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International Programs and Study Abroad Opportunities
The Center for International and Comparative Law supports the internationally related endeavors of students and faculty and serves as a central information clearinghouse for international activities at the Law School and around the University.
Established in 1998 by Professor James C. Hathaway and currently directed by Professor Pene Mathew, the Law School's Program in Refugee and Asylum Law offers the world's most comprehensive curriculum in this field. It provides for in-depth study of international and comparative refugee law, and for direct engagement with the process of international refugee law reform. The curriculum includes classes, a series of advanced seminars, an advanced refugee advocacy workshop, and a biennial Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law, which brings leading scholars to the Law School to collaborate with student researchers. Top students in the program are awarded a Michigan Fellowship in Refugee and Asylum Law, providing funding for a summer internship at one of the program's partner institutions (Amnesty International, London; Human Rights Watch, New York; Jesuit Refugee Service, Lilongwe, Malawi; and the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals Authority, Auckland).
The Program for Cambodian Law and Development provides an academic forum for the interdisciplinary study of Cambodian legal institutions and the role of law in the development process. The program's Pro Bono Cambodia Project provides supervised research assistance to groups working in Cambodia. Projects have included preparing a comprehensive election law report and drafting national legislation. The program offers summer internships in Cambodia, and in the last few years, students have worked with the UN Human Rights Center in Phnom Penh, Legal Aid of Cambodia, Cambodian Defenders Project, Cambodian Association for Human Rights, Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, and the Ministry of Commerce.
The Law School offers an extensive curriculum in international and foreign law. The traditional boundaries between public and private international law have blurred, as students will learn in the required course in Transnational Law. The Law School's many course offerings in human rights, humanitarian law, United Nations topics, international trade law, multinational enterprise, investment law and finance, globalization and labor rights, to name a few, reflect this duality.
The Law School's curriculum complements the many opportunities in the international arena that await our law students in government, NGOs, and law firms. The Career Services Office and the Office of Public Service support students seeking summer and permanent opportunities in this field. The Law School offers a number of paid internships at organizations such as the AIRE Centre and other human rights organizations in different parts of the world, including a paid clerkship at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Faculty exchanges between the Law School and the University of Tokyo enrich the Japanese Legal Studies opportunities which include a Law and Japanese Studies dual degree and a semester abroad opportunity at Waseda University Law School in Tokyo. Additionally, the Law Library is home to an extensive Japanese law collection. In spring 2001, Program Director and Professor Mark D. West organized and hosted "Change, Continuity, and Context: Japanese Law in the 21st Century," the largest Japanese law conference ever held in the United States. In February 2002, the Law School and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nichibenren) conducted a joint symposium in Tokyo on legal education. This symposium, held in anticipation of the implementation of a U.S.-style law school system in Japan in 2004, was the first event of its kind ever held by a U.S. law school in Japan.
Professor Nico Howson is an expert in Chinese Law, and his course offerings in the field complement the research opportunities afforded by the Law Library's Chinese Law collection. The University's Center for Chinese Studies provides law students the opportunity for interdisciplinary studies. Law students have studied for a semester at the University of Hong Kong Law School. Each spring several members of the Michigan Law School faculty teach a course at Tsinghua Law School in Beijing which is also joined by students from Peking University Law School. In spring 2005, Professor Reuven Avi-Yonah organized a joint symposium with Tsinghua Law School on "New Developments in Sino-American Commercial Law", at which seven University of Michigan Law School professors were featured.
Web sites with more information about the Japanese Legal Studies Program and the Chinese Legal Studies Program are available.
The founding director of the European Union Center at the University of Michigan, established in 2001, was Law School Professor Daniel Halberstam. A joint undertaking by the European Commission and the University of Michigan, the center marks the University's continued leadership in European integration studies. The Law School created the first European integration studies program in the United States in 1955. The interdisciplinary center focuses on the EU as a multilayered polity; the EU as a partner in global governance; and the past and future of European identities.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Milton and Miriam Handler Foundation, the Law School at the University of Michigan, in conjunction with the European Union Center (International Institute) and the Horace A. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, is offering research grants to enable students to research and write an independent paper on issues of European Integration. In addition, the Law School at the University of Michigan is pleased to announce the creation of the Jean Monnet Research Fellowship to enable an academic in law to pursue research and writing on legal aspects of European integration toward the production of a paper of publishable quality that makes an original contribution to the literature in the field.
Michigan is one of a select group of U.S. law schools whose students are eligible to apply for clerkships at the European Court of Justice through the Dean Acheson Legal Stage Program.
More information is available on the European Legal Studies Program Web site.
The semester study abroad opportunity is offered with the awareness that, increasingly, legal endeavors transcend national boundaries and that an international and comparative perspective is an important part of professional preparation for the 21st century. The goal of an opportunity for semester legal studies abroad is to permit students to receive the educational benefit of engaging in legal studies in another country at an outstanding educational institution where the Michigan student will be pursuing a foreign curriculum in classes with predominantly non-U.S. students. Semester study abroad agreements currently exist with the following Universities.
Students may also create their own semester study abroad arrangements, approved by the Law School, and in recent years have done so with the University of Copenhagen, ITAM in Mexico City, the University of Hong Kong, and ICADE, Comillas, in Madrid, Spain.
Michigan's externship program is designed to provide individual students with advanced training and research opportunities in areas of particular interest to them that go beyond what is traditionally offered in a classroom setting. Our students have pursued externships for one semester of credit with such agencies as the U.S. Department of State, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S. Department of Justice, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Office of the General Counsel for the Republican Congressional Committee, and at public interest organizations in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and London.
The University of Michigan Law School offers semester-long externship opportunities during the winter term of each year with leading intergovernmental and non-governmental (NGO) institutions. Students with an interest in international affairs can explore how international legal regimes intersect with such diverse fields as trade, human rights, intellectual property, labor, environment, telecommunications and health.
Opportunities are available at the:
Developed by Professor Steven Ratner and others at the Law School, these externships further expand and enrich the School's extensive curriculum in international and foreign law, and make it possible for Michigan Law students to complement their coursework by engaging in legal work with agencies grappling with the most challenging international problems and legal issues of the day. Building on courses taken at the Law School, students are immersed in the work of these international institutions and closely supervised by their legal staffs. The externships are supplemented by a contemporaneous seminar in Geneva, attendance at conferences of interest, and visits to various international organizations to meet the legal adviser or senior policy personnel.
Further information is available from Virginia Gordan, Assistant Dean for International Affairs.
Students participating in the Law School's South Africa Externship Program have been placed in both government agencies and non-governmental organizations, including the Legal Resource Centers in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, in law clinics headquartered at various law schools in South Africa, and in human rights organizations.
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