A History of Cosmopolitanism: Columbia's Unique Contribution
Columbia Law School has been "internationalizing" U.S. legal education since its founding before the American Civil War. Long before global markets and instant worldwide communications forced U.S. practicing lawyers to become aware of laws outside the territory of the United States, and decades before most American law schools offered even introductory courses in international, comparative, or foreign law, Columbia faculty and its students were developing the precepts and principles of public international law, international economic law, comparative law, as well as sub-specialities such as comparative constitutional law.
Columbia has long been an innovator in finding ways to make its students conversant with the legal systems of other nations and international organizations. It pioneered, through the work of faculty members such as Wolfgang Friedman, the premise that an increasing number of issues, including transactions among individuals and businesses, are governed by a complex web of rules that build upon national legal concepts, international treaties and rules of custom, and "lex mercatoria" that might be called "transnational law." And the concept led to one of the first student-edited journals in the field, today's Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (now one of five such journals in the international and comparative field). This has been the result of its faculty's conviction that students need and deserve a truly cosmopolitan legal education, without regard to whether they anticipate that they will practice in the international or comparative field. Long before globalization made such knowledge essential, Columbia has assumed that knowing how others rule themselves or how rules arise in the absence of traditional schemes for law creation and enforcement enriches understanding about how law (as well as less formal social norms) shape our own society. We have also assumed, of course, that such knowledge becomes even more essential as the United States government, its nationals, non-governmental organizations, and companies increasingly interact with the world. Long before the United States became the preeminent "super-power" that it is today, Columbia faculty have assumed that understanding how the world works (or fails to) helps us to understand how our legal system functions.
But a Columbia legal education has been characterized by other qualities, too. We have long sought to build bridges between the world of practice and theory, to balance the study of legal harmonization efforts with attempts to understand the continuing vitality of distinct legal cultures, to incorporate international and comparative insights throughout the curriculum, and to thoroughly integrate into the study of law such post World War II revolutionary developments as the rise and expansion of international human rights principles, the establishment of international criminal law, and the creation of inter-governmental bureaucracies such as those of UN system organizations, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, regional organizations such as those of the European Community, and specialized entities such as the World Trade Organization. Indeed, various Columbia faculty members were "present at the creation" of these developments and pioneered the study of how law has been affected by these political developments, as through path-breaking books and courses on these topics.
Columbia was the first U.S. law school to establish full professorships devoted entirely to international law and diplomacy, the study of foreign law (such as Chinese and Japanese law), international organizations, and international human rights. It was also among the first law schools in the world to revise its curriculum to include courses in foreign law and comparative legislation, to establish connections with foreign law schools (including joint law degree programs), to enable students to undertake clinical work in these fields both in the United States and abroad, to welcome and integrate foreign students into both its J.D. and graduate programs of study, to establish highly regarded specialized student-edited journals in these fields, and to develop specialized centers for the serious inquiry of the study of foreign law and to welcome foreign visiting scholars to the Columbia campus.
Today, Columbia's commitment to international and comparative law, reflected in the breadth of its permanent faculty who specialize in these fields, in the preeminence of its international and comparative curriculum and law library collections, in its path-breaking regional centers, in its efforts to pursue inter-disciplinary insights, in an unprecedented number of relevant student journals, and in the depth of its alumni in the United States and abroad, has no peer among U.S. law schools. No other U.S. law school can match the pioneering achievements of Columbia's academic "giants" in these fields, including those of the school's first lecturer on international law, Francis Lieber, responsible for the "Lieber Code," which formed the basis for modern international humanitarian law governing the conduct of war; John Bassett Moore, a State Department attorney who helped shape modern diplomatic practice; Telford Taylor, Nuremberg prosecutor and prescient advocate of international criminal accountability; Wolfgang Friedman, a pioneer in law and development studies; and Oscar Schachter, one of those who shaped UN law from the first days of that organization. Nor can any other law school lay claim to a comparable stable of professors who continue to lead in these fields. These include such living legends such as Louis Henkin, visionary architect of human rights and foreign relations law; Lori Damrosch and George Bermann, respective editors of the premier peer-edited journals in these fields, namely the American Journal of International Law and the American Journal of Comparative Law (both now ensconced at Columbia); and Hans Smit, one of the world's leading international arbitrators.
