FIU Law offers summer study abroad opportunities to its students. Students are awarded a maximum of six (6) credit hours for study in an approved summer study abroad program. English is the language of instruction in these programs. Currently, FIU Law conducts a summer study program in Seville, Spain. Additionally, several well-established summer programs at other law schools are recommended. A current list is available at the Office of International & Graduate Studies, RDB 2062.
Application for non FIU study abroad.
Seville, Spain
The Seville Summer 2013 Program at Universidad de Sevilla is sponsored by Florida International University College of Law.
Letter from the Program Director
Welcome All Students – Study Abroad and Change Your World!
It’s never too early to look ahead to a summer semester abroad. The Office of International & Graduate Studies in Room RDB 2062 has all the information you need. Study abroad programs are open to students who have completed their foundation curriculum and are in good academic standing (a 2.0 GPA or higher).
FIU Law’s summer 2012 in Spain was a great success! Forty-one students traveled over 8,000 miles to study in Sevilla. It was a diverse group which not only included students from FIU Law, but students from Nova, University of Utah, and Texas Wesleyan University. Two courses were co-taught by both FIU Law and Universidad de Sevilla faculty, giving students a thoroughly comparative perspective on the course materials.
The Summer 2012 courses were:
WOMEN AND THE LAW COMPARATIVE AND GLOBAL CONSIDERATIONS (3 CREDITS)
The course considered the role of law in the lives of women from global and comparative perspectives. Topical coverage included the role of international law on the lives of women by considering certain UN conventions relating to the status of women, as well as with respect to certain global issues which affect the lives of women in a particular sense (e.g., immigration policies and practices, including asylum and refugee law, and human trafficking). The comparative law component considered and compared legal approaches to matters relating to women’s private and domestic life choices and options, such as laws relating to family law, reproduction, and wage and labor gender-based disparities.
EUROPEAN LEGAL HISTORY (3 credits)
This course introduces students to European legal history from the Roman era to the present day. Although focusing predominantly on the development of the continental tradition and subsequent national legal systems, the course also incorporates aspects of English legal history. The materials selected highlight the political and cultural context within which Europe formed and adapted a highly sophisticated legal science. The course provides essential background for any student interested in understanding civil law systems found throughout the world today in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
The courses also took students outside the classroom. They attended on-site visits to the Criminal Courts in Seville. They also visited the Tribunal Constitucional and the Congreso de los Diputados of Andalucia, on a full-day session in Madrid. Students also traveled to Cadiz and enjoyed site visits to El Oratorio as well as the Museo de Las Cortes.
Despite their workload, the students traveled throughout Europe and enjoyed sight-seeing in Spain. Sevilla is a beautiful city known for its tapas, history, Flamenco music, museums, cathedral, and late nights.
The tuition for the FIU Study Abroad Program is very affordable, and provides a great opportunity for you to improve your Spanish, to learn about a different legal system and cultures, to study law, and to earn academic credit outside the United States.
For more information please visit International and Graduate Studies page, or contact Julie Beineke, Program Coordinator.
Sincerely,
M. C. Mirow
Professor of Law
Associate Dean of International & Graduate Studies
Florida International University College of Law
Description of Program
The Florida International University College of Law summer abroad program takes advantage of this unique site to offer an intensive experience in both U.S. and Spanish law. The program is designed to go beyond simply an extended visit abroad. The courses, faculty, student body and site visits are selected to provide a real understanding of Spanish legal culture.
Emphasizing Sevilla’s historical connections to the world around, the courses offered in the program emphasize the comparative dimensions of the subjects taught. Our courses cover both the U.S. and Spanish perspectives. All courses are co-taught by FIU Law faculty and faculty from the Universidad de Sevilla. In comparative courses, each offering contains roughly equal parts U.S. and Spanish law. Students are evaluated on their understanding of both the U.S. and Spanish materials. FIU Law and Universidad de Sevilla are partner schools in this program. Classes are taught in English. Knowledge of Spanish is useful but not necessary.
The program is open to all students from A.B.A. accredited law schools who have completed at least one year. Additionally, several Spanish law students from the Universidad de Sevilla are expected to participate each year. Welcoming Spanish students in the program enriches the classroom dynamic and the level of comparative discussions. It also adds to the cultural and social experience of students coming from the United States. Having host country peers makes the adjustment and learning process smoother.
Space in the program is limited to approximately 50 students. Exploring a new culture and a new legal system, in tandem with U.S. legal materials, requires more attention from faculty and more constant involvement by the student in classroom discussions. As a result, acceptance to the program is capped and is based on a first-come basis, assuming prior satisfaction of all admissions requirements.
Program Schedule
The Florida International University College of Law has been fully accredited by the American Bar Association.
