Information for:


Seattle University School of Law

2012 Summer Courses

Classes will meet five days a week for three weeks.

During the first week of the program (May 27 to June 2, 2012), all U.S. students will take a one-credit course called South African Law, Policy, and History:  Apartheid, Democracy, and the Future.
Professor Mtende Mhango will teach the course.

Students will then choose one of the two-week, two-credit classes listed below.  

Courses will be supplemented by lectures by prominent South African and African lawyers and human rights advocates, and by field trips to Constitutional Court,Pilanesberg, Apartheid Museum, and Soweto.

South African Law, Policy and History: Apartheid, Democracy and the Future
This course will introduce students to the nature and role of the Constitution in post-apartheid South Africa, and to selected jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, with comparative references to constitutional systems in countries of southern Africa, the United States and other comparative systems.  It will deal with the main institutions and procedures of the South African constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights and the role of the Constitutional Court.  Reference will also be made to the dynamic role of the constitutional systems in the transformation of South African society since 1994. 

 At the end of this course students must:Show a high level understanding of the South African constitutional system in the context of other constitutional systems.
  • Be able to critically analyse constitutional jurisprudence/cases and explain the way the Constitutional Court has taken to its transformative mandate.
  • Be able to undertake critical constitutional analysis by synthesising legal materials and demonstrating competence to apply them to practical situations.

Faculty

Mtende Mhango
Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

He studied government, history and the law at Morehead State University, Michigan State University College of Law, Wayne State University Law School and the University of Cape Town.

Mtende Mhango's primary research interests are in the fields of pension law and constitutional law. He serves on the editorial board of Malawi Law Journal and South African Journal on Human Rights, and teaches pension and constitutional law. 

International Dispute Resolution

This course is designed to describe, analyze, and evaluate current global trends in alternative dispute resolution (ADR).  It is designed to provide students with acomprehensive understanding of mediation and other forms of ADR in both key national jurisdictions and in crossborder contexts.  It considers future internaitonal dispute resolution options which can be anticipated in the development of globalization.

Faculty

 Won Kidane
Associate Professor, Seattle University School of Law, U.S.

Professor Kidane is an associate professor of law at the Seattle University School of Law.  He teaches and writes in the areas of international arbitration and litigation, international and comparative law, and immigration law and clinic.  Professor Kidane has published a comprehensive book on dispute settlement in China-Africa economic relations.  He has also published several articles in law journals associated with the Schools of Law of Cornell, University of Michigan, Catholic, Hastings, Chicago Kent, Wisconsin, Denver, Fordham and Berkeley.  Before joining the Seattle University School of Law, Professor Kidane taught at Penn State Dickinson School of Law for three years.

Prior to joining the Penn State Dickinson School of Law, Professor Kidane practiced law in Washington D.C. with the law firm of Piper Rudnick (now DLA-Piper), and later Hunton & Williams.  His practice focused on international arbitration and litigation.  He continues to consult in these areas with law firms.

Before his practice in Washington D.C., Professor Kidane worked as a legal officer in association with the African regional office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Professor Kidane currently teaches international Arbitration and Litigation, and Immigration Law and Clinic.

Law of Globalization

This course examines the role of law in regulating the global political economy. It begins with an overview of the main features of 'globalisation' and the economic principles on which it is based, such as supply and demand and comparative advantage. It then examines four forms of law which constitute the legal architecture of economic globalisation - the 'law' of the market and laws of contract, property and business associations required by the market system, the national law created by legislatures and other law-making bodies in  pursuit of globalisation objectives, the economic law created through multilateral, plurilateral, regional and bilateral treaties, and finally the law emanating from global institutions such as the WTO, World Bank and international courts.

We then critically analyse economic globalisation and investigate how different societies and interest groups are attempting to establish 'alternative' globalisations, both assertively and defensively, through the use of law and legal strategies. Thereafter the course explores the emerging and potential future law emanating from changes to the WTO, global financial institutions and other significant public and private agencies. In the final section the course examines economic globalisation through the prism of the Rule of Law, with particular reference to the inconsistencies among different legal sources and these are, and are not, resolved.

