Global Legal Studies Center Approved

Untitled Document FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE: February 1, 2007

CONTACT: Ronnie Hess, Director of Communications, Division of International Studies, (608) 262-5590, rlhess@wisc.edu; Sumudu Atapattu, Associate Director, Global Legal Studies Center, (608) 890-1395, saatapattu@wisc.edu

GLOBAL LEGAL STUDIES CENTER APPROVED

Madison, WI – A joint initiative of the University of Wisconsin Law School and Division of International Studies has been approved as an official UW-Madison center. The establishment of a Global Legal Studies (GLS) Center within the Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies was approved on December 21, 2006, by the UW-Madison Academic Planning Council.

“This is a major new step in accelerating internationalization at UW-Madison,” says Gilles Bousquet, the 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 and the Center will be directly involved in implementing it by 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, the 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.