Description:

Faculty & Fellows Colloquium

Legal Education in Ethiopia: Expansion; Challenges; Potential for Collaboration

Thomas Geraghty, Law, and Mandefrot Belay, Addis Ababa University

Thomas Geraghty is a Professor of Law, the Associate Dean for Clinical Legal Education and Director of the Bluhm Legal Clinic at the Northwestern University School of Law. Geraghty works in Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi on research projects with law students involving juvenile justice, the legal problems of street children, the status of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, women in the legal profession, and freedom of the press. In 1996, he helped to design a clinical curriculum for the Addis Ababa University School of Law. He recently completed an assessment of Legal Education in Ethiopia for the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative.

Mandefrot Belay teaches law at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He worked for the Ethiopian government for over 15 years, including: Director of the National Justice System Reform Program at the former Ministry of Capacity Building (now Ministry of Civil Service), Head of Law Reform Bureau at the Justice and Legal System Research Institute, and Head of the Department of Legal Counsel at the Federal Ministry of Justice. He joined the American Bar Association Rule of law Initiative (ABA ROLI) in 2008 and served as a Country Director for Ethiopia 2008 to February 2012 implementing the USAID/ABA ROLI program of support for legal education in Ethiopia. He holds law degrees from Nagpur University, India; Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; and the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, Netherlands.