The Winter Law School Programme was a five-week programme that commenced on the 17th of June and ended on the 18th of July.  The Mandela Institute of the School of Law at the University of Witwatersrand worked together with the Seattle University School of Law to offer this programme.  There were lecturers from Wits University as well as from the University of Seattle. 

Our class consisted of about twenty students.  Ten were from the United States and three of us Candidate Attorneys were from the Legal Resources Centre – Stacy-Leigh Manoek from the Cape Town office, Bongumusa Sibiya from the Johannesburg office and myself from the Durban office.  This was a great opportunity for us to get to know each other better as we had already met at the LRC’s Annual General Meeting in May 2008.  The other students were from the African continent and yet others were working at the Wits Law Clinic.

The programme offered three topics – Legal Writing/Global Advocacy, Advanced Constitutional Jurisprudence and Litigation and International Human Rights Law and the role of Corporations.  I elected to do the first two topics.

The Legal Writing/Global Advocacy classes were lectured by Mimi Samuel and Laurel Oates from the University of Seattle, Victoria Bronstein, an associate professor at the Wits School of Law and Lorraine Chaskalson, a former lecturer at the Wits University.  The course taught the basic principles of legal writing as well as a comparison of the different styles of writing.  Because the majority of students were from the United States and South Africa we compared the writing styles of these two countries by analyzing judgments handed down from the United States Supreme Court of Massachusetts and the South African Constitutional Court.  The major assignment required that we draft heads of argument for a hypothetical case on the right to freedom of expression.  We also engaged with oral argument on the assignment.

The Advanced Constitutional Jurisprudence and Litigation course was lectured by Jonathan Klaaren, a professor at the Wits School of Law and Theunis Roux, a Director of the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law.  To complete the course we were required to do one assignment and a take home test.

Overall the course was rewarding as I have an interest in constitutional law and the interpretation of rights. I also enjoyed the experience because I got to meet students and lecturers from other countries and we were exposed to a new teaching style and also learnt a few things about US law and their systems.

Mbalenhle Cele