Mikael Marlies Karlsson, Director of The Kári á Rógvi Institure for Law and Legal Research

I have held the position of Afilliated Professor of Law at the University of the Faroe Islands since 2015. Before that, I taught at the University of Iceland from 1973 until my retirement in 2013, beginning as a Vistiing Lecturer in Philosophy and ending as Professor of Philosophy (now Emeritus), except for being seconded to the University of Akureyri from 2000 until 2004 to serve as founding Dean of the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. In the period 1967-1973, I taught philosophy as a National Teaching Fellow and as a junior faculty member at Simmons College and at Northeastern Univerity in the Boston area of the United States.

My orginal duties at the University if the Faroe Isands were to advise and assist my Faroese colleagues in the development of a full Faroese education in law. This resulted in the establishment of a three-year bachelor's degree program (B.L.) in law in 2019 and a revised two-year master's degree program (Emb.L.) in 2022. In 2023, following a very positive evaluation of these degree programs by a committee from the University of Copenhangen, the Danish authorities recognized the five-year degree sequence as entitling degree holders to the same rights and privileges as graduates of a five-year legal education from a Danish university.

The task of educational development continues, but the focus of my duties has shifted toward the enhancement of legal research among the law-teaching staff, for which purpose the Kári á Rógvi Institute for Law and Legal Research was created in 2020, partly at my instigation, and I have acted as its Director since then. Under legal research, we include the development of teaching materials in Faroese and the revitalization of the Faroese Law Review, which is in practice the only venue in which legal research—meaning scholarly articles on legal topics—can be published in Faroese. Another nascent project of the Institute is the compilation of a Faroese legal dictionary supporting the development of Faroese as a legal language.

The University of the Faroe Islands was invited to host the 16th Polar Law Symposium—an honor for the University and recognition for our now fully functioning Faroese legal education—held in October 2023 and organized through the Kári á Rógvi Institute for Law and Legal Research. A selection of papers from the Symposium are to be published in the 2023 Polar Law Yearbook, for which Bárður Larsen and I have been appointed by the Co-Editors-in-Chief as Special Co-Editors (that is, managing editors of the volume). All submitted papers are editorially vetted and subjected to anonymous peer review. This work is now in active progress and the Yearbook should appear later in 2024 (pubished by Brill).

I also participate in teaching certain courses within the law curriculum for which I have special expertise, although the extent of this is limited by the fact that I am not often in residence in Tórshavn and am wary of distance teaching. The courses in which I have regularly participated in a teaching capacity are our Legal Writing Laboratory, Case Law, Comparative Law, and Constitutional Theory. My colleagues and I find co-teaching to be an especially effective methodology, conducive to student interaction in the classes.

Research interests in law

• Comparative Law, especIally concerning the conceptual understanding of adjudication
• Legal theory
• Constitutional theory
• The concept of legality

Teaching

I have participated in teaching courses in law at the University of the Faroe Islands in every academic year since 2014-2015.

In the fall semester 2023, I taught:

• Legal Understanding (B.L.) (With Kristian Joensen and Bárður Larsen)
• Comparative Law (B.L.) (With Kristian Joensen and Bárður Larsen)