Students will attend classes Monday through Friday from 10:00-2:00 for 5 weeks. Final exams are held during the sixth week. The official start date will be Monday, May 27, 2013 and the last final exam is Wednesday, July 3, 2013.
May 26, 2013, the Sunday before classes begin, students are required to attend an orientation in Seville. During this orientation students will be given a tour of the law school building, Barrio Santa Cruz, and surrounding areas. Following this event, a dinner reception will be held at a restaurant in the beautiful neighborhood of Santa Cruz in Sevilla.
Site Visits
One round trip train ticket to Madrid, and one round trip ticket to Cadiz is included in the fees.
Students will visit the following sites:
- The Spanish Senate – Senado
- Constitutional Court in Madrid – Tribunal Constitucional
- Criminal Court in Seville
- El Oratorio in Cadiz
- El Museo de Las Cortes in Cadiz
Courses and Credit
SUMMER STUDY ABROAD: Seville, Spain 2013
Evaluation of student performance in all Seville Summer Program courses shall conform with the regular FIU Law grading scale. Please see Academic Policies and Regulations Part VI. There is no grade normalization requirement for courses in the Seville Summer Program.
Courses to be taught during summer of 2013:
LAW 6222 EUROPEAN LEGAL HISTORY
This course is co-taught by Professor Victor M. Uribe-Uran, or FIU Law, and Professor Pablo Gutiérrez Vega from Universidad de Sevilla Facultad de Derecho.
This course introduces students to European legal history from the Roman era to the present day. Although focusing predominantly on the development of the continental tradition and subsequent national legal systems, the course also incorporates aspects of English legal history. The materials selected highlight the political and cultural context within which Europe formed and adapted a highly sophisticated legal science. The course provides essential background for any student interested in understanding civil law systems found throughout the world today in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Textbook information to be announced.
LAW 6254 COMPARATIVE FAMILY LAW
This course will be co-taught by Professor Hayes of FIU Law, and Professors Blanca Rodríguez Ruiz, Myriam Herrera Moreno and Beatriz Campuzano from Universidad de Sevilla Facultad de Derecho.
The 2013 course is expected to include an overview of the modern family law. Topics will include legal regulation of adult relationships (marriage, divorce, same sex relationships and domestic violence), and issues affecting children (parent-child relationships, children’s rights, international adoptions, and child protection). The course will highlight the increasing international dimension in family law including treaties affecting substantive rights and international recognition of domestic decisions and international conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Students can expect interesting reading and engaging discussion of modern family law.
Textbook: Family Law in the World Community: Cases, Materials, and Problems in Comparative and International Family Law (Carolina Academic Pres Law Casebook Series). Authors: D. Marianne Blair, Merle H. Weiner, Barbara Stark, Solangel Maldonado
Faculty
Victor Uran-Uribe
J.D., (Titulo de Abogado), Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá
M.A., University of Pittsburgh
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Professor Uribe-Uran holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor of History and Law. The recipient of numerous awards for both teaching and scholarship, including a State University System Teaching Incentive Program Award and a Faculty Senate Award for Excellence in Research, Professor Uribe specializes in Latin American history and law. After earning his law degree at the Universidad Externado de Colombia, he served as a lawyer and then director for the Project of Legal Aid and Legal Research, Centro de Investigacion y Educacion Popular, Bogotá.
He also has held faculty appointments at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Seccional Medellín, and as a visiting professor of law at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. He has received fellowships and research awards from, among others, the Fulbright Program, the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and has served on the board of editors of journals like the Law and History Review. A prominent and widely-published scholar, Professor Uribe-Uran is the author of eight books or book chapters and more than 40 articles and book reviews. In 1997, he received the prestigious Tibesar Prize from the Conference on Latin American History, American Historical Association, for best article published in The Americas. Professor Uribe-Uran is a key figure in the establishment of the College of Law at FIU; his extensive service includes membership on the search and screen committees that recruited the founding faculty and many of the top administrators.
Christyno Hayes
B.A., Davidson College
J.D., University of North Carolina School of Law
Professor Hayes graduated with honors from The University of North Carolina School of Law, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif, served on the North Carolina Law Review as Articles Editor, and authored two published casenotes. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Davidson College. She began her legal career in 1991 specializing in commercial litigation at Greenberg Traurig and further developed her litigation and trial skills at Zuckerman Spaeder Taylor & Evans. Professor Hayes spent several years in private practice advocating for teenagers in dependency court. She has volunteered and worked for many non-profit organizations serving youth in Miami-Dade County including Planned Parenthood, Lawyers for Children America, Shake-A-Leg Miami, Hands On Miami, the Roxcy Bolton Rape Treatment Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and the Miami Gay Men’s Chorus. Professor Hayes has taught Legal Skills and Values I, II and III. She is also a Fellow of the FIU Honors College, where she teaches the first year interdisciplinary course Origins of Ideas; Ideas of Origins.
