Five undergraduate law students from Kent are currently enjoying a five-week Winter School at two Brazilian universities, the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Porto Alegre and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte. It is the first of what is hoped will be annual event in the Kent Law School calendar.
Hannah Loosley (Stage 3 Law with Spanish), Anniella Prinzhorn (Stage 2 International Legal Studies), Jaspinder Singh Cheema (Stage 2 Law LLB), Sarah Obihara (Stage 3 Law and Sociology) and Catherine McLatchie (Stage 3 Law LLB) were all accompanied by Law Lecturer Joe Thompson for the first two weeks of the visit and are due to return to the UK at the end of August.
In addition to attending lectures, the students visited the Tribunal de Justiça in Porto Alegre, accompanied by the eminent private international law and consumer protection law specialist Professor Claudia Lima Marques from UFRGS, and have met with Vice-President Desembargador Francis José Moesch, author of Codigo de Processo Civil, (the new Civil Procedure Code for Brazil). A report of their visit was published (in Portuguese) in the Tribunal’s monthly online magazine (page 20).
So far, the group has also visited a local criminal court, where they observed an appeal being made on behalf of local police officers who were seeking permission to take their guns home after work, and has participated in a lively and engaging Q&A session with local members of the Brazilian Bar Association at the Universidade de Caxias do Sul (UCS). Questions pitched by the audience to the panel (which included Joe Thompson) included queries about issues related to corruption, immigration and constitution in the UK. In Belo Horizonte, Kent law students have visited the Human Rights and International Relations Divisions of the Government of Mina Gerais and the House of Representatives as well as several research groups at the UFMG Law School.
Pictured above during their visit are (from left to right): Ardyllis Soares (PhD candidate at UFRGS), Hannah Loosley, Anniella Prinzhorn, Jaspinder Singh Cheema, Joe Thompson, Sarah Obihara , Catherine McLatchie and Professora Claudia Lima Marques (UFRGS).
More pictures of the visit are available to view on our Brazilian Winter School Pinterest Board.