Week 10
The last week of the legal internship with NCSC was bittersweet. It was an opportunity to finish up projects, give presentations on what we had learned, and say goodbye to the interns and staff that I had enjoyed working with over the last ten weeks.
I began my week by finishing the task of adding learning outcomes (comprising of both outcomes from the Moldovan Ministry of Education, as well original outcomes I formulated with Professor Franklin) to each class of the Moldovan Legal Reasoning, Research, and Writing (LRRW) curriculum. With these learning outcomes approved, semester 1 was complete, and submitted to the NCSC program office in Moldova.
On Tuesday, the interns all gave a presentation to many staff of the International Program Group, including some staff in program offices abroad. The presentation addressed the International Criminal Court’s current cases and ongoing investigations. Specifically, I was responsible for researching and presenting the portion of the presentation on the ICC’s charges against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova for their operation of a program to kidnap Ukrainian children and forcibly relocate them to Russia. Sub-topics included the historical context in Ukraine, the specifics of the ICC’s charges, the specifics of the ICC’s jurisdiction, and ways in which Russia’s war has worked against many of Putin’s goals.
On Thursday, one of the other interns and I gave a second presentation, this time to law students in Tunisia, on immunity as it pertains to international law. This presentation explained the differences between different forms of immunity, how immunity is balanced against jurisdiction, how different nations approach the issue, and the trend away from recognition of immunity for certain violations of international law.
Friday, the last day of my internship, I completed a draft of the learning outcomes for the second semester of the Moldovan LRRW curriculum and submitted it for approval and revision by Tim Hughes and Professor Franklin.
During my last week at NCSC, I also had the opportunity to thank and say farewell to the other interns and staff, who made my ten weeks at NCSC incredibly educational and fulfilling. I am proud of all that I learned and accomplished this summer, and I hope to stay in touch with everyone I met in the course of this internship, both in DC and abroad.