The University of Miami School of Law--located in a metropolitan area that is engaged in a booming commercial and cultural exchange with Latin America--has added a course based on the Spanish civil code and taught entirely in Spanish.

"Obligations in the Spanish Civil Code" is the one of the first courses to be taught in Spanish at any U.S. law school outside of Puerto Rico.

"There have been other courses taught on the Spanish legal system, but generally, they have been surveys, rather than in-depth analyses such as we're doing here, and they have been in English," said Dr. Enrique Fernández-Barros, who teaches the course. Prof. Fernández-Barros is a former professor of law at the Catholic University St. Thomas Villanova in Havana, Cuba, and a former professor of Spanish at the University of Iowa.

"'Obligations,' which covers both contracts and torts in the Spanish civil code, are the background of private law, including international law. That is why this is such an important topic for our students," he said.

"Our goal is to give students a meaningful legal vocabulary in a real historical and cultural context. We want them to learn the words and learn the system, from an international comparative point of view."

While the nations of Latin America have important differences in their legal systems, legal traditions are the same throughout the Spanish-speaking world and in Brazil and Portugal. Moreover, Fernández-Barros explained, many of those traditions also are common to other European countries, such as Germany and Italy.

"Not only do our students see this area of study as an exciting intellectual challenge, they also know that it is very practical--especially here in Miami, one of the world's most international cities and a city with a massive and growing need for attorneys who understand a foreign system," he said.

Fernández-Barros said he had expected only about eight students to sign up for his class, since it is a new course and taught in a foreign language. Instead, it generated an enrollment of 40.

While a prerequisite for the class is a basic understanding of the Spanish language, he described his students' command of the language as "ranging from very good to really excellent."

Prof. Fernandez-Barros is in the process of developing additional courses that could be taught at the Law School in Spanish.

Soon--with the help of Dr. Lesbia de Verona, director of the Cuban Collection at the University of Miami's Richter Library, and a team of student researchers--he plans to begin writing a history of law in Cuba, beginning with the 16th century. "Counting both the Law School's collection and the Richter's collection, we have the best Cuban collection in the country," he said.

"The University of Miami School of Law is the perfect school for jumping into the vanguard of international legal education," the professor said. "We have a great law library and an excellent faculty and support staff, plus we are located in an area with a huge Spanish population and incredible cultural and commercial ties with Latin America and Europe."