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What We're Working On
Immigration Clinic
Students in Suffolk Law’s Immigration Clinic represent low income noncitizens facing deportation from the United States, with a primary focus on individuals detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (“ICE”). Student-attorneys appear before the Immigration Court in Boston to argue for bond, exam witnesses, challenge removability, and litigate applications for relief. Types of cases include political asylum, Convention Against Torture claims, cancellation of removal, and adjustment of status.
Indigenous Peoples Rights Clinic
Students in Suffolk Law’s Indigenous Peoples Rights Clinic serve Native American tribal governments and indigenous organizations, supporting their nation-building activities and advocacy efforts. Clinic students may work with a division or branch of a tribal government and help with legal projects such as drafting rules for tribal courts, researching land rights, or advocating for indigenous peoples human rights.
Academic Programs
Undergraduate Areas of Study
Alternative Winter Break in Cambodia
The Alternative Winter Break program in Cambodia consists of a 3-credit course in the fall and a 1-credit travel course in the spring. During the fall semester, students learn about Cambodia in the course Conflict and Development in Asia, a course that reviews crucial political and economic events in the region. In January, students take a 1-credit travel course, spending 12 days learning about political, social, and economic issues in Cambodia.
Suffolk students can earn a double major in Global Business in four years, combining it with any functional area of business. Each option provides students with a chance to learn a foreign language, travel the world, and explore international internship opportunities. (Also available as a minor.)
The Institute for Public Service offers a global travel seminar in Comparative Public Policy each year. Experience public affairs while working and living in Ireland. You will understand the cultural, economic, and political environment that the country faces, including the context of the European Union and the global economy.
The Suffolk University Government Department seeks to cultivate thoughtful, active, and responsible global citizens. Courses in the major are intended to help students gain a foundational understanding of how institutions, ideas, and ideology shape politics, policy, and decision-making. Globally minded students can select a concentration in International Relations.
Graduate Areas of Study
Suffolk Law offers a number of international courses and study abroad opportunities, and students can add a global specialization to their degree by choosing a concentration in (or focus on) International Law. Suffolk’s international law students prepare to practice in a legal world that expands to all corners of the world.
International Legal Practice Semester-In-Practice
For students in their final year of law school, this 13-week program provides hands-on international practice experience working full time for a public interest organization while earning academic credit.
Combine a Master of Public Administration with one of several complementary degree programs.
Master of Public Administration
Suffolk MPA students and alumni have been in the heart of action since 1973, working for the greater good as legislators, policy makers, nonprofit leaders, public safety professionals, healthcare leaders, and educators. The Suffolk MPA is one of only five New England schools fully accredited by the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA). Dual degrees with Mental Health Counseling, Political Science, Crime and Justice Studies are offered.
International Internships and Legal Practice
Suffolk has four dynamic and complementary internship programs for the field of international legal practice. Each of the four programs provides students with compelling opportunities to intern internationally in conjunction with specialized academic coursework.
Alumni Impact
In the heated aftermath of President Trump’s first executive order on immigration and refugees, attorneys Susan Church, JD ’95, and her husband, Derege B. Demissie, JD ’97, teamed up with the ACLU’s Mathew R. Segal to file a temporary restraining order in federal court that resulted in the freeing of two Iranian professors who had been detained at Logan Airport on Sunday, January 29, 2017.
The Suffolk University Law School alumni, both of whom are immigration attorneys, and Segal worked feverishly at Logan and behind the scenes to ascertain which foreign nationals had been detained and then to track down federal judges to make a ruling.
“A carton of eggs. That was my thank you gift and payment from my first client in South Africa: the daughter of a chicken breeder. Her 4-year-old son Tim was being denied citizenship in South Africa despite being born there."
“I worked on a number of cases, including a landmark class action against the Department of Education, which required a trip to Transkei to collect affidavits that would bring furniture and toilets to mud schools where poverty is rampant. I also assisted in a lawsuit brought on behalf of the residents of Kwa-Ndancama, where residents living in dire conditions have been waiting since 2004 for the construction of new homes,”
Mixing cement, laying bricks, and nailing down a bamboo floor have a way of bringing people together, according to Paul Mucci, Jr., class of 2017, who visited Cambodia in January through Suffolk’s alternative winter break service learning program.
“We all worked together, ate together, and had fun together. It was like we were all part of one big family. I had the time of my life.”
“We went to learn, to help two families build homes, and to experience another culture,” said Gabrielle Elderd, the student leader on the trip to India.
“We worked hard, got dirty, saw the Taj Mahal, made new friends, and fell in love with a beautiful and intelligent country,”
“Suffolk University has immersed me in globalization, I was dropped into a diverse city with people from all over the world and learned to communicate clearly across diverse cultures.”
“I was also president of the Model United Nations Club; my fellow participants represented 12 different nationalities. With each of those experiences, my cultural understanding grew exponentially.”
“Last summer, Suffolk University School of Law’s exchange program with the National University of Ireland’s School of Law-Galway (Galway Law) provided me with a highly individualized educational experience, as well as hands on work experience that future employers would find valuable.
During the last week of May, I attended a week of intensive law courses at Galway Law in a class that was a mix of American and Irish students. Irish professors taught us the basic principles of Irish history and the Irish legal system with the goal of preparing the class for work in public interest internships throughout Ireland.
For the months of June and July, I was placed in a nine-week internship at the Child Care Law Reporting Project in Dublin. The Reporting Project was founded by a former editor of the Irish Times and a retired Irish Supreme Court justice. The purpose is to educate the public about Irish child welfare court proceedings (which are closed to the public).”