{"id":13055,"date":"2010-05-05T07:56:43","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T11:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=13055"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:43:02","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:43:02","slug":"a-bridge-between-nations-teaching-international-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/05\/a-bridge-between-nations-teaching-international-law\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bridge Between Nations: Teaching International Law"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Mark<\/a>
Mark Janis, the William F. Starr Professor of Law. Photo by Peter Morenus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Whether you travel to France on an airplane, purchase clothing made in Cambodia, or place a phone call to someone overseas, you benefit from the workings of international law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say virtually every person in the world \u2013 certainly every American \u2013 takes advantage of international law, though they probably don\u2019t know it,\u201d says William F. Starr Professor of Law Mark Janis, who specializes in international law and human rights law at UConn\u2019s School of Law in Hartford. \u201cAviation agreements, trade agreements, telephone and postal communications \u2013 they\u2019re all regulated by treaties.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Janis, teaching his students \u2013 most of whom will become practicing lawyers at corporations, law firms, and government agencies \u2013 means showing them the diverse approaches that different countries take to address issues regarding international transactions, and giving them insights and skills they will one day need to ask and answer the right questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI view much of the job of international lawyering as being a bridge between two nations \u2013 not only between their laws, but their cultures, their politics, their economies,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to be a person who guides a transaction, a company, a government across that bridge, it\u2019s good not only to know what\u2019s on your side of the bridge; you need to know what you\u2019re going to find on the other side. The really effective international lawyers are the people who can guide you across that bridge to successful destinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Janis explains, much of international law requires extensive negotiation and compromise. \u201cThere are rarely answers that satisfy everyone, but there are answers that prove to be useful for most people most of the time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Janis offers his own insights on various aspects of public and private international law as a member of the International Law Association (ILA)\u2019s International Human Rights Committee, a group of representatives from around the world to which he was recently elected. Janis is one of just four American representatives serving on this international committee, which is tasked with examining and discussing the development of human rights law.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, this committee has as its objective the question about the way in which international human rights law is implemented domestically \u2013 that is, when international rules are used or not used within national legal systems,\u201d says Janis, who will travel to The Hague, Netherlands, later this year for the ILA\u2019s 74th biennial conference.<\/p>\n

Studying and debating law in such a committee can be a drawn-out process, Janis admits. \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that work goes slowly when you\u2019re talking to so many people coming from so many different national groups, trying to craft an agenda and deciding what you\u2019re going to do to try to make a difference,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Yet he finds the process anything but discouraging. \u201cThere are smaller and larger accomplishments as you go along. As you participate in international relations, you realize how difficult and slow-grinding that process is,\u201d he says. \u201cThings sometimes don\u2019t happen, but that doesn\u2019t make them unimportant. You still have to work at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janis has authored more than 60 articles as well as several books on international law, including America and the Law of Nations, 1776-1939<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2010), an intellectual history; a treatise entitled International<\/em> Law<\/em> (Aspen, fifth edition, 2008); and a casebook, International Law Cases and Commentary<\/em> (written with co-author John Noyes, West, third edition, 2006). He also served on the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Human Rights<\/em> \u2013 a major five-volume set, roughly six years in the making \u2013 which recently received the prestigious Dartmouth Medal. The award recognizes the single most outstanding and significant reference work of the year.<\/p>\n

Over the course of his 26 years at the UConn Law School, Janis has established a multifaceted international law program, which includes a wide range of courses focused on international and foreign law, a foreign exchange program, and a one-year master of laws degree program in U.S. Legal Studies available to international students. He also has set up the law school\u2019s Human Rights and International Law Clinic, which offers students opportunities to conduct real-world legal work affecting the development of human rights and international law.<\/p>\n

Such programs provide students at the School of Law with the experiences they need to be effective in the profession, says Janis, who calls himself a \u201cbig believer in international education.\u201d Just as it is acceptable in some cultures and not others for one person to shake another\u2019s hand or to call them by their first name, specific legal rules also vary from country to country and culture to culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you want to do as an international lawyer is make your client feel comfortable in that other culture,\u201d Janis says. \u201cYou need to know enough to know what the right questions are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Mark Janis has been instrumental in building a multifaceted international law program at the UConn Law School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-13055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 19:56:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13055"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37581,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions\/37581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13055"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=13055"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}