The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law has formed a partnership with Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) to teach Mexican law and public policy to students in the United States.

The first-of-its-kind certificate programme will be available in 2020, both online and in-person, at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The courses by Mexican legal experts are aimed at attorneys, judges, scholars, business leaders and anyone else interested in Mexican law and policy.

"We see a real need and real place for learning about Mexican law," said Katherine Barnes, associate dean for programmes and innovation at the law school. "In the U.S., I think that too often we sort of assume that everyone is only looking to us, instead of us looking outward."

Barnes said she hopes the programme will expand in the future to possibly include University of Arizona law professors teaching in Mexico, or even students in Arizona being able to obtain a full Mexican law degree.

"The world is becoming more and more interconnected," said Barnes, alluding to a growing number of binational individuals in the U.S., as well as to expanding cross-border business interests.

Course topics will include Mexican constitutional law, human rights, electoral systems, distribution of power, public policy, plus economic and social regulations.

The courses will be taught in Spanish by top scholars from UNAM and leading figures in the Mexican legal system, such as Juan Luis González Alcántara, justice of the Mexican Supreme Court, and José de Jesús Orozco Henríquez, commissioner of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The certificate programme begins in January 2020 and consists of four 7.5-week courses – two offered in the spring 2020 semester and two in the fall of 2020. Intermediate Spanish fluency is necessary, although each course will have a bilingual teaching assistant and all faculty members are bilingual. A legal background is not required.

The programme is set to roll out as the U.S., Mexico and Canada inch closer to a long-awaited new free trade agreement, called the USMCA. Representatives from all three countries signed a revised version of the pact this week, with the U.S. Congress expected to approve that version sometime in 2020.

Deliberations over trade have cast a pall over the Mexican economy since President Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency in 2016. The U.S. receives a majority of Mexico's exports, while Mexico this year has also been the U.S.'s biggest trading partner by value of goods.

"We are in a critical moment in U.S.-Mexico relations right now, and we believe this certificate in Mexican public law and policy will equip people to appreciate the complexities and dynamics of the Mexican legal system," said Marc Miller, dean of University of Arizona Law.

Participants may enrol in any of the four courses on offer. Each course consists of three units imparted in separate blocks of three days. Those who complete all four courses will receive a diplomado (certificate) from UNAM, while current University of Arizona students who attend in-person also receive University of Arizona academic credit for each course.