As part of a project to restructure legal education in Iraq, undertaken by the International Human Rights Law Institute (IHRLI) at DePaul University through a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) contract, eight Iraqi law professors will visit Chicago for a study tour. The professors, who will be in Chicago from July 23 through August 7, will participate in substantive briefing sessions on relevant contemporary legal issues at several Chicago law schools including, DePaul, Northwestern, Chicago-Kent, and John Marshall.
The Chicago visit is the final stretch of a tour that included study visits to universities in Egypt and Italy and a one-week series of training seminars at the International Institute for Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy. The seminars, which were attended by 42 Iraqi legal educators, were taught by American law professors, including M. Cherif Bassiouni, president of DePaul's IHRLI; William Mock, associate dean and professor of law at the John Marshall Law School; and Kenneth Abbott, professor of law at the Northwestern University School of Law.
The professors represent 11 law schools and include six deans and three associate deans. While in Chicago, they also will visit and receive briefings at the American Bar Association Foundation, the Illinois Supreme Court and the United States District Court. They are scheduled to visit two Chicago law firms -- Baker and McKenzie, and Lord, Bissel and Brook.
The Legal Education Reform in Iraq Project is funded by a multi-million dollar grant from the USAID. It is geared toward the broad-based reform of the Iraqi legal education system through its main four components: 1) educational reform through rule of law; 2) curricular reform; 3) a clinical education program; and 4) technical and administrative support to repair the law libraries and information technology services.
The first of the libraries, located in Baghdad, will be completed by the end of this year as a modern, functional library. Most of the law libraries in Iraq were looted, burned or destroyed, as were many of the basic structures of the 11 law schools in that country.
"Legal education reform in Iraq will prove to be a fundamental pillar of support to the democratic progress and economic recovery in Iraq," said Bassiouni, who heads DePaul's and the Italian institutes at DePaul and in Italy. "We hope that by engaging Iraqi legal educators and representatives of legal education organizations in other countries we can help the educators adopt a system that is their own."
DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the nation.