The establishment of a Global Legal Studies (GLS) Center within the UW Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies was approved on December 21, 2006, by the UW-Madison Academic Planning Council.

The primary purpose of the Center will be to create an institutional platform for implementing the Law School’s strategic goal of pursuing the opportunities of globalization in the arena of academic research, conferences, and outreach.

Plans for the new GLS Center were first formulated in the Global Legal Studies Initiative, launched in 2003 and supported jointly by the Law School and the Division of International Studies.

Director of the Center will be UW Professor of Law Heinz Klug, who will work closely with Associate Director Sumudu Atapattu in developing the Center’s programs and outreach activities.

GLS Director Heinz Klug comments, “This is a milestone in our efforts to expand global opportunities for our students and faculty, and an appropriate next step for the UW Law School, with its long tradition of international engagement.”

Klug adds, “From the law and development movement to more recent aspects of globalization, our faculty members have been active abroad, teaching, conducting research, and working to enhance legal education and practice on every continent. We will continue to promote this engagement by building on our international resources, such as our highly successful East Asian Legal Studies Center, our opportunities for foreign lawyers to do research at the Law School, and our student exchange programs with prominent law schools in Africa, Europe, and Latin America.”

Specific goals of the Center include promotion of socio-legal research on issues of international and comparative law; helping to disseminate UW scholarship internationally; facilitating contacts with scholars in other countries; and sharing expertise with constituencies in Wisconsin and worldwide.

Submitted by on January 25, 2007

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