At a time when law schools everywhere are discovering the need to internationalize their curriculum and faculty, the Columbia Law School retains its preeminence in fields that it has pioneered.
An Incomparable History of Leadership in International Law
The study of international law began at Columbia long before the establishment of its law school, with Columbia College's appointment of its first professor of law, James Kent, in December 1793. From the outset, Kent believed that study of "the law of nations" was an essential component of the education of young "gentlemen," and the topic eventually became a significant part of Kent's masterwork, his four volumes of lectures entitled Commentaries on American Law (1830). Kent's Commentaries, regarded as the most important American law book of the nineteenth century, differs from Blackstone's identically entitled masterpiece in part because Kent devoted attention to international law. Not surprisingly, when it came time to establish a distinct legal curriculum at Columbia, in 1857, a course entitled "Principles of Natural and International Law," along with one called "Civil and Common Law," became part of the new undergraduate course of study in the new School of Jurisprudence. A few years later, the place of international law in Columbia's curriculum was assured when, as part of the first venture at a "university" law school, the trustees of the college appointed Francis Lieber a professor at the law school, as well as in the college.
Professor Lieber became an important unofficial adviser to Abraham Lincoln, and his lectures on the laws and usage of war became, in 1862, a pamphlet used by members of the U.S. Army. The sole civilian member of a special board tasked with the codification of the laws of war, Lieber drafted the Code for the Government of Armies (1863), which was promulgated by the U.S. War Department as the famous "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field." Today, the Lieber Code remains the basis of international rules governing the conduct of war. More broadly, the Code articulated humanitarian principles that have since become basic concepts of international law. It was referred to at the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 by Mr. Martens, Czar Nicholas's delegate; and the "Martens principles" thereafter were used at the Hague Peace Conferences and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 to enunciate the "laws of humanity and the dictates of the public conscience." Today, the Lieber rules lay at the heart of significant debates concerning how the U.S. government and other governments around the world conduct the "war" on terrorism, including the treatment of "enemy combatants," prisoners of war, or civilians in occupied territory, such as Iraq.
In 1891, Assistant Secretary of State John Bassett Moore left the U.S. State Department to assume the Hamilton Fish Professorship of International Law and Diplomacy at Columbia, the first chair in international law created in the United States and perhaps the most prestigious chair in the field today. Moore, a towering figure in nineteenth-century diplomatic circles, helped draft the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War and was a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice (the predecessor of today's World Court). At a time when international law was cultivated largely by political scientists, Moore made the subject a matter of serious legal study. In 1903, Moore was joined by James Brown Scott, who, in his brief time at Columbia, was instrumental in creating the American Society of International Law and the American Journal of International Law, the foremost peer-reviewed journal in the field. Scott left Columbia to become Solicitor of the U.S. Department of State (essentially the lawyer for the Secretary of State) in 1906.
Soon thereafter, during the deanship of Harlan Fiske Stone and as part of a general reorganization and expansion, the Law School deepened and broadened its commitment to comparative and foreign law. During this period, Columbia became one of the first U.S. law schools to devote considerable resources to work in conflicts of law, the jurisprudence of the countries of continental Europe and South America, English legal history and legal philosophy, and comparative legislation. Beyond establishing courses in these fields, Dean Stone, later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, also established a journal of comparative law, thereby helping to solidify Columbia as a center for the study of the world's legal systems and not merely those of the United States.
Columbia's preeminent role in public international law continued with the appointments of Charles Cheney Hyde, then Solicitor of the U.S. Department of State, to succeed Moore as Hamilton Fish Professor, and Philip C. Jessup, an assistant to Hyde, as a lecturer in the subject. The addition of Hyde, a highly regarded practitioner who had long been engaged in the problems of securing world peace, and the prescient appointment of his less well known assistant helped to secure Columbia's place in the field for much of this century.
