Another "American Spring" at our Faculty!
We are delighted that American lecturers are visiting our Faculty with increasing frequency, not only for working visits, conferences, or research projects, but also as teachers conducting classes with our students. A comparative perspective is a valuable complement to lectures on the institutions of Polish private and public law.
Last academic year’s “American March”, featuring three lecturers from Illinois, California, and Kansas, as well as the autumn lecture series delivered by attorney Thomas A. Dickson from North Dakota, proved to be the beginning of another “American semester” at the Faculty.
The English Division of our Faculty is pleased to announce that, since February, we have been hosting Steven Oberman, an attorney and lecturer at the University of Tennessee College of Law, who conducts weekly classes for Polish students of Law, Criminology, and Criminology & Criminal Justice, as well as for international students participating in our academic exchange programmes.
In addition to his classes as a Guest Lecturer, Steven Oberman has, since March, also been teaching his own original course, “American Trial Advocacy”, twice a week. Last week, as part of this course, “The Murderer Mystery Party” took place — an interactive exercise involving our students, in which, in the form of a game, they conducted an investigation into a murder, identified the perpetrator, and reconstructed the course of events. Under Steven Oberman’s guidance, our students took on the roles of suspects, the perpetrator, and witnesses. Our guest will remain with us until the beginning of June.
In April, our Faculty was visited by Professor Douglas McKechnie from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. Professor McKechnie is a constitutional lawyer whose research interests include freedom of speech, human rights, and the judiciary. He met with students during a constitutional law class. Following an introduction on the legal regulation and normative content of freedom of speech in European Union and United States law, a question-and-answer session was held, which clearly showed how much interest the topic generated among our students — almost 20 questions were asked.
At the beginning of June, we will be visited by Professor Rakesh K. Anand from Syracuse University, New York, whose research focuses on issues at the intersection of legal theory, legal ethics, and European law. Our guest is planning a seminar meeting with scholars from our Faculty working in related areas of legal research.
Steven Oberman also invites everyone to an online meeting on 21 May 2026 with two special guests: a distinguished attorney who has practised criminal law for more than a quarter of a century and is a nine-time recipient of the Super Lawyer title in the State of Maine, and a long-serving agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was involved in solving the high-profile case presented in the documentary series Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, available on one of the popular media platforms. Our guest appears in the series!
I would like to express my sincere thanks to our lecturers for welcoming attorney Oberman into their classes, and to the Faculty administration for its assistance in organising the visit. I also warmly thank the students of our Faculty for their active participation in the classes conducted by our guests.
In the new academic year, we will be welcoming further guests from the United States; the first visit has already been confirmed. Please follow our information channels.
