About

The school’s Department of Law (LAW) offers two graduate degrees: an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law, MA in International Human Rights Law and Justice, Graduate Diploma in International Human Rights Law, Graduate Diploma in International and Comparative Law and Justice, and Bachelors of Arts in Political Science/Masters of Arts in International Human Rights Law and Justice.
    
These degrees attract a diverse constituency of Egyptian and international students interested in pursuing careers in academia, international civil service, human rights and development work, or in the legal profession as lawyers, judges or prosecutors.  Wide range of courses are designed to provide students with the intellectual and analytical tools to intervene critically and effectively from a global south perspective in the policy debates around the challenges confronting their societies.  

The Department’s course offerings have expanded in the years since the founding of GAPP to the undergraduate level particularly in the framework of a dual degree with the Department of Political Science at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in AUC. The Department is currently exploring expanding its undergraduate curriculum.

In 2013 and 2014, the LL.M. in International and Comparative Law was ranked first in Africa.  Our students have competed in many international law moot court competitions and have achieved excellent results.  

The Department’s team won the national rounds at the 2017 Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, by far the most prestigious of its kind, and were ranked 93 (out of 700 teams coming from more than 90 countries). Also in 2017, the Department’s team won the African International Human Rights Law Moot Court Competition. Graduates from the Department have gone on to further study at elite law faculties abroad, such as Harvard Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, New York University, the University of Toronto Cambridge University, LSE, SOAS, and Sciences Po.  The Department’s alumni have moved on to prestigious local and international law firms in both Egypt and abroad, to higher responsibilities in both government and nongovernmental organizations in Egypt, to join or rise in the judiciary in Egypt or elsewhere, and to major international institutions like United Nations agencies or the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

In addition, the Department continuously strives to increase its impact on public debates through regular outreach activities such as public lectures and presentations, which are also held with prominent speakers from Egypt and from international institutions such as Human Rights Watch, the European Commission delegation in Egypt, and universities around the world. 
In 2014, the Law and Society Research Unit (LSRU) was established, bringing together the expertise of a diverse set of scholars - lawyers, academics, researchers and activists - interested in employing a sociological reading of law and revolution in Egypt to address larger theoretical concerns spanning Islamic law, positive law, administration of justice practices, tribal and customary law, as well as oral history on the subject. 

One of the unit’s projects was Manshurat Qanuneya which is Egypt’s first digital and open access legal archive hoping to bridge the gap between law and society in Egypt.