School of Law - Special Programs
The Supreme Court of Ohio authorizes student practice under attorney supervision in the final year of law school. Through the clinic students provide legal representation to indigent clients and receive academic credit. The supervising attorneys are full-time members of the law faculty.
In addition to the general courses in civil practice and criminal practice, the clinic offers specialized courses in family law, administrative law, and health law. A simulation course, LAWS 401 The Lawyering Process (2), is open to second-year students.
Since the mid-1970s the School of Law has invested heavily in its litigation program. Students practice the basic skills of trial advocacy in such courses as LAWS 209 Evidence for Litigators (4) and LAWS 397 Trial Tactics (4), and in the cocurricular moot court and mock trial programs.
The International Law Center serves as the stimulus for enhancing programs in international, comparative, and transnational law at the law school. It supports visiting scholars and visiting faculty at the law school to enrich the curriculum and the research capacity of the resident faculty. It also supports the development of international information resources. Through a series of sister law school relationships, it seeks to attract foreign students to the law school and provide opportunities for CWRU law students to study abroad; it also provides opportunities for faculty to study and teach abroad.
The Canada/U.S. Law Institute, established in 1976, is jointly sponsored by the law schools of Case Western Reserve University and the University of Western Ontario. Its primary educational purpose is to give students of both schools a comparative perspective on their own country's legal system. Each semester up to six students from each school spend the term in residence at the other school. The school in which the student is a degree candidate gives full credit for the semester's work. The two schools also exchange faculty, usually for periods of one or a few days but occasionally to teach one or more courses for a full semester.
A second purpose of the institute is to provide a framework for the exploration of transnational and international legal issues affecting the relationship between Canada and the United States. In addition to the regularly scheduled courses on Canada-U.S. topics, the institute sponsors workshops and conferences, including annual conferences in Cleveland, in recent years, dealing with Canada-U.S. economic ties.
The institute also sponsors a regular publication, the Canada-U.S. Law Journal; the annual Niagara Moot Court Competition, in which students from U.S. and Canadian law schools participate; and special research projects, often with funding support.
The Russian Legal Studies Program, established in 1993, operates under a consortium arrangement between the law schools of Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University in cooperation with the law faculties of St. Petersburg State University and Volgograd State University in Russia. The principal pedagogical goals of the program are founded on the growing network of relationships which have emerged in the post-Soviet era between Russia and the U.S. The program is designed to offer students, faculty, and members of the broader legal profession in each country an opportunity to: (1) explore the legal foundations and processes of the other country; and (2) examine and develop the legal and institutional structures necessary to foster closer U.S.-Russia economic, political, social, and cultural connections.
The program offers a variety of activities on behalf of the four participating law schools, including semester and yearlong exchanges for bilingual American and Russian students; an ABA-accredited summer school program in St. Petersburg (taught in English) with a special Russia-focused comparative and international law curriculum, including World Bank and International Monetary Fund cooperation; faculty exchanges (for periods of a few weeks to an academic year); and online computer research capability in the legal systems of both countries.
The Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University has been in operation for more than 40 years. It began with a focus on forensic medicine, but that has broadened to include the whole range of legal, social, economic, scientific, and ethical issues in which law and medicine are interrelated. Besides the regular course offerings, the center frequently presents lectures, symposia, and workshops, and it sponsors major conferences. It publishes a student-edited journal, Health Matrix: Journal of Law-Medicine. Participants in the center's activities include not only university personnel, but also professionals from such institutions as University Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic.
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