ACHIEVING INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION: NYU’S GLOBAL LAW SCHOOL PROGRAM
Norman
Dorsen, New York University, United States
Rather than write on the subject of one of the conference’s plenary sessions, I shall discuss the origins of NYU’s extensive Global Law School Program (GLSP) and how it relates to Plenary Sessions II-VII, that is, to all of the issues to be discussed after the descriptive reports are received in Plenary I.
The GLSP was conceived in 1993, planned and publicly announced in 1994, and implemented in the fall of 1995. The Program was ambitious, with the stated objective of transforming U.S. legal education. The closest analogy is the vast movement, begun toward the end of the 19th century, when a regime of state and local law in the U.S. began to feel, ever more swiftly in ensuing decades, the impact of federal law, leading eventually to a basic alteration of the American legal system. What NYU has in mind is more indeterminate, complex and difficult because, at least potentially, the law from all parts of the world is relevant to our Program and because there is no worldwide center of legislative power equivalent to the U.S. Congress or of judicial power such as the U.S. Supreme Court that can oversee and unify global legal developments.
The origins of the GLSP go back to the summer and early fall of 1993, when Dean John Sexton held conversations with several people, including Rita Hauser, former United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, about the possible impact on legal education of the remarkable changes taking place world-wide in communications, transportation, financial markets and human rights -- what is now familiarly known as “globalization”. John’s thinking about this issue was stimulated by a number of multiple year visiting appointments that the law school faculty had recently made to two English scholars and to other scholars it was considering from East Asia.
In October 1993, John invited me to react to a “new idea” for the Law School -- the addition of a major new international element through more appointments of faculty from other countries and through a special scholarship to attract top quality foreign students to supplement the many foreign students we enrolled each year. He knew of course that many, if not most, law schools invited foreign visiting professors and enrolled foreign students. The difference would be in the scale and breadth of the effort. My first reaction was that the idea was interesting but it needed a lot more fleshing out.
Accordingly, over the next month or so John and I met several times for lengthy discussions of what a “global” program might look like. (We had moved away from “international” because we feared confusion with the substantive field of international law.) We considered, in a preliminary way, how we would identify and attract appropriate faculty and students, what would be the impact on the curriculum, how we would administer the program, and what it would cost. John eventually asked me, “well, what do you think?” I was convinced we should go ahead, although I observed that there were many questions still to answer as well as the need to obtain our faculty’s approval of this novel and unformed initiative. John then asked if I would assume direction of the program if it was approved. I had been expecting this, and I had decided to go for it even though (I pointed out) it was a marked departure from my previous work in constitutional law and civil liberties. John’s reaction was that the need was for someone with managerial experience rather than prowess in international or comparative law, which I lacked.
The first step in the approval process was to obtain faculty authorization for a committee to develop a concrete plan. At the final faculty meeting of the fall 1993 semester, John requested such authorization, and although there were a couple of perplexed questioners and many more who were merely perplexed, the faculty gave its approval without dissent. John promptly appointed me to chair a strong committee, on which he served, composed mainly but not exclusively of colleagues who had substantial international experience.
The committee produced two extensive reports, one on global faculty and one on a student program, which soon became the Hauser Global Scholars Program after a large gift was received from Rita and Gus Hauser. The faculty approved the reports in April and September 1994, and although both votes were unanimous there was initial skepticism among some of our colleagues who either did not quite grasp our objectives or questioned them if they did. Nevertheless events moved swiftly following faculty approval. John appointed committees to recommend global faculty, to recruit an executive director, to select the first Hauser Global Scholars, and to address other issues. All these things happened over the next few months, and the Global Law School Program became a functioning reality as the 1995-1996 academic year began.
I now turn to the subjects of the plenary sessions at the AALS conference. Plenaries II (Achieving Cooperation with Different Systems of Law and Legal Education) and VII (Possible Institutional Moves) are reflected in many of the other sessions, so I will address them at the end.
Plenary III. Faculty Exchange and Cooperation. This is, not surprisingly, the heart of the GLSP. Every year NYU Law School invites approximately 20 foreign law professors and, in a few instances, judges and practitioners, to offer one or more courses or seminars in our regular teaching program over either a full or half semester (in the latter situation the normal teaching hours are doubled each week). The courses traverse the entire curriculum, in both public and private law, except for required first year courses. We spend much effort in identifying and vetting the best non-U.S. faculty throughout the world, using the personal connections and reading of our fulltime faculty, word of mouth from foreign faculty and students, and observation at international conferences. A global law faculty personnel committee considers all serious prospects at length and makes formal recommendations to the faculty, much as the law school’s principal personnel committee recommends new fulltime domestic faculty.