Jessup's extraordinary career as professor and diplomat epitomizes the bonds between academe and practice forged by Columbia faculty in this field. Within two years of his initial appointment at Columbia, Jessup had produced a 548-page volume on maritime jurisdiction and, over the next four years, four more books on a variety of international law topics, including a volume containing his lectures at the Hague Academy (the last given at the extraordinarily young age of 32). A leader in bridging the disparate fields of law, international politics, and diplomatic history, Jessup, who succeeded Hyde as Hamilton Fish Professor, later published highly influential books on neutrality, collective security, and the birth of the United Nations, in addition to his most influential book, The Modern Law of Nations (1947). Jessup's exceptional scholarly productivity was matched by his diplomatic achievements. He helped draft the statutes for the new International Court of Justice and the International Law Commission and served the U.S. government in a variety of advisory and representative posts. After stints as president of the American Society of International Law and vice president of the Institut de Droit International, Jessup left Columbia in 1961 to become a judge on the International Court of Justice. Today, Jessup's name is indelibly imprinted in the minds of most students of international law by the worldwide moot court competition that bears his name.
Columbia's leadership in both scholarship and practice was enhanced by the 1955 appointment of Wolfgang Friedmann as professor of international law and director of International Legal Studies. Friedmann, a man of many countries, had been by the time of his appointment a reader in law at the University of London, head of the Office for Economic Reconstruction in the British sector of Germany, chair of Public Law at the University of Melbourne, and law professor at the University of Toronto. Once at Columbia, Friedmann turned his attention to international economic problems, particularly those faced by developing countries. While at Columbia, Friedmann produced, in rapid succession, a series of influential books on foreign investment, international joint ventures, international aid, and the role of the state and of law in mixed economics, in addition to his 1964 classic, The Changing Structure of International Law. Friedmann helped to establish what is today the oldest student-edited international journal in the United States, the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, and his vision helped to anchor what remains one of the foremost programs for the training of foreign lawyers in the United States. Friedmann was joined as collaborator on his international law casebook by Oliver J. Lissitzyn, an authority on international air law, the International Court of Justice, and foreign investment law.
The successive holders of the Hamilton Fish chair after Jessup, Louis Henkin and Oscar Schachter, continued the remarkable tradition of those who came before them. Like former holders of that professorship, Professor Henkin has produced path-breaking scholarship, particularly in the fields of foreign relations law and human rights, while making extraordinary public service contributions, including as chief reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States (Third) and as a member of the U.N.'s Human Rights Committee. Professor Henkin, now a much honored University Professor emeritus, continues to teach courses and seminars in human rights, U.S. constitutional law, and comparative constitutional law. Professor Schachter, instrumental in establishing a number of enduring legal principles while serving in the UN Legal Department from 1946 through 1975 and considered to be the preeminent international lawyer of the post-W.W. II generation on his death in 2003, had been, like Henkin (?), a recipient of the American Society of International Law's Hudson Medal for his numerous contributions to the field. Together with his Columbia colleagues Henkin and Smit, Schachter produced what became the leading text for the teaching of international law in the United States.
Columbia's depth in diplomacy and international organization was further enhanced in 1957 when Richard N. Gardner joined its faculty in 1957. Gardner, who became the Henry L.Moses Professor of Law and International Organization, became the perfect embodiment of Columbia's tradition of infusing prominent public service with pre-eminent leadership to the academy. Gardner's service to Columbia has been interspersed with prominent service to his country -- as President Kennedy's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizational Affairs, as senior adviser to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, as a member of a Presidential Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy, as U.S. member to the Group of High-Level Experts on the Restructuring of the UN, as adviser to the UN (Rio) Conference on Environment and Development, as alternative delegate to the UN General Assembly, as member of the Trilateral Commission, and as the U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Italy. Professor Gardner, now an emeriti professor who continues to teach a popular intensive seminar on U.S. foreign economic policy, will be receiving the Wolfgang Friedman Award, given to a leader in the field of international or comparative law, in April 2005.
