Blame it on the Rain
With approximately seventy-one hours of summer break (most of which were spent packing and sleeping) I made my way through my first (of many) soggy morning rush hour commutes to my new office in Arlington, Virginia. I'll be spending my summer working for the National Center for State Courts, International Programs Division. While a mouthful to say and another mouthful to explain, if I learned one thing my first week, it was just how important the work of NCSC is!
The National Center for State Courts is headquartered in Williamsburg, ironically, it is adjacent to William & Mary Law School. The US operation focuses on the state courts (much like its name would suggest) and providing training and assistance to foster equality and justice under the law.
The International Programs Division (IPD) takes NCSC's domestic mission and applies it to courts around the world. NCSC has conducted projects in over thirty countries, ranging from helping to establish the Iraqi court system to providing training for law enforcement officials to conduct more effective criminal investigations in the Caribbean. It is going to be one exciting and busy summer!
After a quick tour of the office and introductions to the staff, we were put right to work. I began a small research project on three Caribbean countries and how their judicial systems operate. Most of the international research I have done before has been focused on the Middle East, so broadening my horizons to a new region of the world was exciting. NCSC has a huge project going on in the Caribbean right now so I am sure there will be more to come.
Next, and perhaps most exciting, I was introduced to one of my major ongoing projects for the summer, a white paper on Egyptian Anti-Terrorism legislation. Terrorism is my predominant area of interest so I was over the moon to get such a large terrorism project so early in the summer. I have spent a majority of my time since receiving the project reading all that is available on the current security climate in Egypt and coding the data NCSC has acquired so far on legislation in Egypt to prepare to begin the writing process.
Finally, to break up the Egypt project, I also received an assignment from the NCSC project in Morocco to research how judges in the United States are compensated and report back. While this would seem like a relatively straightforward question, as with most things in the law, it depends greatly state by state and congress by congress. My apologies to Morocco on that one.
After a very exciting first week, I am exhausted. The weather has been rainy and gross so I am hoping to get out more next weekend to explore D.C. I have a long list of museums to visit!