes New Legal Problems of Social Ethics

D. Artificial Intelligence Brings New Changes to Legal Employment

V.  LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF PUBLIC HEALTH

A. Pubic Hygiene Conceives New Legal Concepts of Public Health

B. Public Health Calls for the New System of Legal Guarantee for Health

C. Public Hygiene Expands the New Subject for Public Health Education

D. Public Hygiene Needs New Legal Talents for Public Health Urgently

VI. CONCLUSION

Since China introduced legal education from the West in the late 19th Century, legal education has been separated from Chinese social practice. Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered in a new era, and the development of legal education has ushered in new opportunities. Legal education should be oriented to the modernization of socialism with chinese characteristics, serve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and cultivate high-level, high-quality, inter-disciplinary talents with both moral and legal skills and a clear approach to the law. To break the bottleneck of the development of legal education, the basic point should be on the integration and innovation of law and Chinese social practice, that is, the construction of law discipline system. According to the current situation and development trends, rural revitalization law, Belt and Road law, artificial intelligence law, and public health law should be the four comprehensive new law disciplines that legal education urgently needs to establish.

As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, it will embark on a new journey to build a modernized socialist country on the basis of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and poverty elimination. With the advent of the new era, legal education is also ushering in a new stage and a development opportunity. The fundamental symbol of legal education in the new era is that its main contradiction has changed, which means the current situation of legal education cannot satisfy the new expectations of the party, the country and the people. Its main manifestations are that legal education has detached from social practices, development of times and people’s need, that it lacks attention to economic and technological development of Chinese society, that it is apart from the great social practices of the people, and that it cannot train legal talents who can shoulder the great responsibility of rejuvenating the Chinese nation with the spirit of legal practice and subject innovation. The new era entrusts new missions to and calls for new actions of legal education. It raises important questions that must be answered to legal education. First, what kind of student should legal education train so that it will not disappoint the new era? Second, how should legal education train them to be the ‘pioneer’ of the new era? The former is about the service orientation of legal education. It determines which direction legal education will go in. The latter is about the subject innovation of legal education, which affects the implementation of the service orientation. Without service orientation, the subject innovation of legal education will drift off course; while without the subject innovation, the service orientation will be an ‘impractical armchair strategist’. Given this, this article first analyzes the service orientation of legal education in the new era, from these five aspects: people’s needs, governance and administration of state affairs of CPC, consolidating and developing socialist system with Chinese characteristics, reform and opening-up and socialist modernization, and then talks about the subject innovation of legal education in the new era particularly from these four aspects: rural revitalization, the Belt and Road, artificial intelligence, and public health.

I. SERVICE ORIENTATION

The CPC Central Committee, the State Council and the Ministry of Education have a deep understanding of the general trend of global education development and grasp the chance. They firmly put forward the strategic plan of building a strong country in education and speeding up the modernization of education in view of the basic conditions of China’s education development. President Xi Jinping emphasized on the seminar for representatives of experts in the field of education, culture, health and sports that education is the major long-term plan of China and the CPC, so we must give high priority to the development of education and speed up the modernization of education. We should firmly train capable personnel for the party and the country, strive to cultivate new blood of the era to assume the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and work hard to train builders and successors of socialism who are well developed in all respects. Specifically speaking, legal education should consider training inter-disciplinary, application-oriented, innovative, international and specialized high-quality law talents with moral integrity and legal skills, a firm determination to understand and maintain the law and with both ability and moral righteousness as its training objective and fundamental task.

The rule of law is the basic strategy for the CPC to lead the people in governing the country, the fundamental guarantee for the modernization of socialism with Chinese characteristics and for the country’s enduring peace and stability, and the important support for advancing the modernization of the national governance system and capabilities. Legal education serves to provide intellectual support of legal talents and high quality and accurate services of law for national strategies and people’s livelihood and to train legal talents and produce legal academic products based on needs of the country and the people. It shoulders the important mission of training legal talents and innovation. Therefore, it is an important cornerstone of national development and social progress. Therefore, the development of legal education must be closely connected with the present goals and future directions of national development and always remember and practice the original aspiration and founding mission of ‘serve for the people, serve for the governance and administration of state affairs of CPC, serve to consolidate and development socialism with Chinese characteristics and serve for the reform and opening-up and socialist modernization’. All these efforts are to serve the people’s needs, serve the governance and administration of state affairs, serve socialism with Chinese characteristics, serve the reform and opening-up policy and serve modernization drive.

A. Serve the People’s Needs

The people are the root of the governance and administration of state affairs of the CPC and the primacy of the socialist practice with Chinese characteristics. In the eyes of the CPC, only the people are the creators of history. It is the party’s sincere hope that education should satisfy the people’s needs. And development thought of holding the people as the primacy is a dominant advantage of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the national governance system. Therefore, legal education should work for the people based on the people’s needs and positively react to people’s new concerns, new demands and new expectations. It should set producing qualified legal academic products and training legal talents as the advance direction and meeting people’s growing expectations as the goal of reform and innovation of legal education. And legal education should regard the people as the supreme judges of its educational results and whether it meets people’s expectations as the ultimate evaluation standard.

B. Serve the Governance of China

The central task of the CPC’s governance is to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the goal of upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics is to realize socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Rule of law is the basic way of the CPC’s governance of state, so legal education is the foundation, forerunner and guarantee of the CPC’s governance. Therefore, the legal education faces the CPC to govern the country, is to face the great strategy of the Chinese dream of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Legal education for the CPC’s governance means that it provides the party with the exact rules and system and law talents needed, that it trains legal consciousness, provides the concepts of rule of law, spread legal knowledge and promote the spirit of rule of law for the party, and that it conducts deep research of law, contributes legal methods, creates legal environment and maintains legal ecology for the party.