This course is designed to examine critically the role of law, legal regulation and governance in the global political economy. It is designed to provide internationally-transferable knowledge and to develop a sense of local and global responsibility.

By the end of the course you must know and be able to do the following:

  • Know and understand the main institutions of globalisation
  • Identify and understand the 'laws of globalisation' emanating from:
  • The market system 
  • Domestic legislation and regulation
  • Bilateral, plurilateral, regional and multilateral treaties
  •  The global economic institutions, including the dispute resolution bodies 
  • Know and critically analyse the resistance and opposition to globalisation
  • Understand post-GFC developments and trends in the international political economy
  • Perform legal research in the area.

Faculty
Laurence Boulle
Professor and Deputy Dean, Bond University, Australia.
Honorary Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
BA, University of Natal; LLB, Stellenbosch University; LLM, University of London; PhD, University of Natal.

Laurence Boulle was educated at the Universities of Natal, Stellenbosch and London. He is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and began his career in the Office of the Attorney General, Pietermaritzburg. His first academic appointment was at the then University of Natal, Durban, where he served as Dean for two and a half years. He has held positions at the University of Adelaide and Bond University, where he served as Acting Dean and Chair of Academic Senate. He was the Director of the Mandela Institute and Issy Wolfson Professor of Law between July 2009 and November 2012.

Laurence's research and publication interests have been in constitutional and administrative law, employment law, mediation & ADR, and international trade and the law of globalization. His latest book, The Law of Globalization, will be published by Kluwer Law International in late 2009.

As a practitioner Laurence has been an accredited mediator for the past 20 years and has been a consultant to governments, organizations, law firms and the professions in conflict management, negotiation and dispute systems design.

 Mark Chinen
Associate Professor, Seattle University School of Law, U.S.

Mark Chinen is an Associate Professor of Law and a Fellow of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality.  He was educated at Pomona College and Yale Divinity School before receiving his law degree from Harvard Law School.  Prior to beginning law teaching, Professor Chinen practiced in the areas of international trade and corporate and securities law for seven years in Washington D.C. with the firm, Covington & Burling.  Professor Chinen teaches contracts and courses in international law and writes on various aspects of international law, particularly international governance, theology and international law, and the relationship between domestic and international law.  He was the inaugural William C. Oltman Professor of Teaching Excellence at the School of Law from 2007 to 2010.

Human Rights and the Market Place

The aim of the course is to assess the ways that human rights law has penetrated the market and begun to affect the behaviour of economic factors, including international financial institutions, multinational corporations, the UN and human rights activists.

 The objective of the course is to examine and understand

  • The impact of multinational corporations on human rights, particularly in the developing world;
  • The extent to which multinationals should be regulated by international law and the role of transnational legal norms in promoting corporate accountability for human rights; and
  • Policy considerations for the future of global trade, international investment and finance, corporate governance and economic development.

 Faculty
Bonita Meyersfeld
Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
BA, University of Stellenbosch; LLB, University of Witwatersrand; LLM, Yale Law School; JSD, Yale Law School

Bonita Meyersfeld is an Associate Professor of Law and the Head of Gender at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies.  Bonita's areas of work include public international law, national and international human rights law, gender, business and human rights, national and international criminal law and animal law.  Bonita is currently teaching Public International Law and Human Rights in the Marketplace. Bonita is an editor of the South African Journal on Human Rights.

Prior to her position at Wits she worked as a legal advisor in the House of Lords in the UK where she worked on matters such as advising the Ministry of Justice on the adoption of a written constitution and a bill of rights; the implementation of international criminal law in the United Kingdom and the retrospective application of the Rome Statute; international human rights law and business and human rights. She has contributed to the work of the UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights on matters relating to gender. During this period she was also a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics in the Faculty of Law, Centre for Human Rights.

