PART II
LEGAL EDUCATION THROUGH MINORITY LANGUAGES CHAPTER SIX
BASQUE-MEDIUM LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY
Xabier Arzoz
A. Introduction
In an area of 20,742 km2 and with a population of approximately three million, the Basque-speaking territories of Spain and France possess a high density of law schools. Legal education is off ered in the Basque- speaking territories through the medium of three languages: Spanish, French and Basque. However, most of the law schools follow single- medium education. French is the medium of instruction at the multi- disciplinary Faculty of Bayonne (France) which teaches law and forms part of the Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, and Spanish is the medium of instruction at the law schools of the two Universities of Navarre (the Public University of Navarre and the private, Opus Dei- owned University of Navarre) and at the Spanish Distance Univer- sity (UNED), which has premises in Portugalete and Bergara. Legal education is only bilingual (Spanish-Basque) at the law schools of the public University of the Basque Country and of the private, Jesuit- owned University of Deusto. Th ere is a third private University, Mondragon University, that is highly committed to Basque-medium education but it does not include a law school. It is not casual that both the University of the Basque Country and the University of Deusto have the only bilingual law schools. Th ey are located in the Basque autonomous community, which, on the one hand, with 2.1 million inhabitants, is the most populated Basque terri- tory and, on the other hand, constitutes a region (or ‘autonomous community’ in the terms of Spanish constitutional law) that has used the devolution of power from 1978 onwards to advance the legal status and the social use of the Basque language. In contrast, in Navarre leg- islation explicitly only recognises Spanish and Basque as the languages of instruction with regard to teacher training; although it does not exclude the use of Basque as a language of instruction in other areas, there is a lack of clear commitment on the part of regional autonomous