C. Serve the System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

The leadership of the CPC is the most essential feature of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics. The system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics is one of the dominant advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the national governance system. The characteristic-oriented system of legal education is to serve for upholding and consolidating the overall leadership of the CPC, for consolidating and developing the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, and for consolidating and developing the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics. To achieve that, legal education should stick to the theory of law-based governance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and insist on fostering stronger legal confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics. And by following the path of legal education with Chinese characteristics, it will promote law-based governance and the construction of rule of law in China in an all-round way, produce legal academic achievements of high quality and train specialized high-competent law talents for speeding up the improvement of the system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics.

D. Serve the Reform and Opening up Policy

The reform and opening up policy is the prominent strength of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and the national governance system. And it is also the power source of the improvement of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the modernization of national governance system. The past forty years have witnessed the mutual promotion and cooperation between the reform and opening up policy and legal education, which means legal education have gone through revival, prosperity and innovation in the trend of reform and opening up, and the reform and opening up policy has experienced faster development and broader market with the help of legal education. Facing the reform and opening up, legal education is to keep up with the pulse of the times of reform and opening up, keep up with the global trend of reform and opening up, pay close attention to the new field of reform and opening up, timely and effectively respond to the new demand of legal scholarship and rule of law talents, serve the domestic and international situation and its central work, advance the process of rule of law in national and global governance, and promote the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind.

E. Serve the Modernization Drive

The 19th CPC National Congress announced that we will work to see that ‘socialist modernization is basically realized’ by 2035, and that ‘develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful’ by 2050. Yet, if we do not promote education, the goal of modernization will be achieved in vain.  Comrades Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping, two generations of the highest leader of China, both take serving the modernization drive as the guideline of education development. And that education must work for modernization is clearly written in the Education Law of the People’s Republic of China. Facing the modernization construction, law education should face the main battlefield of economic and social development and the forefront of the world’s scientific and technological competition. It should aim at the frontier of science and technology and key fields, constantly be infused with legal spirit of the time of socialist modernization construction, deeply study the major issues of the rule of law proposed by the socialist modernization construction, and provide legal talents and legal intellectual support for the construction of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics.

‘Five service orientation’ indicates the course of legal education reform in the new area. It is an important component of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the new contributions the party made to the Sinicization of Marxism. The essence of ‘five service orientation’ is to serve the modernization drive. The realization of the modernization drive has been a long-cherished wish of the Chinese nation, and the goal of the CPC’s governance is to lead Chinese people to realize socialist modernization. The aim of consolidating and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics and carrying out reform and opening-up policy is to provide system guarantee and impetus for the long-cherished wish of the CPC and Chinese people. Therefore, fundamentally, legal education for people’s needs, for governance and administration of state affairs, for socialism with Chinese characteristics and the reform and opening-up policy serves the goal of the modernization drive. Only by serving the modernization drive can legal education correspond to the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, coordinate with the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and fit with the goal of advancing the modernization of the governance system and capacity of legal education. And only in this way can legal education achieve connotative development and promotion of high quality and stick to the path of socialist education with Chinese characteristics.

If legal education is to meet the modernization drive, it must highlight its innovation nature. That is because legal education should not be fitted into the modernization drive, rather it should create the modernization drive actively so that it can contribute creative legal power for the modernization drive. Since the born of Chinese legal education, its biggest problem is that legal education has always been detached from Chinese socialist practice and that it is short of the expression on the aspect of ‘social sciences’. Therefore, the basis of breaking through the bottleneck of legal education development should be the integration and innovation of law and Chinese socialist practice. The Modernization of China’s Education 2035 jointly issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council reiterates that innovating the subject system, improving the quality of education, training students’ key competency and enhancing the subject creativity are the key to promote the modernization of China’s education and build China into an educational power country and the pivot of cultivating new blood of the era who are responsible of shouldering the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. The Plan of Training Excellent Personnel in Six Fields and Top Students of Basic Subjects 2.0 implemented by the Ministry of Education requires that we restart the reform of higher education, accelerate the construction of the subject system and high-level undergraduate education, comprehensively improve the ability of talent training, and realize the connotative development that pays attention to the quality of education, students’ key competency and subject innovation ability. This shows that it is vital to restructure the legal subject system. The present legal subject system is based on the law system rather than the needs of social development, like constitutional jurisprudence, criminal jurisprudence, civil law and commercial law, economic jurisprudence, administrative jurisprudence, procedural law, military law and international jurisprudence. Legal subject system should be rooted in China, insist on Chinese characteristics, Chinese style and Chinese manner, based on socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics in a new area, keep up with the development of legal academic foreland and focus on new skills and new areas that are of prospective and strategic characteristics in the process of promoting social economy and technology so that it can stimulate the formation of new top legal subjects that are comprehensive and interdisciplinary. According to current situation and the development trend, legal education in areas of rural revitalization, the Belt and Road, artificial intelligence and public health are new subjects of comprehensive and interdisciplinary characteristics that should be urgently established in priority.

II. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF RURAL REVITALIZATION

The strategy for rural revitalization is a crucial decision carried out by the CPC Central Committee. In 2018, the Views on Implementing the Rural Revitalization Strategy and a Strategic Plan for Rural Revitalization (2018-2022) issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council incorporated the law-based governance into the rural governance system and emphasized that the law-based governance is the foundation of rural revitalization. In the same year, the Ministry of Education published the Scientific and Technological Innovation Plan of Institutions of Higher Education for Rural Revitalization (2018-2022) to support the deep integration of subjects related to agriculture and social sciences and lead colleges and universities actively serve the rural revitalization strategy. On February 5, this year, the Central Committee for Comprehensive Rule of Law approved the Views on Strengthening the Construction of Legal Rural Area which intends that the construction of legal rural area should promote the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy. If we plan to revitalize rural areas, we must promote education at first, and law-based governance is the foundation of them. Decisions and arrangements above have indicated the direction of the reform of legal education and law development in the area of rural revitalization in the new area. Legal education in the area of rural revitalization researches the promotion of the legal system of rural revitalization and its law of development and the legal practice in this area, and it aims at training application-oriented specialized legal talents of high quality who know about agriculture, and are determined to devote themselves to the construction of rural areas and passionate in helping farms, which is not contained in the present legal sub-disciplines. The specific reasons for establishing new legal sub-disciplines in the area of rural revitalization are as follows.

