International Affairs

International Affairs and Law

The Colleges of Law and Social Sciences joint degree program in Law and International Affairs, J.D./M.S., permits completion of both degree programs concurrently. Applicants must apply for acceptance to both colleges according to the individual department’s admission criteria.

For the joint degree program, both the GRE and LSAT must be taken in order to be considered. Applicants must have a bachelor’s degree, an upper division (junior and senior) grade point average of 3.0 or better and a minimum combined score of 1000 on the verbal and quantitative portions of the GRE. At the College of Law, for the Fall 2009 entering class, the average LSAT score was a 161 and the median GPA was a 3.53.

Once a student is accepted in to both colleges, they must then complete an application for the joint degree program, which is located at the College of Law’s Office of Admissions and Records. This is normally done during the first year of law school. The first year of study is generally done at the College of Law.

The normal program sequence for a student in the joint degree program is:


1st Year 2nd Year 3rd & 4th Years Total Law Courses Total INA Courses Total JD/MS Courses	30 hours of Law Courses 24 hours of INA Courses 50 hours of Law Courses 80 hours (8 cross-credits) 24 hours (8 cross-credits) 104 hours

The Juris Doctor Curriculum
The Juris Doctor program consists of 80 credit hours of instruction. The law curriculum consists of 36 credit hours of required courses. Thirty credits are taken during the student’s first year in the program. The remaining 44 credit hours of elective classes may be chosen from the large selection of courses offered by the College of Law. The following are the 36 credit hours of required courses in the J.D. curriculum:


Civil Procedure Contracts I Contracts II Criminal Law Property I Property II Torts Legal Writing & Research I Legal Writing & Research II Constitutional Law I Constitutional Law II Professional Responsibility TOTAL	4 3 2 4 2 3 4 2 3 3 3 3 36
In addition, all J.D. students must complete an upper level writing requirement and 20 hours of pro bono legal work.

International Affairs Curriculum
CORE CURRICULUM A student enrolled in the joint degree program must complete 24 credit hours of classes from the International Affairs Program. All students in the master’s program are required to take:

COURSE NAME	CREDITS


Seminar in International Affairs International Affairs Colloquium Problems of Globalism TOTAL	3 1 3 7
Students must also complete at least 9 credit hours of coursework in at least 3 of the participating Departments (Anthropology, Modern Foreign Language, Sociology, Economics, Philosophy, Urban and Regional Planning, Geography, Political Science, School of Public Administration, History and Religion). Students must take at least 6 credit hours of coursework that focuses on the developing or post-communist world. A written master’s comprehensive examination or an oral master’s thesis defense will also be required.

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT

All students must satisfy a foreign language requirement for the master’s program. Proficiency in a foreign language will be demonstrated by one of the following:

Satisfactory performance on the Graduate Reading Knowledge Examinations.
Certification by the appropriate language department.
Completion of 12 semester hours in a foreign language with an average grade of at least 3.0 (B).
Or four years of a single language in high school.

The major responsibility for planning and carrying out an integrated program of courses in both schools lies with the individual student assisted by the advisor for the program in each school. The joint degree program must be completed within 5 years, although most students complete the program in 4 years. For further Information, contact both the College of Law and the Department of International Affairs.

JOINT DEGREE ADVISOR CONTACT INFORMATION

J.D. PROGRAM (Law)
Professor Donna Christie

Florida State Law

Damon House 206

425 West Jefferson Street

Tallahassee, FL 32306
850.644.4249
E-mail: dchristi@law.fsu.edu
Web site: www.law.fsu.edu

M.S. PROGRAM
Dr. Lee Metcalf

Program Director
International Studies Program
Florida State University College of Social Sciences
Room 211, Bellamy Building
Tallahassee, FL 32303-2161
Tel: 850.644.7327
E-mail: lmetcalf@fsu.edu
Web site: http://www.fsu.edu/~inaprog/

Patty Lollis
Program Assistant
International Studies Program
FSU College of Arts and Sciences
Room 225, Bellamy Building
Tallahassee, FL 32303-2161
Tel: 850.644.4418
Email: Plollis@mailer.fsu.edu
Web site: www.fsu.edu/~inaprog/