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Volume 9, Issue 1, March 2008

The School of Law and Ukraine

Christopher R. Kelley*

Legal education in the United States is beginning to change in response to globalization. It has changed before. Until the 1940s most law schools trained their students for state law practices. Partially in response to the burgeoning role of the federal government in the American economy during the 1930s, the 1940s saw a shift in this focus as law schools began to train their students for a national practice. Now, the economic and social engine driving the need to change is globalization. And change law schools must, for training law students for a state and national practice is no longer an adequate mission for any law school.

If tomorrow’s lawyers are going to discharge their duties competently, today’s law schools must prepare their students for a transnational practice. The ranks of businesses engaged in international commerce, while led largely by multinational companies, are increasingly being filled by smaller, previously domestically-oriented firms. And as our economy and the economies of other nations become more linked, the movement of management, labor, and capital across national borders will grow. As a result, across the spectrum of law practices—from administrative law to family law to sports law—lawyers are being asked more frequently to structure transactions and resolve disputes in which they must deal with foreign attorneys and another nation’s legal system. This trend will only accelerate.

The University of Arkansas School of Law, like other law schools, is seeking to meet the challenges presented by globalization. It has foundational international law courses. It co-sponsors two summer law study abroad programs–one in Cambridge, England and the other in St. Petersburg in Russia. It attracts international students to its Graduate Program in Agricultural Law, the only program of its kind in the world. And it hosts international scholars.

More changes are coming. The School of Law also has embarked on a strategic planning process that, while uncompleted, already has identified as an important objective expanding the ways in which we prepare our students for transnational legal work. Achieving this objective is likely to include more faculty members following the lead of their colleagues who have already started to incorporate transnational legal analysis into courses that traditionally have had only domestic content.

But not all that we have done and will be doing to prepare our students for a transnational law practice is the product of long-range planning. Nor are we entirely following a script written by other law schools. To the contrary, the UA School of Law has found itself forging relationships in one nation—Ukraine—through a process that can be characterized best as fortuitously spontaneous with results that are most certainly unique. Perhaps finding the unexpected in Ukraine should come as no surprise. After all, Ukraine itself has been called the “unexpected nation.”

In the fall of 2005, I was a Fulbright Scholar in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Located in eastern Ukraine a short drive from the Russian border, Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city. During the Soviet era, it was a major manufacturing center. While its prominence in that regard has diminished, the large complexes of apartment buildings built to house the workers who filled the factories still reign over parts of the city. Yet these massive collections of gray concrete towers are softened by spacious, tree-filled parks in and near the city’s center, which holds the largest square in Europe and a massive statue of Lenin.

Kharkiv also was Soviet Ukraine’s intellectual center, and its intellectual energy is still strong. The locus for nuclear and space research and development during the Soviet era, Kharkiv is reputed to have more university students than any other Ukrainian city.

I taught at two universities, the Kharkiv National Agrarian University (KhNAU) and the Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs (KhNUIA). But my teaching as a “Fulbrighter,” as wonderful an experience as it was, is not the story here. Instead, the remarkable story I report here is the relationship between Ukraine and the School of Law that is being built on relationships formed in 2005.

I had intended to teach in Kharkiv for the entire 2005-06 academic year but left in December due to my mother’s illness, which took her life two months later. But I returned to Kharkiv in April 2006 to fulfill a promise made before I knew I would be leaving Ukraine to lecture at a conference at the KhNAU and to give the institution a LCD projector because the one I had brought to Ukraine with me as a “Fulbrighter” had been stolen. When I finished my lecture, I was met at the KhNAU campus by Stanislov Osyatinskiy, the international affairs officer at the KhNUIA with whom I had worked when I taught at the KhNUIA.

Stas drove me to the Seagull restaurant and bar not far from his flat, announcing to me on the way that he wanted to start a project and asking for my thoughts. I suggested a speakers project, promising to find the speakers if he could find the money to pay their expenses. A few words later, I was calling one of my UA Law colleagues, Professor Don Judges.

 I called Don because in addition to being a talented teacher and scholar, Don is a part-time police officer for the City of Johnson, just north of Fayetteville. KhNUIA is accredited by Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and its cadets are trained to serve in the upper ranks of the Ministry. Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs is a troubled institution—human rights organizations in Ukraine have reported that more calls are made to the Ministry to report abuse and corruption by Ministry officers than to report a crime committed by someone not employed by the Ministry. With this in mind, Stas and I decided to focus the speakers project on the rule of law. Ukraine’s progress as a nation depends on the rule of law becoming ingrained there. Stas and most Ukrainians know this, but as most of the world also knows, achieving and sustaining the rule of law is not easy, even in the United States.