Professor Gardner's successor in the Moses chair, Lori Damrosch, came to Columbia in 1984, after practicing in Sullivan & Cromwell and in the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Legal Adviser. Professor Damrosch, who has been Vice President of the American Society of International Law and is presently a Counselor to that body, teaches courses in international law, enforcement of international law, international courts, and U.S. foreign relations law. Professor Damrosch's position as co-editor in chief to the American Journal of International Law, thejournal that her Columbia predecessor James Brown Scott established, enables her students to have access to cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Most recently, she joined her Columbia colleagues in producing the fourth edition to the most widely adopted casebook in the field, International Law: Cases and Materials.
The present holder of the Hamilton Fish Chair, José E. Alvarez, who came to Columbia in 1999 after leading the international law program at the University of Michigan law school, is also following the path of illustrious Columbians. As President-Elect of the American Society of International Law, he will assume the reins of that leading institution in the field, which had been established by Scott, during that body's centennial year. He will be joining former Columbia professors who have been also been presidents of that body, namely Henkin and Schachter. Like former holders of the Fish Chair Henkin and Schachter, Professor Alvarez teaches and writes in the fields of international law, international organizations, and human rights. Like Wolfgang Friedman, he also teaches in the area of foreign investment and will be presenting the Hague Academy lectures on that subject in 2009.
Michael Doyle, who joined the Columbian law school faculty, along with the faculty of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in 2003, enriches the school's offerings at the intersection of the disciplines of law and political science. Doyle, formerly the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, is an eminent political scientist perhaps best known for his work on liberal theory. The author of a widely praised text in politics courses throughout the United States, Ways of War and Peace, Professor Doyle, now the Harold Brown professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy, came to Columbia immediately following a stint as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He teaches courses both at the law school and SIPA on UN peacekeeping, international ethics, and the history of diplomacy and remains engaged on a variety of UN-related projects on behalf of the Secretary-General, including the General Assembly's Millennium Declaration. With Alvarez, Doyle co-directs the School's Center on Global Legal Problems, established in 2003.
Petros Mavroidis, a professor of law at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, also joined the Columbia law school faculty in 2003, joining illustrious Columbians whose work have shaped the law of modern international organizations. A former lawyer at the WTO, Professor Mavroidis is a specialist in international trade law and teaches the general and specialized courses in that field, along with Columbia colleagues Merit Janow (the only U.S. member of the WTO Appellate Body) and eminent economist and University Professor Jagdish Bhagwati. Prof. Mavoridis also teaches international and comparative competition law. Like his Columbia colleague Louis Henkin, who led the efforts to produce the last Restatement of the Law of Foreign Relations for the United States, he is leading a comparable effort, also by the American Law Institute, that may produce the first codification of the law of international trade. Peter Rosenblum, the Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein Associate Clinical Professor in Human Rights, joined the Columbia faculty in 2003(?). Formerly the clinical director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, Rosenblum had extensive field experience in a variety of human rights NGOs in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia before he turned to academe. At Columbia, his innovative year long human rights clinic involves students in diverse hands-on projects involving the use of international human rights law, from assisting human rights NGOs with research to more litigation oriented projects in U.S. courts or international adjudicative fora. He has also co-taught the basic human rights course (with Henkin) and is developing a research seminar on Africa and human rights.
These Columbia professors join at least a dozen other colleagues whose work intersects in diverse ways with public international law. For more detailed biographies of these and other Columbia faculty members teaching in this field, see the International Profiles section of individual Columbia faculty members on the Columbia Law School website.
