Diversity is one of the hallmarks of life in Los Angeles. So it is
only fitting that Southwestern’s LL.M. program hosts a cadre of
international students from a wide range of countries and cultures.
Students from Argentina, Armenia, Belarus, Brazil, China, England,
Netherlands, Russia and Saudi Arabia have come to Southwestern this year
to study the American legal system.
Front: Gevorg Muradyan, Taghreed Haddadi and Shaima Bouzhou
Back: Abdulaziz Saeed Alghamdi, Saad Sarhan, Persis Hodiwalla, Saham
Xavier, Danusa Nisgoski, Kate Anufryieva, Gayane Manachian, Lilit
Ghazaryan, Federico Sergio Efron, William McGrayan and Xavier Delorme
On August 13, they visited Los Angeles Superior Court, where
Presiding Judge David Wesley ’72 gave them a brief overview of the
largest trial court system in the United States. The International
students were treated to a behind-the-scenes tour some of the courtrooms
and told about the challenges of running an agency with more than 550
sitting judges, 4,200 support staff, and 38 courthouses covering 4,000
square miles and handling three million cases.
Despite the shrinking budget and expanding caseload that he deals
with, Judge Wesley says, “I’ve loved everything I’ve done in the law.”
He has managed to efficiently run the court, which has paperwork that is
“13 times the height of Mt. Everest.” He explained that 44 police
departments in 88 cities all feed into the L.A. Superior Court.
The LL.M. students were then taken on a walking tour of the court
buildings, including access to underground tunnels where they got to see
the doors that led to an old courthouse jail. At the end of the tunnels
was the Sheriff’s lot, where 500 to 600 prisoners are transported by
bus each day and brought in for their court appearances. LL.M. student
Gevory Muradyan who is originally from Armenia but studied law in
Russia, said it was most interesting to learn that separate buses are
provided for prisoners with disabilities.
Once the students reached the criminal courts building, they got to
observe the action in three different courtrooms. In the arraignment
courtroom on the fifth floor, the suspects are seated in an enclosed
area, the charges against them are read and their pleas are made. Judge
Wesley explained that, “99 percent of the time, they plead ‘not
guilty.’” He later told students that 95 percent of criminal cases
settle before going to trial.
Students were then split into two groups, each sitting in on a
smaller courtroom to spend 20 minutes listening to witness’s testimony
in a preliminary trial. Afterwards, students got a chance to observe
attorneys arguing over the admissibility of certain evidence in an armed
robbery trial. The judge presiding over that case then generously
offered the students a tour of his courtroom and chambers.
“The entire visit was really interesting, getting to know the courts,
the judges, actually watching the criminal process as it runs every
day,” said Federico Efron, an LL.M. student from Argentina, who is also
the 2014-2015 Siderman Fellow. “The most interesting thing, actually,
was finding out that our system is not that different from the American
system. Our process is not entirely oral as it is in America, but we are
heading toward it, so it was like a glance into the future.”
For more information on the Southwestern LLM program click here
http://www.swlaw.edu/
