12 July 2024
Human Rights Policy Legal Clinic
Legal clinic is a special form of legal education, combining theory and practice, designed to teach not only knowledge, but also develop skills and instill values, and promote social justice. Legal clinics exist in many forms. One of them is a Policy legal clinic, where students do not help individual clients, but rather focus on existing legal problem from a policy perspective, usually by analysis of legal regulation and its practical application, identifying problems and deficiencies, and suggesting general measures, such as changes to legal regulation or other policy-oriented activities, to address the problem.
In summer of 2024, Palacký University, Faculty of Law, would like to invite you to experience the Second Installment of Human Rights Policy Legal Clinic Summer School. The Human Rights Policy Legal Clinic course, which normally takes a whole semester, will be condensed in two weeks intensive schedule of Summer School. Participants of the first Human Rights Policy Legal Clinic Summer School in 2023 appreciated that the course equipped them with necessary tools to identify deficiencies in human rights protection and to suggest measures and legal changes to address the problems. They valued the opportunity to meet wide variety of professionals with different backgrounds working on human rights in many diverse settings.
Summer school tentative program:
The usual structure of the academic program on each day (the program will be in English):
Morning session with an expert (9-12 a.m.) (1 coffee break in the morning)
Lunch (12-13)
Independent work on a group project, practicing and development of competences relevant for human rights policy work (13-15) (1 coffee break during the independent work)
Joint feedback and reflection (15-16)
Optional social program (18-??)
Preliminary program (topics) for each day:
Online preparation session – getting ready for summer school and your project
Monday 1st July: Cross-Cultural Awareness and Respect, Universality of Human Rights
Project work: Human Rights Sensitivity - Identification of human rights issues
Tuesday 2nd July: Evolutive Interpretation and Comparative Perspective of Human Rights
Project work: Defining topics for summer school projects
Wednesday 3rd July: Writing a Submission to the ECtHR
Project work: Researching legal information for summer school projects
Thursday 4th July: Investigating mass human rights violations
Project work: Researching facts for the summer school projects
Friday 5th July: Human Rights, Misinformation and Credibility
Project work: Structuring and analyzing the problem for the summer school projects
Saturday & Sunday 6th and 7th July: free time, sightseeing, sleeping
Course aim
Learning outcomes: Summer Law School will allow the participants to develop:
knowledge in the area of international, European and comparative human rights law (proportionality, horizontal effect, tension between universalism and particularism, equality, positive and negative obligations) and specific rights (human dignity, freedom of speech, socio-economic rights, environmental rights),
develop wide range of analytical, creative, problem-solving, legal writing and critical thinking skills, increase their sensitivity to human rights issues in general, but specifically in cross-cultural context, and
understand the importance of human rights monitoring, policing and advocacy.
During the two weeks of the Summer Law School, participants will engage in interactive sessions with human rights experts from various fields and backgrounds (attorneys, judges, human rights activists), developing their knowledge and relevant skills, which they will use over the course of the whole summer school when working in teams on analytical human rights policy projects, starting from defining and structuring the analyzed problem, researching and discussing it, presenting to others and writing and receiving feedback to their policy paper.
Credits info
Students will be able to get enrolled in a formalized course at Palacký University, granting them ECTS credits.
Fee info
EUR 490: includes academic program and catering during the academic program – 2 coffee breaks and lunch each day
Scholarships
Aurora Alliance students can participate in the academic program free of charge. They may pay an optional fee of 180 EUR in order to be provided with catering during the academic program (2 coffee breaks and lunch each day). If not, there are numerous opp