A Unique Position in Comparative Law
The Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law was launched in 1931 as an independent entity charged with equipping young foreign service professionals and transnational practitioners with training in foreign law, economy, and culture. The Board of Trustees, headed by Harlan Fiske Stone, later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, chose to affiliate with Columbia. After directorships by former Columbia dean Huger Jervey and Alexis Coudert, the directorship of the School was undertaken by Professor Willis Reese, Reporter of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws; subsequently by Hans Smit, Stanley H. Fuld Professor of Law and author and editor of numerous works on international transactions and procedure; and most recently by Professor (and former dean) Lance Liebman.
Since its inception in 1931, the Parker School has acted as a focal point of the Law School's foreign and comparative law efforts. Courses in foreign and comparative law were taught by the renowned regional specialists Henry P. de Vries (European and Latin American law, as well as international transactions) and John Hazard (Soviet law and socialist law generally). Each of them had associated with them teams of resident scholars engaged in research, teaching, and editorial activities. Under Professor Reese's directorship, the Parker School instituted both a program of annual seminars for faculty of other law schools on the teaching of comparative law and a summer program of continuing professional education in foreign and comparative law for practitioners. Launched during this period as well was the groundbreaking English-language Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law.
In the 1950s, Columbia became one of a handful of charter members of the American Association for the Comparative Study of Law (AACSL), formed to promote study and research in foreign and comparative law in the United States. Columbia Professors Willis Reese and John Hazard played leading roles in the foundation of the organization. It has since grown to comprise over 100 American law schools; its current president is George Bermann, the Walter Gellhorn Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, as well as director of the school's European Legal Studies Center, who joined the faculty in 1975.
Bermann, himself a former fellow of the Parker School, is the author of the leading casebook on European law in the United States, President of the American Society of Comparative Law, and, like Damrosch, the editor of the leading peer-edited law review in the field, the American Journal of Comparative Law. Like Smit, Bermann is a leading member of the international arbitration bar. In recent years, Bermann has presided over an innovative intensive seminar on European law that has exposed Columbia students to the most eminent scholars in the field, while producing a series of path-breaking books based on works-in-progress originally presented to Columbia law students for reaction. Bermann joined the faculty during a decade that brought to the school a new generation of area specialists: Randle Edwards, a specialist in Chinese law, Alejandro Garro, a specialist in the law of Latin America, and Michael Young, specializing in Japanese and Korean law. With these hires Columbia reaffirmed its preeminent position among U.S. law schools in teaching and research in foreign and comparative law. The law school's established centers for the study of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, and European law, serve as the fulcrum for a variety of courses on these subjects, for hosting numerous public speaking series and conferences (most open to any Columbia student and not merely those registered in relevant courses), for arranging for student opportunities abroad, and for hosting numerous distinguished visitors to the law school, or for facilitating research projects. In addition to launching extended research and publication projects on international arbitration and the law of central and eastern Europe, the Parker School under the leadership of Hans Smit inaugurated the coveted Parker School Certificate in Foreign and Comparative Law, conferred on J.D. and LL.M. graduates demonstrating a specialization and excellence in foreign and comparative law. Professors Bermann and Garro also brought European and Latin American law together in the basic comparative law course such that the civil law tradition may be studied against a more varied background than is customary at most law schools. Thus was the stage set for the full flowering of comparative law in the Columbia curriculum, and for the introduction of comparative elements into traditionally domestic courses. Today, a variety of courses at the school - from first year courses in torts and contracts to upper level offerings in family law or jurisprudence - include comparative perspectives.
By the 1980s, the Comparative Law course had become a basic component of the Law School curriculum, taught chiefly by George Bermann and, on occasion, by Professor George Fletcher, the Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence and a leading comparativist in criminal law, along with Hans Smit. Fletcher, who joined the Columbia faculty in 1983, has in recent years also developed serious teaching and writing interests at the intersection of international and comparative law, particularly with respect to the treatment of enemy combatants in the on-going "war" on terrorism as well as the evolving definitions of international crimes and procedures for the emerging International Criminal Court. The author of eight books, including most recently, Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the Age of Terrorism, Fletcher is also an editor, along with Alvarez, of the peer-reviewed Journal of International Criminal Justice. His courses include seminars on biblical jurisprudence, international criminal law, and the jurisprudence of war.
