Session One starts on Sunday, May 20, 2012, with the last examination on Friday, June 15, 2012, and includes three lecture courses (a one-unit course and two two-unit courses).
There is a one-week break from Monday, June 18 to Friday, June 22, 2012 with weekends on either side providing 10 days free for travel.

Session Two starts on Monday June 25, 2012, with the last examination or internship day on July 20, 2012 and consists of two new courses or a Practicum Component field placement.

Students must enroll in all three courses in Session One (for a total of five credit units). In Session Two, students can enroll in up to two courses, with a possibility of earning a maximum of two credit units.

The Chile Summer Program will feature the following courses:

Introduction to Latin American Legal Culture (1 unit)
Professor James Cooper, California Western School of Law

Chile has long been the darling of modernization theorists and development economists who subscribe to the Washington Consensus – a blend of economic policies that favor free markets, privatized state services, and low tariff barriers. The Chileans are early adapters of many technologies and often integrate U.S. and European (namely British, French, German, and Spanish) influences, including legal culture. Santiago, Chile is truly a laboratory for many reforms – economic ones like privatization of pensions to legal ones like oral trials and a strongly independent judicial system. This course will examine how Chile has received legal transplants, adopted its own legal processes, and transformed itself into the stable, modern, and increasingly equitable state in a region of less successful neighbors.

The Chile Summer Program takes advantage of the longstanding relationships enjoyed by California Western School of Law for over a dozen years. As part of the Introduction to Chilean Legal Culture course, we will learn from U.S. Embassy personnel, members of the National Police, Attorney-General’s Office, Public Defenders’ Office, members of the judiciary, and the Ministry of Justice. Trips to a former human rights torture center, a justice center (at which new oral trials are taking place), a police academy, and other sites may also be part of the course.

Introduction to Latin American Legal Culture Syllabus CSP 2012

International Trade Law and Social Justice (2 units)
Associate Dean and Professor Raj Bhala, University of Kansas Law School

This course examines the intersections between International Trade Law and Social Justice Theory. The intersections occur in the context of many of the most controversial subjects in Trade Law.
Those subjects include agricultural subsidies, free trade agreements (FTAs), labor, environmental rights, human rights, and special and differential treatment. The term “Social Justice” sometimes is used imprecisely, without careful definition.
Accordingly, the course will review different major paradigms of “Social Justice.” Those paradigms include Utilitarian Theory, which underpins free trade arguments, Marxist-Leninist Theory, which critiques those arguments, and Catholic Christian Social Justice Theory, which draws on a long, deep tradition of faith and reason.

The course will examine the Trade Law subjects by applying these different Social Justice paradigms to them. In so doing, the course will cover the important technical and policy details of the Trade Law subjects. The course also will draw links between the (1) international trade law treatment of poor countries with sizeable Muslim communities, on the one hand, and (2) national security interests of all countries in reducing vulnerability among Muslim communities to extremist ideologies falsely promulgated in the name of “Islam.”

That is, the course will discuss the link from trade liberalization to poverty alleviation, and the follow-on link from poverty alleviation to counter-terrorism.


Syllabus for the International Trade Law and Social Justice course here.

International Human Rights and Latin America (2 units)
Professor Kenneth Williams, South Texas College of Law

This course will examine the development of human rights law from both a policy perspective and the possibilities it offers for application in domestic and international tribunals.  Students should complete the course with an understanding of the international mechanisms available for the protection of human rights, the sources of international law which may be applied in U.S. and foreign courts, and the policy issues which affect the development of international human rights law.  In addition, the human rights abuses of the Pinochet regime and Argentina’s “dirty war” will serve as cases studies, both for the human rights abuses which occurred and the attempts to rectify those abuses.  Finally, the course will study in depth Mexico’s litigation against the United States, brought on behalf of its nationals who had been sentenced to death in violation of their rights.  


Human Rights Syllabus

Practical Training Experience: The Practicum Component of the Chile Summer Program (1 unit or 2 units)
Professor Justin Brooks, California Western School of Law

Free trade has not been a total success in Latin America. In fact, many of the prescriptions for economic development promoted by the United States, the World Trade Organization and regional trade blocs have not resulted in tangible results for the majority of Latin Americans.

This survey course introduces students to the major issues of free trade in the Americas – from human issues like social dumping to health and public safety concerns over cross border pharmaceutical sales.

We provide a detailed examination of border security, corporate practices and other governance issues. We examine competing jurisdictions, new forms of sovereignty, and the rise of the surveillance society.

We dissect the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement and the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act and explore the alternative regimes being offered by MERCOSUR, the Southern Cone Customs Union and the Venezuelan-led ALBA, the Bolivarian Accord for the People of Our America.

Comparative Criminal Procedure (1 unit)
Professor Justin Brooks, California Western School of Law

This course gives an overview of criminal procedure topics associated with wrongful convictions around the world.

Students will learn about "innocence litigation" and the law associated with this litigation.  
Topics including prosecutor misconduct, false identifications, the right to counsel, scientific evidence, and false confessions will be covered.  

There will be a special focus on the Chilean judicial reforms and the causes of wrongful convictions in Latin America. 

Spanish for Lawyers (1 unit)
Professor Yvette Lopez, California Western School of Law

Designed for students who anticipate working with Spanish-speaking clients in their legal careers, this course will provide students with the ability to interview and counsel Spanish-speaking clients; draft letters to Spanish-speaking clients; represent Spanish-speaking clients in court; identify essential legal terminology and acquire cultural competence and intra-cultural communications skills.  

A basic speaking and reading knowledge of the Spanish language is required. Many reading materials will be in Spanish. As such, students should have a good command of the language.