Except in rare situations, we invite first time global faculty for a second visit. After that, for various reasons such as curriculum needs, we either do not extend a further invitation, or we offer a single further visit, or in a few cases we extend a longterm offer of four visits to foreign faculty whom we would like to integrate more fully in our institution. The criteria and process for approving longterm visitors are demanding, first in the committee and then at the faculty level.
As might be imagined, the impact of so many foreign faculty on the law school is enormous, through their participation in workshops and colloquia, in substantive conversations with other faculty and with students, on joint research projects, and socially. But it is on the curriculum that the effect is most pronounced. To illustrate, the attached appendices list new courses taught by global faculty and courses co-taught by global faculty with fulltime domestic faculty.
There are two other ways in which we make use of foreign talent. Each semester we appoint, ordinarily for one week, one and sometimes two leaders from other countries to serve as Distinguished Global Fellows (DGFs) who deliver lectures to faculty and students and contribute to individual classes on invitation of the instructors. The first DGFs in residence were Senator Robert Badinter, former French Minister of Justice and former president of the French Constitutional Court; Dieter Grimm, judge of the German Constitutional Court; Arthur Chaskalson, president, and Richard Goldstone, judge, of the South Africa Constitutional Court; and Lord Slynn of Hadley, a Law Lord of the UK House of Lords.
Apart from trying to assure high quality, we seek to maintain various balances in the global law faculty. A geographic balance among different countries and regions. A substantive balance between instructors of public and private law, and within each of these categories. A balance between established scholars and rising younger scholars. And a sufficient number of faculty who are women and people of color. But quality comes first.
Another category of senior foreign figures -- academics but also judges, high government officials, and a few practitioners -- are Visiting Scholars, about 15-20 per year, who are in residence from one month to a full year. We open the law library to them and, depending on the individual, we invite them to participate in seminars, forums, meetings, etc., and sometimes to teach a class.
The traffic of faculty also goes in the other direction, from NYU to foreign universities. The law school ordinarily does not arrange such visits, leaving them to individual initiative, but many NYU professors each year find their way to institutions abroad for teaching and study.
Plenary IV. Student Exchange and Cooperation. NYU Law School has approximately ten student exchange programs. Most are with European universities, but one is with a South African university, one with an Australian university, and one is being established with a South American university (we expect an Asian connection to be created shortly).
We seek to assure the high quality of the other programs, just as they must be satisfied about ours. The considerable administrative effort necessary to run these exchanges is worthwhile if they result, as they often do, in our students having an enriching experience abroad and in our classes being enhanced by good foreign students.
Overall, NYU each year enrolls about 350 foreign students -- about 30 in the JD program, about 300 in the various LL.M. programs (of which there are nine), and about 20 in various stages of the JSD (doctoral) program. The LL.M. programs are:
General Studies
Comparative Jurisprudence
Corporations Law
International Studies
Labor and Employment Law
Public Service Law (new in 2000-2001)
Taxation
International Taxation
Trade Regulation
The foreign students come from more than 50 countries and, without doubt, they enrich the law school intellectually and in other ways. Two special groups of foreign students are the Hauser Global Scholars and the Global Public Service Law Scholars, 10-15 annually in each category. These scholars are selected competitively by special committees composed of NYU faculty and other members. The committee that selects the Hauser Global Scholars has been chaired, since its inception in 1995, by the president of the International Court of Justice.
It is a challenge to integrate foreign students fully into the intellectual and community life of the law school. A recent LL.M. or JD graduate is recruited each year to spend half time on this work, which includes helping foreign students to apply for places on one of our journals, assuring their participation in student organizations, orientation, convocation and other special programs, and arranging joint social and cultural events for foreign and domestic students.
There is one other category. By analogy to the Visiting Scholars Program for senior people, we run a Visiting Researchers Program for foreign graduate students, junior faculty and junior government officials. Visiting Researchers are accorded access to our law library and in some cases they make useful connections with our faculty and students, both American and foreign. Most of those selected are proposed by one of our regular or global faculty.
As in the case of faculty, there is student traffic from NYU to institutions abroad. Some of this is through the formal exchange programs mentioned above and some, arranged through an Individual Study Abroad Program. We have also secured special opportunities for our students, including summer internships abroad, travel grants, and, most notably, the judicial law clerk/intern program with the International Court of Justice; five graduates annually (no more than one from any country) perform research and analytical work to assist the judges with the disputes on the Court’s docket.
Plenary V. Enrichment of the Curriculum. This issue is noted under Plenary III and is illustrated by the courses listed in the appendices. An entire memorandum (of some length) could be devoted to the subject, but I will briefly touch on only four points here.
1. It is highly desirable and will ordinarily lead to better results if foreign visitors, like domestic faculty, teach courses that they prefer. Sometimes we use global faculty to fulfill institutional goals, by assigning a course or seminar that is needed in a particular year, as long as it is on a topic that they have previously taught. The precise identity and definition of courses taught by global faculty are important matters that draw the attention of the vice dean (who sets the teaching schedule), the executive director of the GLSP and myself, and at times the new chair of our global law faculty personnel committee (in the early years I chaired the committee).
