Bem vindo! Welcome! This summer legal and policy study program is designed to offer a maximum degree of flexibility for students to earn either three (3) or six (6) credits in the study of comparative and international law. The month-long program permits students to take one or two modules, each of two-weeks duration. Each module is worth three (3) credit hours. In this way, the program offers students with work or other family commitments the option to come for two weeks and benefit from the richness of the foreign study experience. For students who can come for an entire month (and, ideally, students are encouraged to come for the whole time), the program offers the opportunity to select from a menu of complementary courses in areas of comparative and international law that are of special interest to them.

The program will include a mixture of learning experiences. Traditional lecture and class discussions will be supplemented by role-playing exercises and on-site demonstrations from local researchers and practitioners. All lectures will be IN ENGLISH or accompanied by English translation.

Each of the courses is designed to maximize opportunities for students to learn about Brazil and Rio de Janeiro from those who know it best -- its citizens. To that end, each course features Brazilian speakers drawn from law, government and civil society.

Speakers have included figures from some of Rio’s most prominent institutions, such as the world-renowned Botanical Garden (a leading federal research institution -- http://www.jbrj.gov.br/) and the non-governmental organization Viva Rio (http://www.vivario.org.br/english/), which has established a network of  internationally-recognized poverty reduction programs in over 30 of the city’s largest shantytown communities. In addition, each course is taught in collaboration with faculty drawn from Rio’s top universities.

Where a guest speaker’s work touches one or more of the substantive areas covered in the program, students will engage in collaborative sessions with their classmates enrolled in other courses. Moreover, to the extent that their own academic schedules permit, Brazilian graduate students will participate in the classes and field visits. The program thus provides students with a variety of learning situations and opportunities. The program further features extensive field visits to places of special interest. For example, environmental law students will go into the Atlantic rainforests (one of the world’s largest tropical forest systems).  Human rights students visit with community leaders demanding that the government give them housing and life-sustaining employment. Students of race and the law visit with quilombolos – leaders of communities descended from escaped slaves, to discuss their efforts to secure racial equality. 

In short, this program has been designed to offer students the widest possible exposure to Brazil and, above all, to the richness of its most famous city, Rio de Janeiro. The program is demanding intellectually and professionally. However, Brazilians are famous for their ability to weave work and pleasure together. Students can also be assured that they will have time to enjoy themselves apart from their studies and return home invigorated by their time in (as Cariocas say) “a cidade maravilhosa” – “the marvelous city.”

This Program is a project of the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth, Georgia State University College of Law.

The Program is fully approved by the American Bar Association.