Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Traveling and teaching in WCL's summer comparative law in Europe program (advertisement!)

I haven’t been posting because I have been traveling, without good web access. My law school has a very nice comparative law summer program (this is an advertisement to all you law students) that starts in London, moves to Paris, and finishes up in Geneva. The first week, in London, is a class – taught this summer by yours truly – on elementary international business transactions. Second week, in Paris, is on European Union law, taught by the organizer of the program, Professor Emilio Viano – he is both an outstanding teacher as well as fabulously knowledgeable on the European capitals where the program takes place. The third week, also in Paris, is on international human rights law, taught this year by our school’s dean and famed human rights scholar, Claudio Grossman. Then the last week, in Geneva, is on international environmental law, taught this year by WCL’s own David Hunter, who is a very well know litigator in this area before joining our faculty (there’s someone else teaching that as well, but I’m not sure who).

The program also takes a day trip from Paris to Brussels to visit EU institutions – in fact, the whole program has many, many excursions to official institutions, with lectures and presentations by various officials, arranged by Professor Viano through his many years of contacts in the program. It is a terrific program, for six units of law school credit, and my impression is that it is pretty cost-effective as education abroad goes. Most of the students are between the first and second year, and I, at least, teach on that assumption – I treat the IBT section as an international contracts class, and don’t assume much knowledge of business associations law. This year the program has about 50 students, mostly from WCL, but maybe 20% from other schools. Check it out at www.wcl.american.edu – it somewhere there on the school’s website.

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