Law School Partnerships

Interest in legal education in the Gulf has attracted two prominent US law schools to form partnerships to develop legal education centers. In Dubai, Penn State Law announced an agreement with Dubai Judicial Institute, and in Qatar the Harvard Law School is working to develop a graduate law program to be located in Education City. The announcements indicate the clear need and good timing for enhanced legal education to serve the growing opportunities here in the GCC. Welcome! See the National Law Journal for more.

Qatar Mall Fire

Qatar's posh Villagio Mall experienced a devastating fire this week claiming many dead and injured. This is a story that touches me deeply as my kids occasionally attended the nursery that burned. The fire claimed many toddlers and fine teachers. Two firefighters died trying to save the kids and many more were injured. My family participated in a remembrance vigil last night with about 100 others at the Pearl. Cherish your kids. Peace.

Brilliant Creative Commons video from CC Qatar

 CC Qatar

Weekend Desert Retreat

I took time off this weekend for some overnight camping in the Dunes. Seven white Land Cruisers took a group of 60 of us south to the Inland Sea, and then to a camp by the beach. That night we spent in the tents with sleeping bags and the wind blowing all night. We lit a bonfire but it lasted less than one hour. The following night was a Qatari wedding. Just an incredible weekend and thanks to my wife Irma for staying home with the kids! I owe you one.

Camp

 

Bed

 

Dinner table

Bon Fire

Sword dance at Wedding

QU Cultural Village 2012

Arabic and English language instruction at QU

The Faculty of Law requires students complete 42 credits in English language law courses,  comprised of  27 compulsory credits in English and additional English electives totaling another 15 credits.  The list of English and Arabic courses is here. Legal research, writing and legal English classes are required in the College of Law to build on the English language skills gained in the first year Foundation Program.  As Dr. Talal Abdulla Al-Emadi said, offering a mixture of  English and Arabic in law courses provides the Qatari community with bilingual law graduates to meet the needs of the legal market . Law students are in high demand and almost all are hired immediately upon graduation in the energy sector , banks, real estate, and investment. Many international law firms hire QU law graduates with strong English skills.

The Qatari Supreme Education Council issued a decision this week  requiring Arabic to be the medium of instruction at Qatar University. The short decree  states that students are to be directly accepted in departments without the need to study the Foundation Program and Arabic will be the medium of instruction at the Faculty of Law, International affairs, Communication, and Business Administration in Fall 2012. Here is the SEC decree.

The Peninsula newspaper has the best article so far discussing the reaction of faculty, students, and the public to the announcement. My own hope is that courses at the College of Law will be altered to meet the expectations of the decree, especially the elimination of the Foundation Program, but instruction will remain bilingual. Library resources and legal research instruction will continue to support both languages.

From the front page of the Peninsula 29-Jan-12

Qatari primary law sources

Over the course of this week I  had meetings at both the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The meetings contrasted the ongoing relevance of print resources in Qatar legal research while eGovernment and open access is in full implementation.

My first meeting on Wednesday was at the ICT with Mr. Hassan Al Sayad. In addition to many other duties, he is in charge of an almost completed project of establishing a comprehensive legal portal to Qatari Law. The aim of the legal portal is excellent from a public access to law perspective and will provide full text access to primary Qatari legal materials. The legal portal will provide multiple formats of the documents, including Adobe PDF that preserves the integrity of the Arabic language better than HTML formatting. The database will be searchable by title, keyword, citation and other standard field searches. Also, translation is provided and material will be in English and the original Arabic, of course. Mr. Hassan was kind enough to provide the offer of early access to the database to me for comments and usability.

My second meeting was with Mr. Mohd Bin Younes at the Ministry of Justice. He is head of the Gazette and codification efforts in Qatar. I enjoyed this meeting very much and obtained a complete catalog of Qatari primary law available from the Gazette Department. This includes bound yearly compilations of the Gazette, subject specific compilations in hard bound and soft bound format, and the ongoing regular editions of the Gazette. Examples of subject specific titles include corporation law and e-commerce for Qatar. All resources in print are in Arabic and available retrospectively.
 

The presence of ICT’s legal portal to Qatari primary law does not, in my opinion, make the collection of these print resources unnecessary. As Mr. Mohd indicated, the print version is the official version of edicts, regulations, rules, and selected cases, and the electronic versions are not as reliable and are not official. Not yet. Using the electronic and print source together will provide the best combination of search, translation, and authenticity.  

Celebrating Eid

Last week was a national holiday for Eid Al-Adha. Qatar University was closed for a week. Most people travelled to Dubai or Europe for Eid. My family and I moved into a new apartment on the Gulf and took the week to shop at the furniture souk and set up the new place. The best part of the flat is the balcony view to the marina at Porto Arabia.

We are located in the new development called 'the Pearl' on reclaimed land from the sea and it is a mega-development with lots of family friendly amenites. The commute to my library at QU is now only ten minutes!

Here is the link to the Pearl: click

Eid Mubarak

QU Campus - old and new

It is much cooler in Qatar now and easy to walk around campus. I took these three shots today, Nov 2nd, 2011. It shows the contrast between the older campus and new College of Law building.

University Mosque near the Men's library.

College of Law facility

Arts Building

Qatari Public Prosecution and access to legal information

Our Dean recently secured access to the cases of the Qatari Public Prosecution office so that Faculty with an appointment may research criminal cases. These are records of criminal prosecutions in archives and are available only in paper to those with permission to access them. There are plans to digitize and translate them in the future. In May the Public Prosecution Office of Qatar adopted electronic case management and in July announced the first public access website at http://www.pp.gov.qa/. The Qatari Attorney General and his department are changing the rules of public access to legal information in Qatar!  

National Day