Fordham Law School

International
Law

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International Law at Fordham Law

Your Passport
to the World

These days, what happens overseas—to people and to businesses—is as crucial to being a successful lawyer as what happens across town. Our extensive International Law curriculum, seminars, workshops, and clinics will prepare you wherever and for whatever you end up doing, whether engaging in human rights issues with village elders in Kenya or negotiating with heads of corporations in the European Union.

Our faculty are deeply involved in international legal issues essential to practicing law in a global economy. Professor Mark R. Patterson, co-director of the Fordham Center on European Law, has done work in Milan, Florence, and, most recently, Rome, at the Italian Competition Authority. “My hope,” he says, “is that deepening ties between Fordham and EU institutions will encourage our students to broaden their job and practice opportunities, particularly if they are interested in areas like antitrust that involve cross-border work.”

An expert in comparative corporate law, Professor Martin Gelter has traveled to the nation of Georgia to help guide the country’s judges through the legal similarities and differences of various corporate structures. Why should the internal goings-on of corporations concern the rest of us? Because, Gelter says, with more and more U.S. workers betting their retirement on the stock market, all of our financial fates depend on the way corporations behave, and sometimes they don’t behave with the noblest of intentions. “When shareholder wealth maximization is the goal, it can come at the exclusion of other goals, like being more mindful of workers,” says Gelter, who has taught in the United States, Austria, Italy, and France. Of his students at Fordham Law, he says: “In my Comparative Corporate Law class, a lot of them write research papers that are so impressive I encourage them to publish.”

older student smiling with a large group of children
“So many of our graduates go out into the world and do amazing human rights work, becoming deeply engaged both domestically and internationally as social justice lawyers.”
Students also gain practical experience doing human rights work, if that’s their passion. In recent years, students have attended diplomatic meetings in Geneva and traveled to India to do interviews on the topic of sexual harassment. “So many of our graduates go out into the world and do amazing human rights work, becoming deeply engaged both domestically and internationally as social justice lawyers,” says Chi Mgbako, a clinical professor of law and director of the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic, who has worked with students on over 40 human rights clinical projects such as women and HIV/AIDS and LGBT refugee rights. “The fiery spirit that the Leitner Center intensifies in our students continues to burn throughout their careers.”

International Law Quick Facts

  • Fordham Law sponsors a wide range of summer and semester-long study abroad programs that expose students to international law and legal systems around the world. These include the Belfast/Dublin Summer Program, the Fordham-Ghana Summer Law Program, the Sorbonne in Paris, Waseda Law School in Tokyo, the Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) program in São Paulo, Brazil, and the Fordham-SKKU Summer Institute of International Law in South Korea, among other global study opportunities.
  • The Center on National Security does important work on cutting-edge issues related to national and global security.
  • The Fordham Law Alumni Association has 14 international alumni chapters, including ones in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America.

Select International Law Course Offerings*

  • Admiralty and International Maritime Law
  • Antitrust – International Cross Border Mergers
  • Comparative Constitutional Law
  • Comparative Corporate Governance
  • Corporate Sustainability, Transnational Business, and Human Rights
  • Crimmigration: The Intersection of Immigration and Criminal Law and Procedure
  • Human Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Human Rights Law
  • Immigration Law
  • International Business Transactions
  • International Commercial Arbitration
  • International Human Rights Scholarship
  • International Law
  • International Litigation and Arbitration
  • International Taxation
  • International Trade Law
  • Labor Law in International Context
  • Mediation: International and Comparative Perspective
  • National Security Law
  • Nuclear Weapons and International Law
  • Protection of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Under International Human Rights Law
  • Refugee Law and Policy
* Not all courses are offered every semester