STU Law’s Summer in Spain Program will award two students the amount of up to $10,000.00 each to cover travel, living, and other expenses connected to a legal internship abroad in any international law field. The Fellowship(s) will be awarded yearly, beginning in 2025. Preference will be given to students pursuing human rights-related work. The goal of the Fellowship is to directly empower our students to pursue excellence, partake of transformative intercultural experiences, and have real impact in the processes that make up and shape international law, guided by the legacy and example of its namesake, Professor W. Michael Reisman.

Michael Reisman is a distinguished scholar of international law and jurisprudence and has published more than 20 books and more than 200 articles. He is one of the co-founders of the policy-oriented approach to law, which inspires this program. Professor Reisman has also served as President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Throughout the years, he has given overall guidance, taught, and supported STU Law’s Intercultural Human Rights LL.M. and J.S.D. Programs, as well as its Summer in Spain Program when it was first established in 1996. He is Myres S. McDougal Professor Emeritus of Law (previously Myres S. McDougal Professor of International Law at the Yale Law School) at the Yale Law School, where he has been on the Faculty since 1965. He taught as a visiting professor in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Berlin, Basel, Paris, Geneva, and many other American law schools.

Professor Reisman’s leadership, inside and outside of academia, has been extraordinary. He has “move[d] frequently and easily between the contemplative and active roles. He [has] participate[d] in the political life of the United States and the world, as a counselor, a decisionmaker, or both . . . . [And he] has always sought to contribute actively to a world public order of human dignity.” He has been a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a former member of its Executive Council, a former member of the Advisory Committee on International Law of the Department of State, President of the Arbitration Tribunal of the Bank for International Settlements, and a member of the Board of The Foreign Policy Association, elected to the Institut de Droit International, President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, Vice-President and Honorary Vice-President of the American Society of International Law, and Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of International Law, as well as served as arbitrator and counsel in many international cases.

Professor Reisman’s scholarship is unparalleled. Some of his books include International Commercial Arbitration: Cases, Materials, and Notes on the Resolution of International Business Disputes (with W. Laurence Craig, William Park and Jan Paulsson) (Foundation Press) (2nd Edition) (2015); Foreign Investment Disputes: Cases, Materials and Commentary (with R. Doak Bishop and James R. Crawford) (Kluwer Law International) (2nd Edition) (2014); Fraudulent Evidence Before Public International Tribunals: The Dirty Stories of International Law (Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures) (with Christina Parajon Skinner) (Cambridge University Press) (2014); The Quest for World Order and Human Dignity in the Twenty-first Century: Constitutive Process and Individual Commitment: General Course on Public International Law (Hague Academy of International Law, 2012); and International Law in Contemporary Perspective (with Manoush Arsanjani, Gayl Westerman, and Siegfried Wiessner) (Foundation: West Academic) (2nd Edition) (2004).

In the words of Professor Siegfried Wiessner, Reisman has been “a beacon of light in the firmament of international law and jurisprudence,” and “the cherished leader of the New Haven School of Jurisprudence, an intellectual movement designed to combine the prescriptive purposes of the law with the empirical insights of the sciences to achieve the goal of the flourishing of human beings, through access by all to the processes of shaping and sharing all things humans value.”

It is in the spirit of Professor Reisman’s legacy that STU Law’s Summer in Spain Program wishes to empower its students to jump into the fray, purposely taking on the cause for human dignity worldwide. STU Law would like to ensure that meritorious students committed to that cause are not deprived of opportunities abroad merely due to a lack of financial resources, especially when they have already obtained admission to a relevant legal internship.

We are currently accepting applications for the Fellowship until May 20, 2025.

For more information and details on the application and selection process, please consult the Handbook.