2. Co-taught courses can be wonderful, but sometimes they don’t succeed if the teachers are not compatible or the subject matter is perceived in radically different ways by the instructors. This is no different from experience with courses co-taught by fulltime domestic faculty, except that the latter usually know each other pretty well before a decision is made to co-teach.
3. Courses taught or co-taught by global law faculty should be subjected to the same rigorous review as all other courses.
4. An important curricular initiative, begun in 1999-2000, is the introduction of “global” material in some first year courses. Four faculty members volunteered to work with me in developing units that involve a foreign element -- for example, including one or more foreign cases on a topic to provide alternatives to American approaches, or exploring the problems associated with enforcing a foreign judgment in U.S. courts, and vice versa, or focusing on a single event, such as the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, where an American multinational corporation must respond to political challenges as well as law suits in a variety of forums. Next year we are expanding this effort in order to broaden the horizons of all JD students and not only those who choose to take relevant upper year courses or seminars.
Plenary VI. A “Global Curriculum” and Educational Outcomes. The first part of this subject is discussed above under Plenary V. The second part, educational outcomes, invites evaluation of the various curricular moves. We all know that it is difficult to make such judgments with respect to the normal domestic curriculum (unless one wishes to rely on bar examination results and similar “objective” criteria), and the same is true about the global curriculum. This means that there can be many different opinions. At NYU there is strong sentiment among faculty and students, both U.S. and foreign, that the newly introduced “global” elements in the curriculum, especially the impact of the large global law faculty, have helped to provide our students with an education that is intellectually stimulating and will be useful to their work as lawyers in coming decades. Why this is (or isn’t) so deserves full and continuing discussion.
Plenary VII. Possible Institutional Moves, and Plenary II. Achieving Cooperation, at NYU and elsewhere. As mentioned at the outset, this entire paper is concerned with these issues. I will comment on five additional matters here.
1. A successful program requires the enthusiastic and effective support of the dean -- financially, programmatically, and in relations with domestic faculty and students.
2. Whatever plan is undertaken and whatever level of resource allocation is made, careful and inclusive planning is important. We have consulted broadly on various moves, including with colleagues whose initial inclinations were not sympathetic to particular proposals. In the same way, we have enlisted valuable help on committees, including the global law faculty personnel committee, from those who had early doubts about the Program. All this broadens the base of faculty knowledge about the GLSP and engages diverse faculty perspectives.
3. An important question concerns the degree to which a law school wishes to work alone, with one or possibly two foreign partners, or with a range of other institutions in formulating its own program. There is no single or simple answer to this question, which of course directly implicates “institutional moves.” Apart from the student exchange programs, NYU has only one formal arrangement with another institution (the law faculty at Oxford University) that encompasses faculty and other visits and cooperative planning of some conferences. Some law schools might find it desirable to go further and jointly plan parts of the curriculum or other matters. It is unlikely that many (if any) American law faculties will lightly surrender sovereignty over their faculty hiring and curriculum, but if mutual confidence is developed through cooperation on individual projects, there could be benefits over time in planning certain core academic functions with a respected and reliable partner.
4. A beneficiary of the GLSP as well as a source of its strength is the various centers and projects at the Law School that have a “global” element. Some of these long antedated the establishment of the Global Law School Program, for example, the Center for International Studies and the Center for Research in Crime and Justice. Some are roughly contemporaneous with it, such as the Center for Environmental and Land Use Law, the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, and the Center for the Study of International Organizations. And some are actually part of the Global Program, notably the Project on Transitional Justice and the Global Public Service Law Project. These institutions, each in its own way, provide a forum for deeper understanding of problems by injecting international and comparative elements. In addition, they all provide fellowships and internships for faculty and student travel in both directions.
5. A feature of NYU’s GLSP that has had substantial payoffs in our community is the program of international conferences and seminars, some large and broad in scope, others smaller and more narrowly focused. Each category has a positive role. Among the former have been symposia we have hosted for judges of European constitutional courts and the U.S. Supreme Court and “dialogues” we have helped to organize for heads of countries on global economic issues and the place of law in civil society. Among the many smaller events have been two recent conferences on comparative constitutional adjudication and a joint meeting with members of the Oxford law and business faculties on intellectual property issues.
Conclusion. NYU’s Global Law School Program is not presented as a model for all or most law schools or law departments elsewhere. To the contrary, each institution should proceed as its history, traditions and resources warrant. The important thing is to recognize the transforming changes taking place in society that require commensurate and diverse responses in law and legal institutions, and therefore in legal education around the world.