No International Law at U Chicago? Forum

[BillsFan9907]

I'm not really seeing any indication that U Chicago has a strong international law program. Am I looking in the wrong places?

[worldtraveler]

I'm sure they have international law courses. If you really want to know more about it, look up their faculty members and their areas of interest.

[Emma.]

There are plenty of opportunities to take classes with an international focus. But the school tends to concentrate on things that are, you know, real.

[jbagelboy]

If you want a community that will huzzah your mythological international law aspirations, assuming Yale is not an option, go to NYU, or to a lesser degree CLS. They pride themselves on having tons of programs and research centers, summer opportunities and funding for IHR, clinics, moot courts, societies, study abroad programs, ect all devoted to it. If you got into UChi but you really want to circle jerk the international stuff while you're in school (but inevitably wind up at a domestic large transactional practice your 2L summer anyway), you should have the numbers for NYU too.

[Doorkeeper]

Overall, NYU, Yale, and Harvard have the best international law faculties. Both Yale and Harvard are pretty strongly public international law focused, NYU is more balanced between public and private international law.

Chicago only has 4 faculty members doing work in anything related to international law (Posner, Huq, Abebe, Ginsburg), and they all do predominantly public international law. I would be worried about having a stable amount of upper level coursework in these areas.

[2014]

We have several international law seminars, usually taught by a faculty member who takes their domestic specialty and covers the international POV or by a practitioner who comes in. Doorkeeper's list of full time faculty who make International Law their focus is accurate.

Here are the classes from this quarter that seem vaguely international lawish to me:

Public International Law
Comparative Legal Institutions
US Taxation of International Transactions
Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking
International Finance
Legal Issues in International Transactions
European Legal History
Chinese for Business Lawyers
Cross Border Transactions: Lending


Keep in mind that is for one quarter, you should expect other quarters to have a similar amount and variety.

I'm confident that we will give you great employment options for whatever you hope to do with International Law and I think our faculty and courses are sufficient, but I do agree that if it is important to you to be able to have the academic kumbayah circle jerk that other peer schools might be a better fit. I think it is short sighted though to take your eye too far off of the prize, which should be employment, and ruling out Chicago this early is probably unwise.

[phillywc]

Choose a Law School forum gets worse every time I look at it...

[Emma.]

Overall, NYU, Yale, and Harvard have the best international law faculties. Both Yale and Harvard are pretty strongly public international law focused, NYU is more balanced between public and private international law.

Chicago only has 4 faculty members doing work in anything related to international law (Posner, Huq, Abebe, Ginsburg), and they all do predominantly public international law. I would be worried about having a stable amount of upper level coursework in these areas.

Then again, by the time you have the chance to take upper level coursework, you hopefully will have realized that "international law" is not a thing.

[FlightoftheEarls]

Overall, NYU, Yale, and Harvard have the best international law faculties. Both Yale and Harvard are pretty strongly public international law focused, NYU is more balanced between public and private international law.

Chicago only has 4 faculty members doing work in anything related to international law (Posner, Huq, Abebe, Ginsburg), and they all do predominantly public international law. I would be worried about having a stable amount of upper level coursework in these areas.

Then again, by the time you have the chance to take upper level coursework, you hopefully will have realized that "international law" is not a thing.

Public international law is an elusive beast to be sure, but it does "exist" and isn't a completely impossible dream for someone who (1) will be attending a top-tier school, (2) has meaningful/relevant pre-law school experience in the field, and, ideally, (3) is a citizen of a non-WEOG country. Who knows if OP meets any of those requirements, but the jobs are out there for a select few.

[Emma.]

Overall, NYU, Yale, and Harvard have the best international law faculties. Both Yale and Harvard are pretty strongly public international law focused, NYU is more balanced between public and private international law.

Chicago only has 4 faculty members doing work in anything related to international law (Posner, Huq, Abebe, Ginsburg), and they all do predominantly public international law. I would be worried about having a stable amount of upper level coursework in these areas.

Then again, by the time you have the chance to take upper level coursework, you hopefully will have realized that "international law" is not a thing.

Public international law is an elusive beast to be sure, but it does "exist" and isn't a completely impossible dream for someone who (1) will be attending a top-tier school, (2) has meaningful/relevant pre-law school experience in the field, and, ideally, (3) is a citizen of a non-WEOG country. Who knows if OP meets any of those requirements, but the jobs are out there for a select few.

Fair. But whether those jobs are open to OP certainly won't depend on how many professors at his or her school focus on international law.

[FlightoftheEarls]

Overall, NYU, Yale, and Harvard have the best international law faculties. Both Yale and Harvard are pretty strongly public international law focused, NYU is more balanced between public and private international law.

Chicago only has 4 faculty members doing work in anything related to international law (Posner, Huq, Abebe, Ginsburg), and they all do predominantly public international law. I would be worried about having a stable amount of upper level coursework in these areas.

Then again, by the time you have the chance to take upper level coursework, you hopefully will have realized that "international law" is not a thing.

Public international law is an elusive beast to be sure, but it does "exist" and isn't a completely impossible dream for someone who (1) will be attending a top-tier school, (2) has meaningful/relevant pre-law school experience in the field, and, ideally, (3) is a citizen of a non-WEOG country. Who knows if OP meets any of those requirements, but the jobs are out there for a select few.

Fair. But whether those jobs are open to OP certainly won't depend on how many professors at his or her school focus on international law.

Agreed. From my experience, placement programs and organizational relationships tend to be significantly more valuable than the number of professors focused on international law.

[BillsFan9907]

There are plenty of opportunities to take classes with an international focus. But the school tends to concentrate on things that are, you know, real.

I get what you're saying but where would you put history or for that matter philosophy?

I guess the important question is this - if someone burns all their electives on public international law, what are their chances of obtaining a lucrative career in an unrelated field?

[worldtraveler]

There are plenty of opportunities to take classes with an international focus. But the school tends to concentrate on things that are, you know, real.

I get what you're saying but where would you put history or for that matter philosophy?

I guess the important question is this - if someone burns all their electives on public international law, what are their chances of obtaining a lucrative career in an unrelated field?

I'm not quite sure I understand your plan here. You want to take IL classes and then go work in another field? You can do that but the problem will be that you won't have coursework training you to do other work. You have limited time in law school and you can't fit in every IL class and useful stuff for your career.

I know plenty of people who took some IL classes and went to firms. It's not that uncommon. But if you want to go to a firm anyway and this is just an academic interest, there are far more useful things you can do in law school.