Stanford granted $7.2m to expand Afghan legal education

The prestigious Stanford Law School has received a grant amounting to $7.2 million to expand an innovative legal education programme in Afghanistan, the United States announced on Monday.

The Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) will build on its existing partnership American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) to develop a full, five-year integrated Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degree programme on the AUAF’s campus in Kabul, the State Department said.

It added the new degree programme trained Afghan students to become professional lawyers who could provide the much-needed legal representation services, help enforce Afghanistan’s constitution, stabilise the country through rule of law, and become legal educators to teach Afghanistan’s next generation of lawyers.

The new degree-granting programme is the latest in a series of efforts by Stanford Law School faculty and students to enhance legal education in Afghanistan. ALEP was launched in 2007 as a project to develop legal textbooks for AUAF.

The curriculum will emphasise on practical skills, professional responsibility, and substantive instruction in criminal, commercial, comparative, Islamic, and international law. A number of courses will be practice-oriented and geared to experiential learning.

The first class of this new law degree-granting programme will graduate in 2015, the State Department said.