Judicial Externships in Buenos Aires, Argentina
May 27 - July 10, 2012
As an alternative to the regular course offerings, a limited number of full-time judicial externships are available to qualified students. Judicial externs receive 3 units of credit for 200 hours of field placement and 2 units for an accompanying course titled Argentine Legal Institutions. Externs are placed in the Argentine Supreme Court, appellate courts, criminal courts and federal courts of first instance. Preference for positions at the Supreme Court is given to students entering their final year of law school.
The externship program begins on May 28 with a five-day segment of Argentine Legal Institutions, which offers students an overview of Argentine judicial procedures and analysis of discrete areas of Argentine law. Students then work at their externships full-time for five weeks from June 4 through July 10 and complete a research paper that serves as the basis of their grade for the classroom component. There is one Argentine holiday in June.
Students will receive a letter grade for the 2-unit Argentine Legal Institutions course. The 3-unit externship itself is graded as "Credit/No Credit." The grade of "Credit" is a passing grade. Only a notation of "Credit" or "No Credit" will be recorded on the student transcript. Southwestern cannot indicate a letter grade for the externship, nor can Southwestern certify that work which receives a "Credit" is equivalent to any particular letter grade. Please contact your home school to ascertain whether transfer units will be awarded for courses designated as "Credit" before applying to the externship program.
All externships are supervised through weekly meetings with Southwestern faculty. The accompanying Argentine Legal Institutions course is taught in Spanish by Professor Pablo Manili, J.D. and Ph.D., University of Buenos Aires School of Law (UBA). Professor Manili teaches constitutional law at UBA, and as a guest professor in many law schools in Argentina and Latin America. He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters and books in the areas of constitutional law, international law and international human rights law.
All students participating in the externship program must be fluent in Spanish. Applicants to the program must submit a completed program application form; a law school transcript; a current resume; and a letter describing their level of Spanish fluency, how that fluency was acquired, and the reasons for their interest in a judicial externship in Argentina (resume and letter should be written in both Spanish and English). Each student will be interviewed in person or by telephone prior to acceptance. While students may apply for externship positions up to April 2, the program will begin to fill placements starting March 1. Placements are assigned in mid-April.
Read students' perspectives on Judicial Externships in Argentina.
