Campaign Priorities: Unrestricted Giving

The campaign's goals include $10 million for the Dean's Discretionary Fund. Generous unrestricted gifts enable the School of Law to outpace its competition by providing the flexibility to surmount unexpected challenges and the resources needed to move quickly in realizing new possibilities.

Profile: A Gift of Global Learning

When longtime Baltimore resident and law school supporter Howard Brown honored the memory of his father by establishing the David S. Brown ´33 Fund for Excellence, his major unrestricted gift was also an expression of support for the School of Law's vision.

Brown's generosity coincided with a growing need for the law school to expand international and comparative law offerings. In particular, current and prospective students were expressing increased interest in expanded study opportunities abroad.

The result was the creation of the innovative David S. Brown International Fellows Program. The Program provides support for several School of Law students each semester to pursue public interest work at agencies around the world. The number of placements has already grown to 17 in just the program's second year.

"My unrestricted gift was intended to allow the School of Law to seize unexpected opportunities as they arose," says Brown. "It is tremendously gratifying that the result has been the creation of such an innovative and program that has helped the law school address a pressing need."

Jessica George ´08, who worked at a Cape Town public interest firm on constitutional litigation relating to women's rights, says, "After working for a domestic violence center in Baltimore, it's fascinating to see similar challenges facing women in South Africa and impressive to see how women attorneys are fighting for women's rights."

Externships in South Africa are just the beginning: The Brown International Fellows Program also supports those pursuing externships with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and to those with internships at the Law Reform Commissions of England and Australia, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica.

Robin Clark ´07 headed to the Australian Law Reform Commission, working on a critique of how free speech rights have been impacted by the nation's recently enacted anti-terrorism act.

"It was an incredible experience to see another country's governmental system at this level," she says, "working with its best legal minds on one of the pre-eminent issues of the day."