Abstract:

Since the uprising of the first ancient civilizations crime, as an immediate one way act of human communication, has occured in a social context understandable from reason´s experience. From then on, Criminal Law has been taught and learned by european continental jurists along centuries in accordance with a deductive and theoretical method in which the analysis and judgement of the punishable reality has become a living self-postgraduate course.

Aware of such academic handicap, until now considered by most a virtue, the teaching staff of the Department of Criminal Law of the University of Navarra has conceived a new method in which the students of the four-monthly subject “Criminal Law. The Crimes in Particular” are involved in the resolution of three nuclear cases with regard to the main legally-protected rights studied in the course, namely: (1) crimes commited agains the person; (2) crimes commited against the property and the socioeconomical order; and (3) crimes commited by civil servants. In each of these cases the students are organized in small working groups in order to argue and to pass judgement of the crimes appearing in the facts given, as wel as of its authors and their guilt.

As a result of such intellectual process of communal discuss in law, students are invited to think in law from the very first instant of their learning process. In addition, they handle legal texts and judicial pronouncements that will show them writing in law and will introduce them to what they will find in their job as lawyers once they obtain their degree. The immediate consecuence is that their aim will be encouraged by their day to day progress, constantly supervised and assessed by a Proffesor that becomes the guiding edge of a training path that ends with the reach of legal practice.

The appointed method is expressed in a teaching tool built up and compiled by our professors, named 'Crimina 3.0', which is presented in two ways: (a) on one hand, it is printed and given to the students as a text containing the three cases mentioned before, the legal texts to apply to them (Spanish Penal Code), a glossary of terms in use and a wide list of cards describing each of the crimes studied in the subject, as well as synopsis explaining and summarizing these crimes; (b) on the other hand, the same materials and some self-evaluation exercises are also offered in the web site (http://www.unav.es/penal/crimina/) under the OCW mode.

The main aim underlying this new teaching method, which is being of application in our subject “Criminal Law. The Crimes in Particular” in the present year, is to familiarize the student with a growing global conception of learning and teaching human sciences, close to the practical principles inspiring the ultimate educational changes taken place at the European Comunity level.

Keywords:

criminal law, case method, teaching tool, educational changes, legal practice.