Course Information
Curriculum
The program is designed to prepare students for practicing law in the globalized atmosphere of the 21st century by broadening their understanding of International and Civil Law. Four 3-credit courses will be offered; each student must enroll in two of the four courses offered.*
All courses comply with the standards of the American Bar Association, and the program has been approved by the Accreditation Committee of the ABA Section on Legal Education.
Although generally credits earned in an A.B.A. accredited program are completely transferable to your home school, it is unlikely that participation in a study abroad program for only one summer may accelerate graduation. Students are encouraged to check with their home schools and review the A.B.A. Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Rule 304 and Interpretation 304-4, if they desire to accelerate graduation.
*Students must choose one 9:00 a.m. course and one 11:00 a.m. course. The program will be limited to anywhere between 50 and 70 students, depending on hotel availability. Required casebooks and text materials must be purchased by the students at their expense prior to departure for Spain.
*Due to the accelerated pace of the curriculum program, most time outside of class from Monday to Thursday should be devoted to study. We will hold no class meetings on Fridays. Weekends are off for student travel at their own expense. However, every Thursday, all students will participate in a cultural activity organized and covered by our Program. And, additionally, every Friday or Saturday, the Program will also host an additional and optional excursion, paid for by the Program, for those students who prefer to remain on site during the weekends, expl0ring locally and better preparing for Monday classes. These may include a visit to the Spanish Supreme Court, attending a special entertainment event or museum, touring Spain’s oldest law school in Barcelona, and strolling through and having dinner in Segovia, known for its two-thousand-year-old Roman Aqueduct.
*Note that, in addition to attending your two courses, you and all other students will also jointly attend a 2-hour bonus lecture after lunch offered by an invited guest speaker (as scheduled on the program to be circulated in advance: sometimes only one day per week, other times two days per week) on a variety of topics in comparative and international law. These guests will be law professors, experts, and judges from Spain, other European countries, and the United States. Attendance to these bonus lectures is strongly recommended and may, at the discretion of the Program’s Director, also be required.
There is a maximum of 30 students per class. We understand that some courses may be more popular than others, but we cannot have an imbalanced program. This means that, once a course in a given block (9am-11am, 11am-1pm) reaches 30 students, the rest will go to the alternative one. You will be informed of what your actual courses will be as soon as we reach our overall student cap of 50 for the Summer and can work out the distribution going by who registered for what first.
Courses – Summer 2025
Monday – Thursday – 9:00am – 10:50pm
Professor Lenora Ledwon
The goals of this course are for you to gain a deeper understanding of the social and cultural components of your chosen profession by exploring the rich interdisciplinary connections between comparative law, literature and popular culture. You will have the opportunity to analyze a diverse selection of cultural texts from common law and civil law systems, utilizing analytical methods from the jurisprudence of comparative law and literature. Texts may include judicial opinions, statutes, graphic novels, plays, poetry, film, and television.
- Syllabus – Imagining Justice: Comparative Law, Literature, and Pop Culture [TBD]
Monday – Thursday – 9:00am – 10:50am
Professor Robin Peguero
This case-study-intensive, discussion-oriented course will examine the procedural posture of the criminal justice system in America versus the rest of the world, including Spain, France, England, Italy, and Germany. Our central focus will be analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the adversarial and inquisitorial models, weighing the American style of the former–including strong rights for the accused, partisan competitiveness, and lengthy penalization–against the truth-seeking, restorative-justice function of the latter. Major areas of analysis include the role of police and the investigatory phase; the right to remain silent (or lack thereof); burdens of proof and evidentiary hurdles; and differences in sentencing and predominant theories of punishment.
- Syllabus – Comparative Criminal Law and Procedure [TBD]
Monday – Thursday – 11:00am – 12:50pm
Professor Christian Lee Gonzalez-Rivera
LAW 866
This course offers an introduction to the rules, doctrines, and principles that make up the field of Conflict of Laws, alternatively called “Private International Law.” The subject consists of mostly American and some comparative and international principles determining what law governs when multiple bodies of law and sovereigns are implicated in the same dispute (a business contract, divorce, or tragic international flight accident implicating more than one jurisdiction, for example). Conflict rules also determine what forum has jurisdiction over whom or what, as well as whether and how to enforce judgments issued by sister or foreign courts. The course will expose you to the three core concepts of Conflict of Laws, regardless of jurisdiction: those pertaining to choice of law, jurisdiction, and the enforcement of judgments.
- Syllabus – Conflict of Laws [TBD]
Monday – Thursday – 11:00am – 12:50pm
Professor Vincent Ploton
LAW 893
This course introduces you to the nature and role of international organizations: institutions composed of three or more states, held together by intergovernmental agreement, and governed by international law, including some non-governmental organizations. This course focuses on organizations like the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the monitoring bodies of several critical human rights treaties, including the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UN Convention against Torture, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, and the Human Rights Council. The course will explore such issues as UN special procedures, universal periodic review of compliance with these treaties, and commissions of inquiry and other investigative bodies.
- Syllabus – International Organizations [TBD]
