A group of 29 foreign military lawyers representing 21 countries toured Harvard Law School on June 7.
The lawyers are all enrolled in the Defense Institute for International Legal Studies (DIILS), a program run by the U.S. Department of Defense. The HLS tour was at the invitation of John Fitzpatrick ’87. A supervising attorney and senior clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Prison Legal Assistance Project, Fitzpatrick is also a major in the U.S. Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. Fitzpatrick’s Army Reserve unit, the 3rd Legal Operations Detachment, assists the DIILS program at the Naval Station in Newport, R.I.
When Fitzpatrick learned that a group of foreign JAG officers, who were training at the Newport facility, would be taking a weekend field trip to Boston, he jumped at the chance to show them around HLS. Pam Peifer, assistant director of administration of the Harvard Law Library, conducted a tour for the group. “Pam’s generosity helped to foster better ties for HLS and the U.S. with these many foreign partner nations and their militaries,” Fitzpatrick said.
That’s in keeping with the DIILS motto, which is “Justitia per orbem terrarium” or “Justice for all the earth.” The program focuses on nations where the U.S. government has a strategic interest in enhancing the rule of law and democracy, according to the DIILS website.
The lawyers touring HLS came from around the globe, hailing from: Armenia, Argentina, Australia, Bahamas, Colombia, Czech Republic, Japan, Germany, Latvia, Macedonia, Morocco, Mauritius, Nigeria, Pakistan, Romania, Slovak Republic, Tanzania, Turkey, Xambia, Uganda, and United Kingdom.