A. Rural Revitalization Puts forward the New Mission of Tackling the Immaturity of Law

The ‘immaturity’ of law is the author’s description of the ‘congenital deficiency and acquired imbalance’ condition of legal education in China. ‘Congenital deficiency’ indicates that legal education in China is short of its tradition and foundation; ‘acquired imbalance’ means that legal education in China has always been detached from social practice. The ‘congenital deficiency’ results from history, but we cannot change the past. However, the ‘acquired imbalance’ is man-made, and we can correct human behaviors. Therefore, the ‘acquired imbalance’ is the root problem of legal education in China. For example, there is a terrible lack of knowledge in legal textbooks and classroom teaching to support rural revitalization and poverty alleviation. It is difficult for law students to effectively deal with the practical legal problems raised in rural life with the legal book knowledge obtained from school education. Therefore, grass-root courts in rural or remote and less developed areas often fail to ensure the regular turnover of judges, because book knowledge cannot match practices. Besides, law researchers often ignore legal problems about agriculture, rural areas and rural people, and institutions like ‘Law School of Rural Revitalization’, ‘Research Institution of Law concerning Rural Revitalization’ have not appeared in people’s view yet. Almost all the major economic restructuring measures issued by the state are made by economists, and few of those are research results of jurists. All these phenomena illustrate the long-existing problems of legal education in China. The implementation of rural revitalization strategy puts forward the new mission of tackling the immaturity of legal education, which pushes the reform of legal education that has long been apart from social practice. While the basic way to overcome the ‘disease of immaturity’ of law is to establish a new legal subject of rural revitalization and achieve deep integration of legal education and rural revitalization.

B. Rural Revitalization Relies on New Knowledge about Good Laws Related to Rural Affairs

To implement the rural revitalization strategy, the rule of law is the guarantee, while good laws are the prerequisite. Good laws related to rural affairs are the catalyst and midwife of the development and reform of rural society. However, the formation of good laws related to rural affairs must be conditional on the new knowledge about laws related to rural affairs. And the new knowledge about laws related to rural affairs is the legal concepts, principles and systems that reflect people’s will, conform to the principle of justice, keep up with the trend of rural development and are of operable characteristics. At present, the Rural Revitalization Law and the Food Security Law are the first two laws related to rural affairs that need to be enacted as soon as possible. The reasons are as follows. First, the Rural Revitalization Law occupies a constitutional position in the law system related to rural affairs, and it plays the role of the framework, foundation, overall planning and general constitution in the system. Second, the Food Security Law has strong economic and political characteristics. It ensures that Chinses people have enough harvests for themselves. And it is the foundation of the CPC’s governance and the basis of national security. Besides, mainstay laws related to rural revitalization like rural basic management system, the rural land system, rural collective property rights system, agricultural support and protection system, rural social security system also need to be improved as soon as possible. Laws related to rural affairs mentioned above are of strong exploratory, practical and innovative characteristics, which are new knowledges of law. This new knowledge has already been beyond the range of legal subjects, infiltrated with subjects like economics, politics and so on. If these laws aim to become good ones, law makers, enforcers and protectors must learn new law knowledge in this field. However, present legal education is not capable of teaching these knowledges, let alone providing intellectual and talent support for the formulation and implementation of good laws related to rural affairs. The formation of the system of good laws related to rural affairs on which rural revitalization relies is based on the foundation of new legal knowledge provided by legal education of rural revitalization.

C. Rural Revitalization Requires the Exploration of New Local Resources of Law-based Governance

As an ancient saying goes, a law cannot be implemented only by itself. It is not enough just to make rural governance effective only by relying on legal norms. Other social regulations are also needed in this process. Rural governance must insist on the integration of law-based governance, self-government and rule of virtue. The social characteristic of vast rural areas in China is the acquaintance society which needs no laws and orders. It is an ethics-centered society ruled by rites. In such society, national laws almost do not work, while what really regulates the social life is ethical norms and ritual regulations spread among people. Such social regulations are mainly divided into two categories. One is self-government norms, and the other is moral rules. The former occupies the basic position in the rural governance system, of which the most representative is Lyu Shi Xiang Yue (a local convention made by Lyu Family) made by ‘four brothers of Lyu Family in Lantian’ (a county in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province) in the Northern Song Dynasty which still has profound affects today. Now, Lyu Shi Xiang Yue has been further compiled into new local conventions like behavior conventions, hygiene conventions, wedding and funeral convention, so on and so forth. The latter plays a role of moral education and incentive and restraint in the rural governance system, among which ‘new local elites’ put forward in Gaolan County, Lanzhou City of Gansu Province has big impacts. These elites influence and educate people by their moral authority. Legal education does not like all these ethical norms and ritual regulations prevail in acquaintance society mentioned, not to mention exploring and inherit them. And even they are ‘sentenced to death’ by legal education in the name of ‘incompatible with modern law-based governance’. On the contrary, they are beneficial supplement of modern rural governance and a new resource for the development of local law-based governance. Therefore, we should not criticize rural society because it is different from book knowledge, rather we should adjust book knowledge to reflect the rural life. This shows that it is necessary to conduct legal education reform and the establishment of legal education in the area of rural revitalization.

