This summer, fourteen students – thirteen judges from Brazil and one lawyer from Nigeria – have been taking courses in the Master of Comparative Law (MCL) Program at the Cumberland School of Law. Ten MCL students will spend July in England along with ten JD students from the US, studying international and comparative law in Cumberland’s Cambridge study-abroad program. After the MCL students return home, they will use the knowledge and skills they have gained in these courses to work toward completing the other requirement for the MCL degree, a substantial thesis on a comparative law topic. We know of two MCL theses that have been published as books in Brazil. The MCL program has been responsible for building a remarkable breadth and depth of relationships between Samford and Brazil, which is rapidly becoming a major force in the 21^st-century world. MCL students regularly extol the benefits they gain from this program, including greater appreciation of the US and our legal system, a richer understanding of their own civil law system from comparing it with the common law system in the US and the UK, and the strong long-term friendships that they forge with US students and faculty. Our students and faculty here gain a corresponding opportunity to interact with the distinguished visitors that the MCL Program brings to our campus from Brazil and elsewhere in the world. Mike Floyd directs the program. 

  

The world is better because Samford reaches beyond the gates.