International Visitors Share Perspectives

Five visiting practitioners and scholars from four continents provided curricular enrichment in presentations to faculty and students during a six-week period in the spring semester.

A highlight on April 6, 1998 was a visit by 1978 Washburn Law School graduate E. Eugene Clark who presently serves as Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Canberra in Australia. Gene compared trends in the legal profession and legal education in Australia and the United States. His description of recent mergers of law and accounting firms is Australia provoked a wide-ranging discussion of the resulting ethics and practice issues. Clark is a recognized scholar in the area of commercial law and spent the spring semester, 1998, as a Visiting Professor of the University of New Mexico Law School. Prior to joining the Law Faculty at Canberra, he was on the Law Faculty at the University of Tasmania.

On March 5, Raquel Alvarado Beltran, a prosecutor from Peru, discussed proposed reforms of the Peruvian criminal code and sentencing, corrections and human rights issues at a forum hosted by the International Law Society. She was accompanied by Dr. Zoraida Avalos Rivera, a prison administrator in Peru. Their visit was coordinated by the U.S. Information Agency.

The following morning, Tatsuo Tanaka, Consul General of Japan in Kansas City, gave a presentation on international trade issues, also sponsored by the International Law Society. The Kansas City office is one of 16 regional consulates maintained in the United States and its territories. Consul General Tanaka has spent 36 years with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and previously represented Japan in Germany and Pakistan.

On April 8-9, Professor Neal MacCormack of the University of Edinburgh Law School in Scotland lectured on jurisprudence and constitutional law issues. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Texas Law School during the spring semester.

Professor Dermot Walsh of the University of Limerick Law School in Ireland visited on April 14-15. He conducted a faculty development session discussing criminal law and human rights issues as well as the peace accord entered just days before his visit. He also lectured on "Bloody Sunday" to a standing room only audience in Room 100.