When I returned to Arkansas, I invited Professor Melissa Waters of the Washington and Lee University School of Law to join Don in our ad hoc speakers project. A native of Northwest Arkansas and the daughter of the late Honorable Franklin H. Waters, United States District Court Judge for the Western District of Arkansas, Melissa enthusiastically accepted.

Melissa was the first to travel to Kharkiv. In September 2006, she lectured at the KhNUIA, the KhNAU, and at the Yaroslav the Wise National Law Academy in Kharkiv. Stas had convinced the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to fund Melissa’s trip; I tagged along at my own expense. This turned out to be propitious, for it provided me with introductions to the Cultural Affairs Officers from the Embassy who accompanied us from Kyiv to Kharkiv.

In December 2006, I returned to Ukraine, this time to spend three days at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv pleading for funds to bring Don to Kharkiv and lecturing in Kyiv through arrangements made by the Embassy. I failed to get the funds, but I made good friends at the Embassy, which is reward enough.

Even without Embassy funding, Don agreed to go to Ukraine in March 2007 using my frequent flier miles and his own funds for the rest of his costs. And his money was well-spent. Don lectured brilliantly for three days at the KhNAU, using slides that had been translated by Yuliya Momot, a Kharkiv native, one of my “Fulbrighter” translators, a top student at the Kharkiv National University, and now a graduate student in the Master of Public Administration Program at the University of Arkansas.

As Don and I prepared to leave the KhNUIA, its Vice-Rector made an extraordinary offer. He invited the School of Law to join the KhNUIA in developing a cooperative distance-learning project focusing on the rule of law. Intended to help the KhNUIA change the culture within the Ministry of Internal Affairs so that the rule of law prevails throughout the reaches of Ukraine’s national law enforcement agency, this project will connect the School of Law and the KhNUIA using interactive, audiovisual conferencing equipment and a website dedicated to publishing research and other scholarship about the rule of law. In April 2007, the School of Law faculty voted unanimously to participate in the project. We are now trying to raise the $40,000 needed to purchase and install the equipment KhNUIA will need to participate in classes, student and faculty discussions, and other activities with us.

While we were in Kharkiv, Don and I also were also treated to a traditional Ukrainian dinner by the Inyurpolis law firm (), one of Ukraine’s leading law firms and one that I have since joined as its of counsel. The practice of law is unregulated in Ukraine, but Inyurpolis is committed to the highest international standards. Its principal lawyers teach at the Yaroslav the Wise National Law Academy, which is reputed to be one of the best law schools in Ukraine. This summer I will hold a retreat for law students at the Academy employed by Inyurpolis as summer interns. Our goal is to improve their understanding of the U.S. legal system, legal ethics, and their English through legal writing exercises. We also are exploring connecting Inyurpolis with the School of Law through audiovisual conferences so that our students and faculty can learn about the practice of law in Ukraine. An idea in its infancy, one conceived by UA Law Dean Cyndi Nance, is to develop a service learning project for our students in Kharkiv to give them the opportunity to work with Ukrainian law students and attorneys and thus prepare them for a transnational law practice in a setting few, if any, law schools could duplicate.

Although the U.S. Embassy could not fund Don’s lectures in Kharkiv, its Cultural Affairs section has continued to be supportive. Indeed, in December this year, to commemorate International Education Week, the Embassy invited the School of Law to participate in an interactive audiovisual conference with law students in Kyiv who were hosted by the Embassy. This conference was so successful that a second one was held in January, where we were honored by the Provost’s moving introduction to the University of Arkansas and the leadership that its former president, William J. Fulbright, provided in promoting international understanding through the creation of the Fulbright Program.

The relationship between the School of Law and Ukraine is expanding. In April, for example, the Arkansas Bar Association will host the Arkansas Rule of Law Conference, where the main feature will be a transnational discussion by audiovisual conference between the participants in Arkansas and those assembled and hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. And there is more to come, including a new project to assist with legal education reform in Ukraine.

The Provost’s invocation of the contributions and spirit of Senator Fulbright was more appropriate than he might have realized at the time. Without the Fulbright Program and the support of the University of Arkansas, the School of Law’s relationship with Ukraine and the learning that is flowing from this relationship would not have happened. What has happened and what will follow is part of Senator Fulbright’s legacy; it is a gift he has given to each of us at the University of Arkansas.

Bibliography

Wilson, Andrew.  The Ukrainians: Unexpected Nation. Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 2002.

*Christopher Kelley is Associate Professor of Law, University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.