D. Rural Revitalization Pushes the New Path of Training Law Talents

It is indispensable of legal talents to support the implementation of rural revitalization strategy and promote law-based rural governance. At present, the legal personnel of rural society in China mainly consists of judicial assistants, legal document delivery and judges who act as lawyers. The main function of judicial assistants is to provide legal services such as writing indictments and representation of parties in court, and the duty of legal document delivery is to deliver legal documents. They were selected by the county justice bureau and the township people’s court from the local educated youth and veterans. Judges who act as lawyers are judges of the township people’s court, in the meantime they play the role of lawyer. This phenomenon comes from the shortage of the supply of legal service in rural society. These legal personnel in rural society mentioned above have not received formal legal education, except for judges who act as lawyers, which is enough to show the condition of law-based governance in rural society. Legal personnel come from rural areas at the beginning, but why do they not go back to where they came from? There are two reasons. First, they are not willing to go back, because the economy in rural area is deficient and its culture is underdeveloped. Second, they are not capable of serving rural areas, because what they learned is detached from the situation of rural areas. These two reasons both indicate the root problem of legal education that legal education is separated from social practice in rural areas. For this problem, there are two solutions. One is to establish legal education related to rural revitalization so that legal education and rural life can be deeply integrated, and the problem that book knowledge does not match the reality will be solved. The other is to develop human resources of local legal personnel so that educated people who come from rural areas will go back and deal with local problems. In this way, the problem of people with ability back to the grass-root level will be solved. Both approaches point to the reform and innovation of legal education. Only by the reform and innovation of legal education can law-based governance in rural areas build a solid foundation.

III. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE

Opening to the outside world is a basic state policy, and building the Belt and Road with joint efforts is a major step to open China wider to the outside world. In 2015, the Vision and Proposed Actions Outlined on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce was aimed at carrying forward the spirit of the ancient silk road and building a community of interests, shared future and responsibilities for countries along the routes. To build the Belt and Road with joint efforts, education is the foundation and the forerunner. In 2016, the Opinions on Works of Opening-up Education in the New Era published by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and General Office of the State Council emphasized that education should serve the opening-up policy and the development of the Belt and Road. Later on, the Promotion of the Education of Building the Belt and Road with Joint Efforts issued by the Ministry of Education proposed two missions of education of jointly building the Belt and Road. One is building the education community of the Belt and Road, and the other is to realize closer people-to-people ties and provide talent support for the initiative. To jointly build the Belt and Road, legal education should not stay out of the trend. And the establishment of legal education related to the Belt and Road is the basic approach to carve out a way of legal education of the Silk Road. Legal education related to the Belt and Road is independent from all present sub-disciplines. It researches the law system of the Belt and Road, its development and the legal practice of the Belt and Road and aims at training application-oriented, innovative, high-level and specialized legal talent that the Belt and Road Initiative needs. Reasons for establishing this subject are as follows.

A. The Belt and Road Creates a New Era for the Legal Culture of the Silk Road

Since the Opium War, China has started the process of legal modernization. However, people equate ‘modernization’ with ‘westernization’, so western laws like continental law, common law and Soviet law that reflects European history and culture began to be introduced into China. Even today, such times are not over yet. Legal teaching materials and classroom teaching are filled with the institutional arrangements, rule models and values in western countries. And legal research is full of the academic view of how to learn from the western experience of the law-based governance to reform the Chinese legal system. The rise of the Belt and Road opens the door to re-understand the world. Overnight, the heart of human civilization has moved from the Mediterranean to its birth place, the East, and the center of world politics and the economy has moved back from Europe to its original place, Asia. The new era for the legal culture of the Belt and Road has come. Looking at the global map of law, what we can see is the vast land located between Europe and the Pacific, on which roots Chinese legal culture led by Confucianism and Indian legal culture and Islamic legal culture that closely related to religion. In particular, the Chinese legal system, which has lasted for thousands of years, will regain its former glory with the reconstruction of the combination of Chinese and foreign laws and the selection of good, and will once again dominate the world legal system. This means that the era of western legal culture’s exclusive dominance in the world is gone forever, and the Eastern cultures like Chinese law, Indian law and Islamic law, reflecting the Asian way of life and ideas, will become the master of the future world order and the cradle of the new world order. The new area for the legal culture of the Silk Road created by the Belt and Road requires that the new legal subject related to the Belt and Road established by legal education fit with the feature of the era.

B. The Belt and Road Breaks a New Path for Global Law-based Governance

The Belt and Road is to build a community of common interest, shared future and responsibilities that has mutual trust in politics, economic integration and cultural tolerance, instead of promoting power politics such as sphere influence, military confrontation and colonialism. In a word, building the Belt and Road with joint efforts is to construct a community with a shared future for mankind. On the respect of the global governance system, this means removing the ‘state-centered’ law order formed by the Westphalian system and establish the ‘human-centered’ law order created by the Belt and Road. The ‘human-centered’ law order is a ‘world law’ order that laws of all nations contain shared concepts or common factors. The world law, also ‘common law of mankind’ or ‘the community of law for mankind’, is the inevitable logic result of a community with a shared future for mankind. Therefore, on the perspective of law, building the Belt and Road with joint efforts is not only seeking for solutions to conflicts of law cultures of different nations, but also shared concepts and common factors existing in law cultures of various nations. Countries along the Silk Road, developing countries, have a history of being bullied by imperialism and hegemonism. They also have a history of trade and exchanges with other ethnic groups. In terms of religion or ethics, they all hold the doctrine of ‘adherence to treaties’. Therefore, these countries may have more similarities on legal values. The world law is a new path for global legal modernization created by the Belt and Road, but the unimpeded access of this new path depends highly on insisting comparative law education under the cosmopolitanism vision, which means developing legal education in the area of the Belt and Road Initiative. However, in sharp contrast with the construction of the Belt and Road which is growing vigorously, legal education related to the Belt and Road still stays in an astonishing backwardness. Such state urgently requires that new legal subjects related to the Belt and Road be given priority in the university legal education.

