Santa Clara University

The Power of Place

Law students travel to El Salvador to study the legal system

By Cynthia A. Mertens, professor of law since 1975 and director of the Katharine and George Alexander Community Law Center.

Law student Supriya Bhat (center, red shirt) with two women and several children from the the village of Copapayo.

Recall your most intense or powerful learning experience. Was it  sitting in a classroom, listening to a lecture? Preparing for your first court hearing or your first trial? For fourteen second and third year law students it was, without a doubt, studying the justice system in El Salvador in January 2004. The trip was an intense educational experience with tremendous emotional impact. It was so different from the   “normal” law school learning experience that describing it to those who  did not experience it is difficult. It far surpassed my expectations. In short, it was the best educational experience I have provided students in my 29 years of teaching law school and rates as the best professional experience of my career as a lawyer.

El Salvador is one of the poorest of the Central American countries and one that suffered numerous atrocities during a civil war that lasted from 1980 to 1992. My interest in El Salvador stems from a faculty immersion trip in which I participated in March 2001. I made the commitment after returning from that trip that I would someday take a group of law students there to study the justice system and its relation to human rights. During the planning stages, I had no idea how profoundly it would affect the lives of the students who participated.