I had the privilege to represent the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences as its associate dean in the United States, and to participate on the Law and Society conference in Toronto, Canada, during June 2-11, 2018, hence a short summery of the visit to these countries.
Old and new: the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences has many North-American partners. Among them, the University of Baltimore, School of Law belongs to the older partners. Its professors have visited Szeged several times (Phillip J. Closius was also awarded a Civis Academicus Honoris Cause prize in 2016), and its Center for the Law of Intellectual Property Law and Technology also signed a cooperation agreement with the Szeged Law School. In June, I have met several professors of the Baltimore Law School, including CLIPT’s Professor William Hubbard and Professor Colin Starger, with whom I talked about the details of a future collaboration on the field of IP law. Further, I agreed with Professor Phillip J. Closius about the details of his next visit to Hungary.
The Penn State University Dickinson School of Law belongs to the newer partners of our Faculty, as we signed a Memorandum of Understanding and a Memorandum of Agreement in 2017 on teachers’ and students’ mobility as well as research collaboration. During my visit to Penn State’s campus I was hosted by two associate deans of the School of Law, namely Stephen Barnes (Assistant Dean of Graduate and International Programs) and Victor Romero (Associate Dean for Academic Affairs), I also met Scott Gartner, director of Penn State’ School of International Affairs, as well as several other researcher, faculty and students of the school. As a part of our collaboration, one of the Szeged Law School’s students will spend a whole semester in the Happy Valley. Further, all researchers are warmly welcomed by Penn State. A special chance for a deep collaboration seems to be possible on the field of international relations
Finally, I had the privilege to attend the Law and Society Conference with the financial support of Professor Attila Badó’s NKFI grant. The event was the largest of this series with its 2800+ attendees from all across the globe. On the Toronto event I attended panels dedicated to the topic of the NKFI research project (namely, independence of judiciary), as well as panels related to my specific field of interest, namely, intellectual property law. I also organized a panel for the conference, where American and Finnish presenters introduced their latest research related to the doctrine of exhaustion.
All in all, during the slightly more than one week I spend in the USA and Canada, I had the chance to strike some important deals for the school, I discovered the campus of Penn State, where our students and hopefully our colleagues will have a chance to study/work in the future, and I also had a chance to deepen my own knowledge on the LSA event.
