Belize
Rwanda
Two other students traveled to Belize, a Central American country whose active tourism industry tends to overshadow the dark underbelly of human trafficking and violent crime, much of it drug-related. Lauren Moon and Stephanie Pond spent eight weeks in Belize’s capitol, Belmopan, working for the chief justice. “A typical day involved shadowing one of the Supreme Court justices in trial,” says Moon. “We experienced all levels and divisions of the court both civil and criminal. Following the day’s trial, Stephanie and I would discuss our questions as well as our opinions with the justices in chambers.”
Jesse Clark was one of four students who worked for 10 weeks as legal advisers in the Government Contracts Division of the Rwandan Ministry of Justice. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda completely devastated the country, particularly the legal profession, and Clark says that country’s push for development far exceeds the number of trained legal minds that can regulate it. This often leads to oversights. “It was not uncommon to find a very big obligation in a contract that one of my Rwandan colleagues had completely missed,” he says, noting one agreement with an international development agency that had Rwanda, unknowingly, on the hook for millions of dollars. “They desperately need more Rwandan attorneys,” he says.
Moon says she was also thrilled to contribute to some landmark cases in Belize including the trial of former Belize Prime Minister, Said Musa, and the Mayan Land rights case. Moon also observed the difference in resources available in Belize, as compared to the United States. “A great deal of evidence technology is not available for the average case in Belize. For instance, blood evidence can only be classified by type. Where the technology certainly exists to have more advanced blood and ballistic testing, the finances for equipment do not,” she says. Despite missing out on various summer traditions back home, Moon says there is nowhere else she would rather have been. “Public Interest work is the reason I came to law school, to strengthen the voice of the under-represented.”
Both initiatives are already underway, as nine Pepperdine law students clerked in Ugandan courts this summer. The academic collaboration has also started with Dean Starr serving as the inaugural speaker of the Ugandan Judiciary Distinguished Speaker Series. In addition, four Ugandan judges from the country's commercial courts traveled to Malibu, California, for a Mediating the Litigated Case training at Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution from August 10 through 15.
Clark’s most eye-opening experience in Rwanda came in the Gacaca Courts, which address the question of what to do with hundreds of thousands of people guilty of genocide. “There are no judges and no lawyers,” he explains of the system. “The killer gets up in front of his or her local community, admits who they killed, where the bodies are, etc.; and then that is the end of it. In most cases, the génocidaire [the perpetrator of genocide] walks away.” The experience tested Clark’s ideas of fairness under the law. “My American mind tells me that that is not justice. This killer should be put in jail. It took a long time for me to wrap my head around this, but that is how it’s being done here in Rwanda and it seems to be working,” he says, noting it would take another 110 years to prosecute all the prisoners through the original system. As their internships came to a close, the four students in Rwanda received three welcome visitors. Dean Ken Starr, and Colleen Graffy, professor of law and director of Pepperdine Law’s Global Programs, and Jay Milbrandt, director of Pepperdine's Global Justice Program, who traveled to both Rwanda and Uganda to visit students. Rwanda’s minister of justice, Tharcisse Karugarama, told Dean Starr about the good work of Pepperdine students over the summer and enthusiastically requested that the School of Law send more. When Dean Starr inquired whether they had the space to accommodate more students, the justice minister simply said, “We will make space.”
Visit the Global Justice Program at law.pepperdine.edu/nootbaar/global-justice.
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