Global Research Seminar

Penn Law recognizes the importance of first-hand experience in providing students with the skills they need to examine thoroughly global and comparative legal issues. In 2010, Penn Law initiated the Global Research Seminar (GRS), an intensive international research course that facilitates engagement between faculty and students in a global setting. The focal point of this semester-long seminar is a one to two week overseas field research visit. The field visit gives students the opportunity to interact with stakeholders on important topics in public and private international and foreign law, and develop substantive expertise on an issue as well as key professional and cross-cultural skills. Each year, the GRS addresses a new topic, giving different faculty members the opportunity to design unique, focused international courses on an annual basis. Penn Law's GRS embodies our commitment to integrate practical and academic learning and expose students to the law in action.

ACADEMIC YEAR 2011/2012 - US and EU Internet Law

This year-long course led by Christopher Yoo took on a crucial and timely issue by comparing Internet policy in the US and the EU.  The U.S. and Europe have historically taken widely divergent approaches to the regulation of communications technologies.  In more recent years, the approaches have begun to converge, in part because of the increasing globalization of the telecommunications market and in part because of certain intellectual insights that have transformed the conventional wisdom about economic regulation.

This seminar compared the regulatory approaches taken in the U.S. and Europe, studying both their emerging similarities and the key differences in intellectual commitments that tend to keep them distinct.  As part of the seminar, students traveled to Washington DC, Germany and Brussels to interview and do field research with policy makers, academics, government and non-governmental officials, corporate executives and other stakeholders. This unique course was co-taught by Professor Thomas Fetzer in parallel with a seminar at the Dresden University of Technology; students from each institution collaborated on a final joint research project.

SPRING 2012 - Islamic Finance and Investment in the International Markets

The Spring 2012 seminar, led by Professors Michael McMillen and Michael Knoll, will explore contemporary Islamic finance (commerce and finance in accordance with the principles and precepts of Islamic sharīah law) from a transactional vantage and with particular emphasis on structuring financial transactions and products.  This course is highly relevant for students interested in global financial markets and transactional practice and how culture is shaping law and finance in and beyond the Muslim world.  The course content will be built around industry case studies taken from numerous jurisdictions around the world.

Although often overlooked, Islamic finance already has a significant presence in the United States and Western Europe.  Islamic finance is also the fastest growing segment of the financial market.  Yet in spite of its growing importance as a source of capital, Islamic finance is largely ignored in Western universities.  That is beginning to change slowly.  To the best of our knowledge, this course will be the first interdisciplinary (bringing together students in law, business, and arts and sciences) and cross-border Islamic finance course offered in the United States.

As part of the course, students will travel over the University’s spring break to Malaysia to meet with the Malaysian central bank (Bank Negara), the Islamic Financial Services Board (ISFB), and private sector firms and companies that are at the center of designing, implementing and overseeing the financial services products that are shaping Islamic finance now and in the coming decades.  Since the earliest days of modern Islamic finance, Malaysia has played a leading role and its firms and regulators have collaborated to develop the most progressive tools in order to build important bridges between conventional and Islamic investors.  In this Global Research Seminar, students will have an unparalleled opportunity to meet with the architects of these products and examine in depth the legal, religious, economic and cultural forces that underlie their design with those who are using them and regulating them on a daily basis.

Past Global Research Seminars