UMKC offers a four-week, five-credit summer study abroad program in the Republic of Ireland. We also offer two externships with Ireland’s High Courts in Dublin where you may clerk for one of the Superior or High Court Justices for an additional 3-4 weeks in Dublin, Ireland.
This program offers students an opportunity to learn and experience Ireland across the span of two magnificent locations (Cork and beautiful Dingle) which will help you appreciate why Ireland’s membership in the European Union makes Ireland a vital strategic trading location for U.S. corporations, as well as help you understand the role that the European Union Institutions and European Union Free Movement Laws have played in constructing the world’s largest consumer market. You will learn about new types of supranational law-making institutions based in Brussels (EU Commission & Council), Strasbourg (EU Parliament), and Luxembourg (EU Court of Justice), who together make European Law applicable in all 27 Member States legal systems, stretching from Portugal across to Greece in the South, to Finland in the North, Romania to the East to Ireland in the West.
You will learn how the 27 EU Member States legal systems accommodate EU Laws within their own national systems. The key role played by the European Court of Justice in the European Union legal order will be examined. Imagine a court with no dissenting or individual judgments! You will learn about how the Four Freedoms work, involving Free Movement of People, Goods, Services and Corporations. We will also study the powers of the key EU institutions and the role played by these institutions in a new type of legal order, which makes for interesting comparison and contrast with our own U.S. federal institutions, and raises interesting questions about how and why 27 countries’ national judges and legal systems decided to accept the Supremacy of EU Law over National laws to make the EU 27 the world’s most progressive zone for collaborative law-making and cross-border co-operation in many areas ranging from trade liberalization, advancing personal rights and enhancing public freedoms.
March 1st (after that, based on housing availability)
Registration is open to all U.S. and foreign law students as well as any interested graduate student from other disciplines, attorneys, and a limited number of student companions. All applicants must be in good standing and law students must have completed at least one full or part-time year of law study to earn transferrable law credit. Community participants should contact the program coordinator for further information.