Curtis J. Milhaupt, the Fuyo Professor of Japanese Law and Legal Institutions and present director of Columbia's Center for Japanese Legal Studies, took over for Michael Young in 1999. Formerly an associate professor of law at the Washington University School of Law, Professor Milhaupt brought a wealth of academic as well as practical experience to Columbia and his work bridges comparative law, corporate law, and law and economics. His principal areas of research and teaching include comparative corporate governance, Japanese law, financial regulation, law and economics, and the new institutional economics. Milhaupt's interests in comparative corporate governance and institutional economics intersect with those of his colleagues Andrzej Rapaczynski, the Daniel G. Ross Professor of Law and a member of the Columbia faculty since 1982, and Katharina Pistor, an associate professor of law who left the Kennedy School of Government to join the Columbia faculty in 2001. Pistor also teaches and writes at the intersection of comparative and corporate law. Her major fields of interest include as well Russian law, the law of transitional economies, including the problems associated with transplanting law from one nation to another. In the spring of 2005, Professors Pistor and Bermann will join forces to teach an innovative course on transnational and comparative law that is very much in the tradition established by Wolfgang Friedman, to first year JD candidates.
Benjamin Liebman, an associate professor of law, took over for Randle Edwards as director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies in 2002. A former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter as well as a lawyer with Sullivan & Cromwell, Liebman teaches a number of courses in Chinese law, along with a first year course in torts that has a comparative dimension. Needed: origins, current state of play of Rekosh program and Korean center?
A Rich and Rigorous Curriculum
Over time, Columbia Law School's established role in fostering the development of international and comparative law and jurisprudence has been reflected in the strength of its curriculum. Honed by continuous innovation, the Law School's curriculum offers the most extraordinary array of international, comparative, and foreign law courses of any law school in the United States, and perhaps the world.
In a typical year, law students at Columbia can choose from more than 60 international, foreign, and comparative law courses, opening broad vistas of opportunity to students who will be the future leaders of international jurisprudence. Students can also choose from a remarkably diverse set of related more hands-on experiences: from term time externships at the UN or UN missions to a clinical experience involving human rights. The expansive curricular offerings offered at Columbia are vastly supplemented by curricular and other possibilities available through over a dozen established student exchange opportunities at eminent institutions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, in addition to any that students are free to arrange on their own with approved institutions abroad.
Columbia Law School has every aspect of international and comparative law covered. As Professor Bermann notes, "We have deliberately built an institution that is both broad and deep by approaching globalization on multiple fronts: courses, exchange programs, journals, research, an international faculty and student body. Our program is solid, distinct, and diverse in scope. And we were leaders in moving the focus of international and comparative law from what you might call a ‘boutique' approach—with just a few courses here and there—into the mainstream of the curriculum. Today, Columbia students understand that their education is not complete without exposure to those aspects of law."
Professor Bermann practices what he preaches. As noted above, for the spring term of 2005 and thereafter, he, along with Professor Pistor have designed a unique course on transnational and comparative law that will be available to first year students after their first semester of study to assist them in making the transition to applying U.S. legal concepts to cases with transnational dimensions. That course is also designed to help students think through how distinct legal issues are addressed in other legal systems.
Professor Bermann's course typifies Columbia's approach to legal education. Like most courses at Columbia, it is grounded in concrete, "real world" problems, thereby helping to bridge the gap between academic study and practice. At the same time, like many courses in Columbia's three-year law curriculum, it lessens the artificial divide between "domestic" and "international" law while encouraging students to scrutinize their own biases about prospective legal solutions. Bermann's course, like those dealing with civil law systems or the laws of China or Japan offered by Professors Curtris Milhaupt or Ben Liebman, look to foreign systems of law for insights not only into others' legal cultures but also our own. Other courses, such as those offered by Pistor, offer unparalleled opportunities for insights into the difficulties involved with the export of U.S. law or legal institutions abroad -- at the heart of nation-building or rule of law efforts by the U.S. and other international organizations.