C. The Belt and Road Urgently Needs New Products for High-end Legal Talents

Building the Belt and Road with joint efforts needs high-end legal talents which mean that besides legal knowledge and abilities concerning countries along the routes, legal personnel also require the knowledge and ability of religions, morality, ethic and languages of these countries. For example, Indian law and Islamic law are of strong religious characteristics. The Quran and the Hadith are the basis of Islamic law, which is the will of Allah. Dharma treatise and Dharma are the source of Indian law, and their distinctive features are that they are dominated by the caste structure. Although both Indian law and Islamic law belong to religious law, the former advocates the concept of ‘all men are born with a hierarchy’, while the latter advocates the principle of ‘all men are born equal’. The origin of Chinese law comes from various theories of Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism and Legalism, but Confucianism occupies the leading position. Different from Indian law and Islamic law, the foundation of Chinese law is ethics and morality, and it does not believe in the existence of a ‘human soul’ or a ‘divine will’. Chinese law contains democratic factors beyond time and space which is a major resource for the revitalization of Chinese law culture in the new era. What is more, language is the carrier of law culture and the bridge of legal communication. There are as many as 53 official languages countries along the Belt and Road, involving Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, Caucasian, Dravidian and other languages. Except for official languages, there are also many dialects. For example, in India, there are more than 1600 local languages. From the above we can know that qualified legal personnel require not only legal knowledge and abilities concerning countries along the routes, but also the knowledge and ability of religions, morality, ethic and languages of these countries. So how to train such high-end legal talents? It must be legal education reform and innovation, the establishment of new legal sub-disciplines related to the Belt and Road.

D. The Belt and Road Injects New Energy for the Cooperation of Legal Education

Regional cooperation among countries along the route aims to provide intellectual support of law and legal talents and promote people’s communication in these countries through the law-based governance. However, so far, the regional cooperation among countries along the route still contains fatal weaknesses, achilles’ heel. Such weaknesses are that many cooperation agreements are signed, but few practical cooperation is conducted, that the cooperative institution has many projects but the education level is poor, that people have interests on scientific research, but it is difficult to be implemented, and that student exchange scale is small and educational level is low, so on and so forth. Many scholars attribute it to factors like motivation barrier, language barrier, trust barrier. Actually, these factors are just a symptom of the larger problem. The fundamental obstacle is the lack of new legal subjects that match with building the Belt and Road with joint efforts. Among governments, schools, enterprises and other social forces, schools are undoubtedly the most basic mainstay of the regional cooperation in legal education, but the exertion of its main function and the implementation of its responsibility depend on the establishment of the new legal subject related to the Belt and Road. Without the guarantee of new legal subjects related to the Belt and Road, problems will occur in the regional cooperation of legal education. For example, there are numerous interactions on the decision maker level but less cooperation on the executive level. The integration of school, enterprise, industry and education has been violated. National languages are detached from national laws. Without the support of new subjects related to the Belt and Road, the regional cooperation of legal education will be ‘the water without source’, and the development of the Belt and Road will eventually become ‘the castle in the air’. The construction of the Belt and Road has injected new energy to the regional cooperation of legal education, which is the establishment of new legal subjects that match with the Belt and Road. The establishment of this new subject will surely promote the common prosperity of legal education related to the Belt and Road, and then comprehensively advance the stable and long-term construction of the Belt and Road.

IV. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

President Xi Jinping emphasizes that we should actively promote the profound integration of artificial intelligence and education. In 2017, the Development Planning for a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence issued by the State Council said that it is a national strategy to develop artificial intelligence and build China into a scientific and technological power. It attached great importance to the training of horizontal interdisciplinary talents of ‘artificial intelligence plus law’ and the construction of cross-disciplinary subjects of ‘artificial intelligence plus legal education’. In 2018, the Action Plan of Artificial Intelligence Innovation in Colleges and Universities published by the Ministry of Education clearly set adhering to the integration of science and education and improve the quality of personnel training as its basic principles and main objectives, and required the combination of artificial intelligence and specialized legal education on the aspect of subject arrangement and specialty construction. The above situation indicates that it is urgent to set up a new legal subject of artificial intelligence. The research object of legal education related to artificial intelligence is the legal regulations of artificial intelligence and the legal application of artificial intelligence in various legal professions. Its goal is to train versatile, innovative and specialized high-end talents who can put artificial intelligence into use and promote the sound development of artificial intelligence. Legal education related to artificial intelligence is independent of any sub-discipline of present legal subjects. It is the inherent logic of the sound development of artificial intelligence to establish a new legal sub-discipline of artificial intelligence. The specific reasons are as follows.

A. Artificial Intelligence Puts up New Demands for Technological Legal Service

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, various fields of economy and society are leaping from digitalization and networked form to intelligence, the era of intelligence is coming. People’s production mode, life style and thinking pattern are changing. And the four links of ‘production-exchange-distribution-consumption’, which constitute the total process of human production, are also being reorganized. Such changes or reorganizations are mainly manifested on that all fields of human production and life, such as manufacturing, agriculture, finance, investment, insurance, logistics, business, home furnishing, medical treatment, health, old-age care, government affairs, justice, transportation, environmental protection, education and military, have become ‘intelligent’. ‘Being intelligent’ means that the traditional social relations of production will be replaced by intelligent social relations of production, and that traditional human legal relationship will also be transformed into intelligent legal relationship due to the deep implantation of artificial intelligence. Intelligent social relations of production or intelligent legal relations put forward a new requirement for legal personnel, that is, legal personnel should not only be proficient in law, but also master artificial intelligence technology. Only versatile talents who are proficient in both law and artificial intelligence can meet the needs of intelligent economy and intelligent society in the era of artificial intelligence. It can be seen that in the era of artificial intelligence, legal personnel have achieved a thorough transformation, from the original ‘professional legal personnel’ to ‘technical legal personnel’ or ‘legal technical personnel’. However, the training of these two kinds of personnel cannot be achieved by present legal education. Therefore, legal education must be reformed and innovated, and a new legal subject related to artificial intelligence should be established to meet the new demand of ‘technical legal personnel’ or ‘legal technical personnel’ in the era of artificial intelligence.

