Global legal studies center approved

A joint initiative of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Division of International Studies to establish a Global Legal Studies (GLS) program has received approval to become an official UW–Madison center.

“This is a major new step in accelerating internationalization at UW–Madison,” says Gilles Bousquet, dean of International Studies. “It creates new opportunities and venues for collaboration across campus, especially between the professional schools and area and international studies, including programs within the university’s International Institute.”

“We are very happy that our commitment to global legal studies has been recognized,” says Kenneth B. Davis, Jr., dean of the Law School. “The new center’s goals advance the Law School’s strategic plan. (The center) will be facilitating research, fostering partnerships and exchanges, and developing the curriculum in the area of global legal studies.”

The primary purpose of the center will be to create an institutional platform for implementing the Law School’s and, more broadly, UW–Madison’s strategic goals related to globalization in teaching, academic research, and outreach.

“This is a milestone in our efforts to expand global opportunities for our students and faculty, and an appropriate next step for the Law School, with its long tradition of international engagement,” says Heinz Klug, the director of the center and UW–Madison professor of law.

According to Klug, Law School faculty members have been active abroad, teaching, conducting research, and working to enhance legal education and practice on every continent. “We will continue to promote this engagement by building on our international resources, such as our highly successful East Asian Legal Studies Center, our opportunities for foreign lawyers to do research at the Law School, our student exchange programs with prominent law schools in Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and our connections with other international and area studies programs across campus,” Klug says.

Specific goals of the center include promoting socio-legal research on issues of international and comparative law; extending contacts with scholars in other countries; and sharing scholarship and expertise with constituencies across Wisconsin and worldwide.

Plans for the new GLS Center were first formulated in 2004 when the Global Legal Studies Initiative was launched. The establishment of the center within the Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies was approved in December 2006 by the UW–Madison Academic Planning Council.