These qualities are also evident in the public international law side of the curriculum - in courses that explore the rules governing relation among nations, such as those governing diplomats, international boundaries, and war and peace. These courses analyze how international rules evolve to meet the needs of rapidly changing societies and address the changes that have occurred through the rise of intergovernmental organization, the addition of former colonies to the family of nations, the extension of international law to new subjects, the effects of the end of the Cold War, and the growing desire to enforce international criminal law. Courses such as Richard Gardner's seminar, Legal Aspects of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy, José Alvarez's course, on the Law of Global Governance and Regulation, Michael Doyle's course on International Ethics, or Lori Damrosch's seminar on Enforcing International Law -- to give just three examples -- are grounded in these instructors' rich practical experiences and offer students unrivalled opportunities for simulating discussions tied to real world problems faced by contemporary policy-makers. Moreover, thanks to Professor Peter Rosenblum's innovative human rights clinic or Columbia's numerous foreign exchange and externship opportunities, those Columbia students interested in opportunities for hands-on experiences are give abundant opportunities to see the law in action even during their law school years.
Similarly, Columbia's courses dealing with international economic law—a comprehensive array of courses and seminars that are second to none among U.S. law schools and that canvass subjects as diverse as international business transactions, foreign investment, international banking, international tax, and international trade—build on Columbia's well-earned reputation as the finest U.S. law school for the study of "cutting edge" corporate law while staying abreast of the latest developments in practice. Students headed for international corporate practice—whether on Wall Street or elsewhere—get the benefit of instruction from such professors as John Coffee, one of the leading scholars of his generation in corporate law or Merritt Fox, a leading authority on international securities. Those interested in comparative corporate insights can study or engage in supervised writing projects with such luminaries as Pistor, Milhaupt, Rapacynski. Those interested in international litigation or arbitration can take Bermann's popular offering on transnational civil litigation or Smit's offerings on arbitration. Those interested in cutting-edge judge-made rules governing international trade or investment can study with Mavroidis or Alvarez.
But the richness of Columbia's international and comparative law curriculum is not limited to the courses formally identified as such. Columbia's faculty have been leaders in integrating comparative, foreign, and international law throughout the traditional law school curriculum. Comparative, foreign and public international law insights appear in such non-international courses as constitutional law, intellectual property, securities regulation, and labor law. Thanks to the efforts of professors like Mark Barenberg, Jane Ginsburg, Sam Issacharoff, Jack Greenberg, Kendall Thomas, and Katherine Franke, Columbia remains a leader in U.S. legal education in ensuring that international and comparative insights are reflected even within the formerly "domestic" subjects in which these professors specialize: namely labor law, intellectual property, constitutional law, civil procedure, civil rights law, and law and sexuality. Mark Barenberg, for example, offers a course on global labor rights that includes discussion of the efforts of the International Labor Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement's Labor Side Agreement, as well as various "fair trade" provisions among other U.S. treaties. Kendall Thomas's and Katherine Franke's Center on Law and Culture, along with these professors' respective seminars, have addressed such questions as the cultural difficulties implicated by attempts to enforce ostensibly "universal" international human rights.
Columbia's curriculum and many centers recognize that in today's world, legal problems do not come neatly bundled into "domestic" or "foreign" packages but require the ability to integrate knowledge from many sources both here and abroad, along with numerous "non-law" disciplines, from anthropology and cultural studies to economics and public choice theory. Throughout the curriculum, and not just in the many courses explicitly devoted to international, comparative, or foreign law subjects or those taught by Columbia's many visitors from abroad, Columbia's professors resist the temptation to confine their topic to United States law of U.S.-based problems. As befits a school located at the crossroads of the world, Columbia insists on exposing its students to cosmopolitan perspectives from the first day of law school.