B. Artificial Intelligence Starts New Legal Education Pattern

The impact of artificial intelligence on education is so comprehensive and revolutionary that some people call it the ‘renaissance leading the future of education’.18 This revolutionary change manifests itself in the content, method, scientific research, environment and other aspects of legal education. In terms of content, computer programming has been introduced into law textbooks, and innovative courses such as robot law, legal information and science and electronic legal investigation have been introduced into classroom teaching. The development of legal game, legal programming teaching software and other Law Tech has become a hot topic for learners. In terms of methods, legal knowledge becomes legal practice. Legal system becomes scene simulation. And the traditional ‘standardized teaching’ for all becomes ‘one-to-one’ personalized teaching. In terms of scientific research, the legal artificial intelligence laboratory, the artificial intelligence law school, the artificial intelligence law institute, and the program of master of computing law have come into being. In terms of environment, ‘digital campus’ has been transformed into ‘smart campus’; ‘teacher-centered’ education pattern has been transformed into a ‘student-centered’ pattern, and daily education and permanent education have been customized. The above new mode of smart legal education objectively requires the support from the establishment of a new legal subject related to artificial intelligence. Without the new legal subject related to artificial intelligence, the new mode of smart legal education will become unpractical, because smart legal education cannot be separated from technicians with the best knowledge of law and legal personnel with the best proficiency of technology. It is worth mentioning that the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, in accordance with the relevant requirements of the Academic Level Office of the State Council, has established the sub-discipline of ‘legal education related to artificial intelligence’ that is not contained in the catalogue, but in terms of the degree authorization level of this sub-discipline, it is only applied to PhD’s.19 Therefore, it is still in urgent need to set up a new legal sub-discipline of artificial intelligence at the undergraduate level of law schools nationwide.

C. Artificial Intelligence Causes New Legal Problems of Social Ethics

With the further development and extensive application of artificial intelligence, legal problems of social ethics related to artificial intelligence will be presented in a more complicated form. From the perspective of ethics, artificial intelligence brings great challenges to human emotions, love, marriage, childbirth and family and seriously impacts the basic ethical and moral principles of human beings, and it poses a huge risk to world peace and security and is a serious threat to the basic principles of international relations and the common interests of mankind. From the perspective of law, artificial intelligence not only brings about the fundamental transformation of legal supply pattern, legal cognitive model, legal regulations forms and legal value orientation, but also causes a series of new legal issues, such as the legal subject qualification of robot personality, the copyright ownership of artificial intelligence works, the tort liability of intelligent driving, the personality right protection of citizens’ privacy, the labor security of robot employment discrimination, the insurance compensation of robot work-related injury, and so on. From this, we can see that artificial intelligence not only brings profound changes to the social moral basis and legal conditions of the rule of law, but also may evolve into the ultimate form of law. New legal problems related to social ethics caused by artificial intelligence are strange, difficult and hard to deal with for the traditional legal personnel, because artificial intelligence contains technique factors that traditional legal personnel does not know about and is not good at, and it transcends the disciplinary scope and cognitive level of the traditional legal personnel. Therefore, if these problems are going to be solved well, traditional legal personnel need to learn lessons of artificial intelligence. Therefore, it is necessary to establish new legal subjects related to artificial intelligence in the present legal education. Only by establishing legal education related to artificial intelligence can legal problems of social ethics concerning artificial intelligence be researched and solved.

D. Artificial Intelligence Brings New Changes to Legal Employment

The profound integration of artificial intelligence and law has given birth to artificial intelligence legal personnel, for example the world famous first artificial intelligence lawyer, Ross. The arrival of artificial intelligence legal personnel mingles the good and the bad for human legal personnel. On one hand, the ‘good’ is that it has freed the human from a great deal of repetitive, simple and tedious works. For example, artificial intelligence teachers can test classroom learning, mark and correct papers and assignments, engage in personalized classroom teaching; Artificial intelligence lawyers can analyze cases, search for information, review documents, draft documents and find solutions to legal problems from vast databases; Artificial intelligence judges can identify the law applicable to a case, predict the verdict of a case, and make legal documents. On the other hand, the ‘bad’ is that the dominance of legal practices of artificial intelligence legal personnel has caused ‘structural collapse’ to human legal personnel, which makes humans face the huge risk of position changes and unemployment. However, as a matter of fact, jobs like teachers, lawyers, judges, etc. cannot be completely replaced by artificial intelligence legal personnel, but we have to make it clear that human legal personnel that cannot do what artificial intelligence legal personnel cannot do, or that are not compatible with artificial intelligence legal personnel will be replaced by their counterpart. This means that ‘legal occupations related to artificial intelligence’ have become a new job and position in the profession of law. Therefore, for human legal personnel, artificial intelligence is not just a challenge but more an opportunity. Legal education must seize this opportunity, focus on the new demand of the legal occupation market by which human legal personnel making a living, and set up a new legal subject related artificial intelligence so that it can train high-end legal talents who can do what smart legal personnel cannot do or can coexist harmoniously with them. 

V. LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE AREA OF PUBLIC HEALTH

The repeated major public health emergencies like SARS and COVID-19 deserves profound reflection. ‘Healthy China’ has been upgraded to a national strategy. The Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Major Issues concerning Upholding and Improving the System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Advancing the Modernization of China’s System and Capacity for Governance deliberated and adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the CPC confirms that public health and the prevention and control of major infectious diseases are the contents of state governance. In 2020, the Commission for Law-based Governance issued the Opinion of the Commission for Law-based Governance about COVID-19 Prevention and Control and Protecting People’s Health, emphasizing that we should prevent and control the epidemic by the law and ensure people’s health. An Outline for the ‘Healthy China 2030’ Initiative requires that national education and subject teaching should be integrated into health education. The Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases and the Law on the Promotion of Basic Medical Care and Health provide for the establishment of a health education system and the incorporation of health knowledge and prevention of infectious diseases into school education. This means that public health is not simply a health issue. It also involves national governance, legal innovation, educational reform and other issues. Viruses coexist with human beings, so disease prevention should be incorporated with education. Therefore, strengthening the weaknesses of the subject related to public health of legal education is the basis and premise for overcoming the epidemic. Legal education in the area of public health is a new legal subject that integrates medicine and law. It takes public health and its related legal system and practice as the research object and aims at training high-level, application-oriented and versatile legal talents of public health who are committed to the construction of a healthy China. The reasons for establishing the new subject of legal education related to public health are as follows.

A. Pubic Hygiene Conceives New Legal Concepts of Public Health

The concept of law-based governance is the cornerstone and soul of the national law-based governance and is the concentrated embodiment of the spirit and value of law. Since the reform and opening-up, new legal concepts of socialist ‘public health’ with Chinese characteristics has been gradually formed in the process that the CPC leads the people in combating COVID-19 in accordance with the law and in the great struggle against public health and epidemic prevention. ‘Food and clothing’ are no longer the main challenge for the Chinese people, and ‘health’ has become the theme of their lives. At the critical juncture of COVID-19 prevention and control, President Xi Jinping pointed out that people’s lives, health and safety should always be given top priority. People’s health is a national priority development strategy and the core of building a healthy China. Individual health and the health of the whole people constitute the unity of the people’s health, but the health of the whole people is the fundamental goal of strategy of healthy China. Health for all is public health, and its realization depends on the legal recognition and implementation of the ‘right to public health’. According to the Law on the Promotion of Basic Medical Care and Health, ‘citizens shall respect the right and interests of others to health and shall not harm the health of others and the public interests of society’. This is the legal recognition of the right to public health. The right to public health is a new type of collective human right, which is characterized by the public nature of the right subject, the idea of preventive medicine, the breadth of coverage, and the sociality of the implementation. Respecting and protecting the right to public health is an inevitable requirement of the legal concept of public health, and a concentrated embodiment of the modern spirit and value of the law-based governance. The practice of new ideas requires the establishment of new subjects, and the establishment of new subjects lies in the practice of new concepts. Therefore, in order to cultivate and promote the new legal concept of public health, we must first set up and develop a new legal subject of public health.

B. Public Health Calls for the New System of Legal Guarantee for Health

If ‘prevention’ is the most economical and effective health strategy, ‘law-based governance’ is the most solid and powerful guarantee for health. The result of industrialization must be urbanization, and in the process of urbanization, if the government management contains certain problems, it will cause a series of urban diseases, of which major public health emergency of COVID-19 is the important manifestation. This incident shows that the management mode of industrial society can no longer follow that of agricultural society, and that individuals, social organizations, local governments and other social subjects are no longer able to effectively solve public health problems alone, so the state must assume its responsibilities and forcibly intervene in public health management through public health legislation. The earliest public health law in the world is the Public Health Act of 1848 in the UK. The state intervention model created by this act is of great significance to the construction of a new legal system of public health protection in China. We should abolish the concept that health and survival are purely private matters and strengthen the responsibility of the guarantor of national public health; rationalize the allocation of central and local power and strengthen the central government’s power to intervene in public health undertakings. Public health reform should not be confined to densely populated urban areas, but should cover large rural areas. And public health standards and measures should replace the norms of authorized rights with the norms of compulsory obligations to strengthen the enforcement of law.20 The construction of the system of legal guarantee for public health should not be regarded as the country’s passive remedial measures to deal with public health events, but should be the country’s forward-looking and exploratory pioneer of public health undertakings. The new system needs the support of intelligence and talents provided by the new subject. Therefore, the establishment of a new legal subject related to public health is the inevitable logic of building a new system of legal protection for public health.

C. Public Hygiene Expands the New Subject for Public Health Education

Although it seems that wild animals have nothing to do with public health, present scientific researches show that the origin of the COVID-19 virus is the wild bat and point out that pangolins are potential intermediate hosts. As scientists said, the COVID-19 virus separated from an infected person can also be separated from a stall selling wild animals illegally at the South China seafood market in Wuhan. The Decision of February 24, 2020, that Ban Eating Wild Animals issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress should be an indirect proof of the close relationship between the COVID-19 virus and wild animals. Although the real origin of the COVID-19 virus and its route of transmission has yet to be drawn by scientific studies, there is no doubt that the building of the system of protecting wildlife and the traditional habit of eating wild animals are the two new subjects that legal education related to public health must confront with. The Decision above issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress aims to prevent and control the potential hazard of public health from the origin. This means that the wildlife legal system has a new value orientation that it is not only about protecting wild animals, but also about maintaining human health. Chinese people believe in a folk philosophy that the cure and the food come from the same source, and the tradition that ‘you are what you eat’ has been passed on for a long time. For example, Hubian (penis of tigers) is good for erectile dysfunction; snake gall is good for eyes; pangolins help to remove the damp evil in your body; and monkey brain can make you cleverer.21 Such tradition increases the chance that humans will be infected by a virus from wildlife. Therefore, there are two ways to prevent the risk of public health and to control the outbreak of anthropozoonosis. One is to improve the legal system of wildlife protection. The other is to change the traditional habits of eating wildlife. However, the discipline education of legal education related to public health must be established whether it is to improve the system or to reform the tradition. Therefore, the establishment of a new subject of legal education related to public health is the inevitable result of the new task of legal education in the area of public health.

