Preparations

Preparations for the trip are slowly coming along. I've taken care of my passport an am working on getting my vaccinations and any other medical requirements I need to take care of before I go. I still have to buy a plane ticket - I'm waiting on that to see if I get the fellowship or not. And I'm still working on housing too. I got a list of housing today - capitalism has definitely found its way into South Africa. Talk about price gouging. Some of the places are asking for $100 a day - that's more than 700 Rand a day! Definitely out of my price range. I'll have to do some more searching once I get done with my last paper next week. I just finished my paper on welfare rights and South Africa. If anyone wants to read it let me know and I will send it along.

45 days until I start at the SALRC!

What the Heck is a Law Reform Commission?

A law commission is an independent organization that is set up by the government to reform the laws. This begs the question, "What is law reform?"

Law reform is a process whereby the commission examines the laws of a state and makes recommendations or proposals for changing the laws. These proposals then go to the government and they may then choose to implement the proposal.

Government, in terms of law reform, is not the same as government the way Americans think of it. In a parliamentary system, government refers to the governing party. For example, in Britain Gordon Brown is the Prime Minister of the government. His government was formed from the Labour Party. Many other governments are formed from a coalition of different political parties and the majority coalition is referred to as the government. It is the government who gives the law reform commissions their assignments and in turn receives the end product from the commission.

The South African Law Reform Comission (SALRC)

The SALRC was created by the South African Law Reform Commission Act 19 of 1973 (which means it is actually older than the South Africa we know today, which was formed after the end of apartheid in 1994).

Section 4 of the Act sets out the SALRC's goals: "To do research with reference to all branches of the law of the Republic and to study and investigate all such branches in order to make recommendations for the development, improvement, modernisation or reform there of..." specifically it will make recommendations on: "the repeal of obsolete or unnecessary provisions; the removal of anomalies; the bringing about of uniformity in the law in force in the various parts of the Republic; the consolidation or codification of any branch of the law; and steps aimed at making the common law more readily available."

This means that the SALRC is essentially an advisory body. The enactment of its reforms is the responsibility of the government.

So I will be working on examining the various laws relating to or effecting Hindu marriages. I'm looking forward to learning more about a new legal system and how different laws are implicated in this area.

What's Happened So Far

Hello friends and family! I am starting this blog so that I can keep you all updated on my summer 2010 trip to South Africa. No, I'm not going for the World Cup (although I may try to catch a game). I will be working for the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) in Pretoria, South Africa this summer on a project on Hindu marriages. All of this isn't quite as random as it might seem. Here's the story so far:

My law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, has several programs that let you study/work abroad for a summer or a semester. You can take summer school classes in Aberdeen, Scotland; be an exchange student at universities in Santiago, Chile, Hamburg, Germany, Beijing, China, Cape Town, South Africa; work for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica; work for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; work in South Africa for the fall or spring semester; or spend a summer working with one of the various law reform commissions around the world. Since I do not know any Chinese or German, and am not fluent in Spanish, some of these were immediately off the table. I decided last semester that I wanted to go to South Africa. In order to have this ability I had to choose between taking South Africa: Race and the Law or Comparative Public Policy and Law Reform. Since I wasn't sure that I wanted to spend next fall abroad, I chose the latter.

Early in the semester I had to choose which commissions I wanted to apply to. My top three were:

1. SALRC

2. Australian Law Reform Commission

3. Scottish Law Commission

Each one of these would have provided an amazing experience, but South Africa was the one I had my heart set on. It also helps that I have been researching South Africa throughout the semester for a paper in that course. (In the paper I am arguing that the United States needs a constitutional amendment that guarantees welfare rights. While this seems like a radical concept to many Americans, that is not the case in South Africa. South Africa's Constitution was adopted in 1996 and is one of the progressive in the world. It guarantees, among many other things, welfare rights, such as the right to housing and education).

I sent my preferences to one of my professors who was trying to get those of us interested in working for a commission a summer position.

On April 6, I got my first inkling of SALRC's interest when my professor asked me to send an updated resume and list of projects SALRC was working on that I would be interested in. The SALRC is working on so many interesting projects right now that it was hard to select just a few, but several struck me as very interesting: Hindu Marriages; Review of administration orders; Sexual Offences: Adult prostitution; or Assisted decision-making: Adults with impaired decision-making capacity.

Each of these interested me for different reasons. The assisted decision-making project interested me because of a negotiation competition I was in earlier this semester where I was trying to negotiate medical care for a woman with Alzheimer's. I chose the sexual offences project because I have always been interested in criminal law, and it would be interesting to see how South Africa dealt with that problem. And the Hindu Marriages project interested me because of something I read for class. One day, when we were discussing South Africa, we read a proposal by the SALRC on unifying South African law, international law, and the customary Islamic law on marriages. Assuming that the Hindu Marriages project would involve something similar, I thought that it would be a great way to be exposed to multiple areas of law and public policy.

A week later, my professor informed me that the SALRC wanted to offer me a summer position. I was ecstatic. I don't thing words can really describe how excited I was to hear the news. And this past Friday, I found out that I will be working on the Hindu Marriages project. So, not only was I lucky enough to get my first choice of summer jobs, but I also get to work on one of the projects that I find most interesting.

On Friday, my "Rough Guide to South Africa" arrived, which I was able to start reading yesterday. I had to finish a paper for Election Law that was due on Saturday, so it took quite a bit of self-control to not ditch the paper for the guidebook. I've already started reading it, trying to get acquainted with an overview of South Africa's history as well as what sorts of things I need to get done before I leave.

One of the big things that I have started working on is funding my trip. I applied for a David S. Brown Fellowship (http://www.law.umaryland.edu/programs/international/fellows.html) that my school gives out to help provide financial support for international public service and externship programs. The funds for the fellowship are for off-setting airfare and to partially subsidize housing expenses. I had to put together a estimated budget, which proved to be difficult in itself, since prices are hard to gauge with the World Cup going on.

I've read about other people doing this, and I've always though that it was a clever fundraising tactic: I'm asking for any of my friends and family members who would like and are able to do so, to sponsor a portion of my trip. Some of the various things I have thought of people sponsoring and my guesstimated prices are:

World Cup Match: $50

Rugby Game: $50

Safari at Kruger National Park: $150

Train Trip to Cape Town: $75

Cage Diving with Great White Sharks: $200

Sponsor A Day: $ 20

1-Day Car Rental: $40

Those are just the things that I want to do so far. I hope to be able to stay for a week or two after my work for the SALRC ends so that I can see the country.

What do sponsors get besides my undying gratitude and knowing that they helped me have an amazing time? For any donation of $40 or more, I will send you a post card from a place I visit. $50 or more will get you either a postcard or handwritten note and, if sponsoring a trip to a sporting event, a souvenir from the game. (I'm not sure what kind of souvenirs there will be, but at a minimum I think that I can can send a program). If donating $150 or more or by sponsoring a trip to Kruger National Park, I will send you a framed 8x10 picture from my trip as well as a CD/DVD of the photos that I take. For those of you that have seen some of my photography, you know that this can be quite the nice item. And for $200 or more or sponsoring my cage diving adventure, well I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I don't know that I can take pictures of the sharks. BUT I have plenty of time to come up with something.

I intend on updating this blog as much as possible both before I leave and while I am abroad, so check back often to see what I am up to.