Beatriz Campuzano Díaz
Professor of Law
University of Seville
Doctorate in Law, University of Seville
Professor Campuzano received her PhD in Law from the University of Seville. Her research is centered on International Commercial Law. She has published two books: Consequences of the Vienna Convention of 11 April 1980 in the Field of International Sale of Goods (2000) and International Aspects of Insolvency Proceedings (2004). She has also carried out research on International Civil Procedural Law and International Family Law, areas in which she has published numerous books, chapters, articles and reviews. She teaches Private International Law at the University since 1995. She has been awarded the Teaching Excellence Award in the academic courses 2000/2001, 2002/2003, 2003/2004 and 2005/2006. She has been the main researcher of several projects, financed by the European Commission, on “Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters.” Professor Campuzano is a research member of Research and Development Projects of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and of Projects of the Spanish International Cooperation Agency (AECI). She is the Vice-Dean of International and Institutional Relations of the Law Faculty at the University of Seville.
Pilar Cubiles Sánchez-Pobre
Professor of Law
University of Seville
Doctorate in Tax Law, University of Seville
Professor Cubiles Sánchez-Pobre has spent her entire career as a legal educator and researcher. The principal focus of her activities has been the analysis of the Spanish Taxation System and Comparative Law within the European Union. She has a doctorate in Tax Law with a thesis about the rights of defense of the taxpayer. Between her completion of her studies in law at the University of Seville and her Doctorate, she was an Erasmus Graduate Student at the University of Panthéon-Assas (Paris), France, where she studied European and International Economics and European Union Law.
She has taught in the Law faculty and in the Economics faculty at the University of Seville. She was an Erasmus Professor at the Liverpool University in spring 2007. She has done research at the Universities of Paris (France), Padova (Italy) and Munich (Germany).
Myriam Herrera Moreno
Professor of Law
University of Seville
Doctorate in Law
University of Seville
Professor Herrera’s main focus has been on victimization and victimology, as well as restorative justice. Much of her research has to do with special kinds of victims, such as minors –bullying- and the elderly –abuse against elders-. She also writes on gender victimization, crime prevention and social policies aimed at protecting women from violence and abuse. She is interested in the applicability of therapeutic jurisprudence to the Spanish Criminal Law System. Professor Herrera is the Sub-director of the Andalucía Inter-Universitary Criminology Institute, Seville, as well as President of the Andalusian Society of Victimology.
Professor Herrera teaches Criminal Law and Criminology at the Law Faculty of the University of Seville.
Miryam Rodríguez-Izquierdo Serrano
Professor of Law
Constitutional Law Department
University of Seville
Ph. D. in Constitutional Law, University of Seville
Degree in Law, University of Seville
Degree in Journalism, University of Seville
Miryam Rodríguez-Izquierdo Serrano has followed a combined education and professional training path, through which she has had the chance to accumulate knowledge from different fields. When she began her studies in Law at the University of Seville, she had a Degree in Journalism (1991-1996) and had just spent two years doing some post-graduate studies in Journalism and Communication (1996-1998), researching in the Public Newspaper Library in Seville, working as a freelance reporter, as well as following some Political Science courses at the National University of Distance Learning.
As a Law student (1998-2003) she did an internship in an engineering multinational company (Instalaciones Inabensa, S.A.), where she also worked as legal consultant after her Degree in Law and until February 2004. It was then that she was awarded a Research Fellowship in Constitutional Law by the Science and Education State Department and began to study for her Ph.D. at the University of Seville, where she has been lecturing as Assistant Lecturer from 2005 on Spanish Constitutional Law and Press Freedoms as Fundamental Rights. In 2007 Professor Rodríguez-Izquierdo Serrano received a Research Award from the Andalusian Network of European Information for her research on the Subsidiarity Principle in EU Law, which was published as Posibilidades Constitucionales del Principio de Subsidiariedad (University of Granada, 2008). She finished her Ph.D. in Constitutional Law in April 2009 with a research on the field of federal principles of Law in relationships between EU Law and member States´ Constitutional Systems.
She has been a guest lecturer at the Vermont Law School Seminar on Spanish Constitutional Law at the University of Seville in March 2007 and a visiting lecturer in Lancaster University, United Kingdom, in February 2009. In the last three years, she has also participated as a lecturer in different seminars on European Law, held by the European Information Center of the University of Seville, as well as on Constitutional Law, held by the Andalusian Institute of Public Administration.
Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz
Professor of Law
Department of Constitutional Law
University of Seville
Blanca Rodriguez Ruiz is a Lecturer of Constitutional Law at the University of Seville, Spain, since 2000. She obtained her law degree at the University of Seville and received her Ph.D. in law at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. She was a von-Humboldt post-doctoral research scholar at the law school of the University of Frankfurt, Germany, and a visiting scholar at Gender Institute of the London School of Economics. Her academic work, published in Spanish, German and English books and academic journals, analyses questions related to fundamental rights, democratic theory and gender, from a discourse-theoretical perspective. Her current work covers questions regarding women’s political representation and citizenship.
Pablo Gutiérrez Vega
Associate Professor
University of Sevilla School of Law
Pablo Gutiérrez Vega is an Associate Professor for The History of Law and Institutions, Department of Basic Judicial Sciences, at the University of Seville School of Law since 1998. He obtained his law degree from University of Oviedo in 1995 and a degree in Political Science and Administration (Major in International Relations) from the University Autonoma of Madrid. Professor Gutiérrez Vega obtained a Masters in Advanced European Studies at the Department of Political Science from the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium.
He is an observer and supervisor of the OSCE and the European Union (from Bosnia Herzegovina in 1998 to Guinea Bissau in 2006). He was the Coordinator for the European Masters on Human Rights and Democratization for the University of Seville from 2005 to 2007; He is the Director of seven thesis for masters program relating to indigenous people from 2004 until present. He is the legal advisor in matters related to human rights and indigenous peoples for Consejo de Autoridades Tradicionales U’wa (Colombia), Defensoría Maya, Universidad Maya (Guatemala); Consejo de Ancianos de la Nación Comunitaria Mosquitia (Nicaragua), and Parlamento Qullana-Aymara (Bolivia).
Tuition and Financial Aid
Tuition is $3,600 for the five week program (same rate for in-state and out-of-state). This includes a total of 6 credit hours consisting of two 3-credit courses, insurance and FIU fees. Students are required to take six credits. An additional non-refundable $400 registration fee is charged to cover miscellaneous costs including site visits in Sevilla, two dinners, health insurance (mandatory), a group cultural outing, map of Seville and a round trip train ticket to Madrid. Financial aid is available for FIU Law students through the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, RDB 1055. Contact Michelle Pestaina, Assistant Director of Financial Aid, at 305-348-8006.
Students from other law schools should inquire about the availability of assistance at their own schools’ financial aid offices. We will work with your institution regarding financial aid.
| Breakdown of expenses: | USD |
| Tuition (includes insurance) | $3,600 |
| Registration Fee (non-refundable) | $ 400 |
| Estimated Housing Expenses | $1,500 |
| Estimated Airline Travel | $1,100 |
| Estimated Food, Personal Expenses, Books, Travel, etc. | $1,400 |
| TOTAL | $8,000 |
| Payment schedule is as follows: | Deadline | USD |
| Registration Fee (non-refundable) | At time of Application | $400 |
| 50% of Hotel Charge (estimated) | March 1, 2013 | $750 |
| Tuition | May 1, 2013 | $3,600 |
| Balance of Hotel Charge (estimated) | May 1, 2013 | $750 |
Cancellation Policy
FIU Law reserves the right to cancel this program at any time or make changes, modifications or substitutions to the program.
If the program is canceled after the $400.00 registration fee has been paid, this fee will be returned to each student and every effort will be made to make arrangements for each student enrolled to attend a similar program, if the student so desires. Tuition and registration fees advanced by the student shall be refunded within twenty (20) days after the date of cancellation.
If changes are made in the course offerings or other significant aspects of the program, these changes will be communicated promptly to any applicant who has paid a deposit or registered for the program, and an opportunity will be provided for that person to obtain a full refund of all monies paid if student chooses to cancel.
If a State Department travel warning is issued prior to commencement of this program, students will be given the opportunity to withdraw with a full refund of all fees paid. Every effort will be made to make arrangements for each student enrolled to attend a similar program, if the student so desires. For information on Spain, please see the State Department Travel Information.
If a State Department travel warning is issued while the program is running and FIU Law cancels the program, students will be refunded the registration fee and tuition within twenty (20) days after the date of cancellation.
FIU Law is not responsible for expenses related to room and board, personal expenses or airfare.
Contact Information
For further information, please contact:
Julie Beineke
Coordinator of International and Graduate Studies
Florida International University College of Law
11200 S.W. 8th Street, RDB 2062
Miami, Florida 33199
Tel: 305-348-7595
Fax: 305-348-2282
Email: jbeineke@fiu.edu
Student Information Handbook
View the Student Information Handbook
Application
The Summer Study Abroad – Seville, Spain Application (2013).
Access for Persons with Disabilities
Students with documented disabilities who may require specific accommodations while studying abroad should consult with the Program Director at the time of application.
Accommodations
It is recommended that students find private housing. The Office of International and Graduate Studies is happy to assist students in finding housing options. Students may also request housing through the program. You can download this sheet of different options for accommodations.