By Dean Jay Conison
Over the summer, five students participated in externships overseas. Annica Downing served with Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia, in Cambodia; Elizabeth Plank with Potter, Shelly & Co. in Huntingdon, UK; Katie Stephen with Irish Refugee Service, in Cork, Ireland; and Elizabeth Groselle as a judicial clerk in Melbourne, Australia. We expect more students to serve in these, and other, placements, in summers to come.
We now have two summer abroad programs. Thirteen students participated in the program in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile, and ten students participated in the program in Cambridge and London, UK. A new component of the UK summer program was a trip to The Hague to observe hearings in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. We are exploring a third summer abroad program, in Melbourne, Australia, that might commence as early as the summer of 2010.
We now have exchange agreements with three law schools in South America (Universidad de los Andes, in Santiago, and Universidad Austral and Universidad Catolica Argentina, in Buenos Aires), through which our students can enroll in law courses for a semester at one of those schools and receive credit toward graduation. The agreements similarly provide that students at those universities can attend law school here for a semester and receive credit toward graduation at their home schools. The exchange agreements also provide that faculty at the South American schools will teach and lecture here, and that our faculty will teach and lecture at the schools in South America. One example of this faculty exchange is the course on Comparative Constitutional Law taught the week of August 18 by Professor Julio Rivera. Fifteen students enrolled in Professor Rivera’s course.
Professor Andrews has established an Advocates and Scholars in Residence Program that brings distinguished visitors to campus, mainly from other countries. Visiting Advocates and Scholars this year include Professor Owen McIntyre, of the Faculty of Law, University College, Cork, Ireland; T. Negbalee Warner, the head of the Liberia Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative; Steve Kahanovitz, of the Legal Resource Centre in Cape Town, South Africa; and Justice Marcia Neave of the Court of Appeal in Melbourne, Australia. Our first visitor, Professor McIntyre, will be here from September 10 to October 10.
In July, I was in Tbilisi, Georgia, working with USAID and the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative on a project to develop a more western (mainly European) system of legal education in Georgia and create a system of accreditation for law schools. In early September, Professor Andrews and Professor Brown will be in South Africa at the request of the Minister of Justice to hold workshops for women as part of a project to help further the development of the legal system. In prior years, Professor Brietzke has worked on projects to help develop the legal system in Indonesia and Jordan.
This summer, four of our professorsProfessors Andrews, Brown, Telman, and Huss—attended the annual Law and Society Meeting in Montreal, presenting papers, chairing sessions, and serving on panels. This fall, Professor Straubel will participate in the 14th International Congress on Sports Law, sponsored by the International Association of Sports Law, in Athens. Many other international lectures and conferences by our faculty are scheduled for 2008-09.
We currently have 21 international students enrolled in our LL.M. program, which provides an intensive education in U.S. law for foreign-trained lawyers. We have also just received acquiescence from the ABA for our new S.J.D. program. This is a dissertation-based doctoral program for foreign-trained lawyers who have completed an LL.M. at Valparaiso or another United States law school. And this fall, in our new 1L class, we have students from Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Argentina, Bosnia, Russia, Jamaica, Scotland, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Taiwan, and Poland.
What all this and more reflect, is a cultural change and a change in the way we see ourselves as a law school. We are more than simply an Indiana law school (or simply a Great Lakes law school). We are a law school that prepares students for a globally connected practice, a law school that serves students worldwide; and a law school whose faculty have an impact on law, legal education, and political and economic development worldwide. And this is the way it should be, because those schools that fail to look internationally will be left behind.
If you are interested in international opportunities for study of for externships, I hope you will talk to Dean Adams or Professor Andrews. If you are interested in making global connections, I hope you will take advantage of opportunities presented by our many international visitors. And I hope you will contribute to the continued development of our international programs by sharing with me, or with others, any ideas of connections you may have for further growth and progress.
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