For decades, Pitt Law and its Center for International Legal Education (CILE) has been synonymous with legal education in conflict zones. Long before other American law schools, we were training the next generation of global lawyers and leaders in often overlooked areas of the world. One of our first foreign partnerships was with Donetsk National University Faculty of Law in Eastern Ukraine. Two decades later, we boast dozens of LLM graduates from Ukraine, more than from any other single country. We have also been active in Afghanistan since 2015 and have collaborated with over a dozen Afghan law schools to train their students, coaches, and faculty in international commercial law and arbitration.
This year, Ukraine and Afghanistan are at the center of crises, fundamentally testing the rule of law and democracy. This moment demands that we respond, and we have. In August 2022 we welcomed eleven deserving law students from Ukraine and Afghanistan, allowing them to escape the current crises in their home countries, work on meaningful pro bono matters through our International Legal Assistance projects, and earn their LLM degrees in Pittsburgh. Like our other foreign law graduates, we hope they will eventually be able to return to their home countries, where they will become leaders in strengthening democracies and the rule of law.
For 2022-23, we are pleased to announce our inaugural class of eleven Rule of Law Scholars:
