2nd year: Global Governance Studies (GGS)
Scientific Directors: Horatia Muir Watt and Jean d'Aspremont
Academic Advisor: Kyle Schneider
Academic Assistant: Hélène Menguy
programme Description
This one-year M2 level programme, which requires fluent English, welcomes students from Sciences Po and from several élite North American law schools (Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, Virginia). It also offers an exchange programme with Columbia Law School, run jointly with the University of Paris I.
It is designed to provide a comprehensive theoretical and practical approach to legal issues in a global context, whether from a perspective of international litigation and arbitration, of supranational economic governance, or as a matter of transnational advocacy in human rights cases. It forms students who aspire to work in lawfirms in the field of international litigation, in arbitration practice, in international institutions such as the WTO, as inhouse legal advisors to multinational groups, particularly in compliance departments, or as human rights advocates. The more theoretically inclined will find exciting new areas for research on issues of global law and governance.
The compulsory common core of classes relate to advanced private and economic international law, international commercial and investment arbitration, and human rights, development and corporate social responsability. Students are then free to choose electives which focus either on global business and economic law, litigation and arbitration, or accountability, development and human rights.
Methodologically, it offers a deliberately comparative and transdisciplinary perspective on global issues, emphasizing multiple cultural viewpoints. Epistemologically, it rests on a pluralistic conception of the legal field in a global context, encouraging students to break the frames of traditional state-centered legal discourse in public and private international law and to think how to design legal tools for social innovation.
Teaching takes place very largely in English, but students may opt for course offerings in French and, in some instances, Spanish. The overall intake of students is 50 and classes are small (20 maximum for the compulsory classes and fewer for the electives).
The richness of this programme lies in the interaction between students from different institutions and countries, with differing aspirations, horizons and cultural backgrounds ; in the equally varied faculty and guests, who contribute views of globalization from the South and the East ; in the compulsory common core of course offerings, which prevents the usual gap between the study of business law and economic governance on the one hand, and issues of social justice, development and human rights on the other.
The Columbia exchange programme (informations in French) takes on eight students from Sciences Po, who, together with eight from the University of Paris I, spend their first semester at Columbia Law School, and the second in Paris, together with up to 16 students from Columbia who join us. In Paris, these students will choose among the course offerings described above and a course offering by Paris I.
Curriculum
Courses are taught either in English or in French. Students may expect to take the following courses:
Testimonial