Bonita's past work experience includes positions at Interights in London, the International Centre for Transitional Justice in New York and Edward Nathan, Friedland and Sonnenbergs, Knowles Husain & Lindsey Inc and POWA in South Africa.

Vincent O'Nmehielle
Associate Professor, School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Cross-Cultural Legal Communication

After exploring the theoretical underpinnings of cross-cultural communication in the legal context, students will have the opportunity to both observe and participate in client interviews and intakes at the Wits University Law Clinic.  To start, students will receive a lecture about a particular area of South African law, for example, family law or refugee law.  Students will then explore how differences in culture, language, and tradition affect the lawyer-client relationship and how lawyers can most effectively communicate with clients from differing cultures and backgrounds.  Armed with these skills, students will first observe staff from the Wits Law Clinic interview clients, and they will then conduct interviews themselves.  In addition, because South Africa has 11 official languages, the course will also focus on the posed by the use of interpreters, and students will visit local magistrates' courts to see the role that interpreters play.  Finally, students will select a topic relating to cross-cultural communication and write a 10-15 page research paper, which will be due on July 31, 2012.

Faculty
Laurel Oates
Professor and Director of Seattle University's Legal Writing Program, School of Law, United States.  BA, Western Washington University; JD, University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University).

Professor Laurel Oates is the Director of Seattle University's Legal Writing Program, which has been ranked by U.S. and World Reports as the top legal writing program in the United States. After receiving her J.D. cum laude from the University of Puget Sound School of Law (now Seattle University School of Law), Professor Oates clerked for Division II of the Washington State Court of Appeals.

In 1984, Professor Oates helped co-found the Legal Writing Institute, which has more than 2000 members from more than 150 law schools and which works to improve the teaching of legal writing. As a member of the Legal Writing Institute, Professor Oates helped establish The Second Draft, which is the Institute's bulletin, and helped organize and host seven national conferences, including the 1984, 1986, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 Legal Writing conferences.

Professor Oates is the co-author of five books, including The Legal Writing Handbook, which is now in its fourth edition, and Just Research, Just Memos, Just Briefs, Just Writing, and a Practice Book. She has also authored a number of articles, which are listed in the publications list.

During Spring Semester 2007, Professor Oates and Professor Samuel provided workshops on effective writing for judges, magistrates, attorneys, and law students in India, Uganda, and South Africa. In addition, during March 2007, Professors Samuel Oates and Samuel hosted the first legal writing conference to be held in East Africa and helped establish an organization to promote the exchange of ideas about the teaching of legal writing between professors in Africa and the United States. In June 2007, Professor Oates received the Burton Award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing Education at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

Mimi Samuel
Associate Professor, Seattle University, School of Law, United States.
AB, Georgetown University; JD, Georgetown University Law Centre.

 After law school, Professor Samuel practiced business litigation for approximately eight years, first in Washington, D.C., at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, and then in San Francisco, at Thelen Marin Johnson & Bridges.

An avid traveler, Professor Samuel has pursued opportunities to work with law students, lawyers, and judges overseas. In 2003, she taught the foundations of the American legal system to Russian law students at Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok. During a leave of absence in 2007, Professor Samuel and colleague Professor Laurel Oates conducted a series of trainings and workshops in India, Uganda, and South Africa. In addition, Professor Samuel co-organized the Conference on the Pedagogy of Legal Writing for Academics in Nairobi, Kenya, which brought academics from the U.S. together with academics from East Africa. At the end of the conference, the participants decided to form a new organization dedicated to promoting the teaching of legal writing and the exchange of information among academics in the U.S. and Africa. Professor Samuel serves as the first U.S. co-president of that organization. In addition, Professor Samuel has taught in Seattle University's Global Justice Advocacy Program in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In 2008, Professor Samuel was awarded the first Bronson Dillehay Award for her article Focus on Batson: Let the Cameras Roll. That award is given by the American Society of Trial Consultants for a proposal for addressing a significant and persistent problem that undermines both the right to a fair trial and public confidence in the legal system