D. Public Hygiene Needs New Legal Talents for Public Health Urgently

The prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic is a hard test for national public health management. This test has exposed that there is a severe shortage in the government of all levels of legal talents for public health management who can analyze and evaluate public health risks with the concepts of law-based governance and that there are few professional legal talents for public health management can scientifically and accurately investigate and control the epidemic situation of the grass-root community and rural areas through law-based governance. The painful lesson tells us that legal personnel for epidemic prevention and control and public health management are national strategic talents. To build a team of such strategic talents, we must improve the training system of legal education related to public health in medical law schools. However, at present, there is no precedent of legal subjects related to public health in any university in China. Some universities only set up the subject of health law and recruit postgraduates and PhD candidates (such as Central South University). Some universities only set the research direction of health law under the subject of administrative law and recruit postgraduate students (such as China University of Political Science and Law). Some universities only offer legal courses related to public health under the law major to train law undergraduates (such as Capital Medical University). We must make it clear that health legal education is not the same as public health legal education. The above universities have submerged the public health legal education in health legal education or general legal education, which makes the legal education related to public health lose its strategic position. How can people train under such a system be able to respond to major public health emergencies according to law? How can they be a qualified ‘sentinel’ on the front line of the law-based governance in public health? Therefore, it is of great urgency to build a new team of legal talents for public health prevention and public health management and establish a new legal subject for public health.

VI. CONCLUSION

The service orientation and subject innovation of legal education in the new era must be guided by the Marxist theory of law with Chinese characteristics. Marxist jurisprudence holds that the production and development of law are determined by economic activities and serve or react to economic activities. ‘The science of law originates from the law, and law originates from application’.22 Therefore, the law and legal education, with the core of training legal talents with independent construction ability of legal mind and independent creation ability of legal subjects, must possess the characteristics of application and practice. To realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is a sacred mission entrusted by history to all people of the Chinese nation. And what is the function of legal education in this process? Comrade Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of the reform and opening up policy, pointed out that education should be oriented towards modernization. The core of ‘five service orientations’ of the development of higher education put forward by President Xi Jinping is that education should serve the socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics. President Xi Jinping also pointed out that one of the current major problems of China’s legal discipline system is that it cannot solve the practical problems in China.23 Two generations of the top leaders of the party and state have clearly outlined the direction of service orientation and discipline innovation of China’s legal education in the new era, that is, to solve China’s problems based on China’s practice. Without this foundation, no matter how good the service orientation and discipline design are, it probably cannot be called a ‘science’. And the so-called ‘legal talents’ trained in the system will be eliminated by the society for the reason that they cannot solve particular problems. Therefore, legal education in the new era must be innovated and advanced under the guidance of the theory of Marxist jurisprudence, establish the new sub-discipline like legal education in the area of rural revitalization, the Belt and Road, artificial intelligence and public health, and faithfully serve the great practice of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics.

The service orientation and subject innovation of legal education in the new era must be based on the modernization of legal education governance in China. Education is the foundation of the task for centuries to come; law-based governance is the foundation of national governance. Therefore, the modernization of legal education governance is not only an important component of the modernization of national governance but also the basis, forerunner, and guarantee of promoting the modernization of national governance. However, what is the ‘modernization’ of legal education governance? It is not ‘westernization’ but ‘sinicization’. A mistake in China’s legal education is to imitate blindly and copy from the West.24 It is well known that Roman law was the first to divide the law into public law and private law, human law and property law and procedural law, etc. After the victory of the French bourgeois revolution, five codes were successively promulgated, including the civil law, commercial law, criminal law, civil and criminal procedure law. Subsequently, the classification model of law based on the nature of law became popular all over the world and had a profound impact on the classification of legal subjects in countries around the world, especially in continental law countries. The classification of Chinese legal subjects is also impacted. In the new era, China’s legal education should never go back to the old way of western law and forget and destroy itself. Rather, it should inherit the special ideal and spirit of traditional Chinese education and shoulder the responsibility of ‘governing the country and making the world peaceful’ by establishing a new China, carrying forward the new Chinese culture, and creating a new Chinese history. Therefore, to promote the modernization of China’s legal education governance, we must adhere to the service orientation that connects the destiny of the country and the subject innovation that connects social practice. It is a significant step in promoting the modernization of Chinese legal education management that we establish legal education in areas of rural revitalization, the Belt and Road, artificial intelligence, and public health. And it is also our experience, strength, confidence in legal education with Chinese characteristics.

The service orientation and subject innovation of legal education in the new era must aim at complying with the trend of the times and solving China’s problems. The historical position of the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics determines the service orientation and position of legal education in China, which means that based on the reality of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics, we will solve problems in this endeavor, train builders and successors of the law-based governance in building a modern socialist country with Chinese characteristics, and provide intellectual and legal support for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. China’s legal education in the new era should highlight three characteristics: first, it should pay more attention to social practice; second, it should attach more importance to its quality improvement; third, it should focus more on the integration of disciplines. These three characteristics reflect the historical direction and basic trend of the development of the world higher education. It is the inevitable logic of the innovation and development of legal education with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and the prerequisite for the construction of the legal academic system, legal discourse system, and legal textbook system with Chinese characteristics. So, what on earth is the legal subject system with Chinese characteristics? There is no doubt that the legal subject system with Chinese characteristics is a system that pays attention to China’s social practice and national development strategy, that concentrates on quality improvement and conjunctive development, and that attaches importance to interdisciplinary integration and collaborative innovation. At present, legal education in areas of rural revitalization, the Belt and Road, artificial intelligence, and public health are the four new sub-disciplines of legal education that are most compatible with the practice of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics and are of the most Chinese characteristics and the most urgent need for priority development.