Braving New Worlds
Engel and students reflect on a bridge-course adventure in Thailand

UB Law students are accustomed to their professors' taking them to new worlds of thought. In one January-term bridge course, though, 11 second- and third-year students found themselves immersed in a legal system half a world away.

Students exploring Thailand.

Professor David Engel's course on The Legal Culture of Thailand was an adventure in cultural awareness as well as legal training. Engel and his wife, Jaruwan, served as translators and guides as the group took up residence at Chiang Mai University, more than 400 miles north of Bangkok.

"This course was one of the most enjoyable teaching experiences I have ever had," said Engel, who served in the Peace Corps in Thailand. He shared photos and stories from the UB Law trip on March 10 in the Baldy Center conference room, bringing a bit of warm, sunny Southeast Asia to a brisk Buffalo day.

The course, Engel said, concentrated on three themes:

• The interaction of law and culture, such as the village-level Buddhist practice, mingled with animism, that permeates the Thai legal system.
• The workings of a national legal system based on civil law, versus the more familiar common law.
• The changing nature of Thai culture, which is being influenced by globalization in profound ways.

Starting with a scavenger hunt in the city of Chiang Mai, to acclimate the students to the culture, the two-week trip progressed with a series of experiences both legal and cultural. Many students cited their interview with a village monk as a highlight; he left them with a blessing, and tied a sacred string on the right wrist of each visitor. They also learned to bargain over merchandise – "it is second nature to Thais, but it was tough for the students," Engel said.

The legal pedagogy includes conversations with the dean of Chiang Mai Law School, an anthropologist, a constitutional historian and the leading feminist legal scholar in Thailand. The students also watched a drug trial in Chiang Mai Provincial Court (the role of the judge is expanded, because there is no jury) and visited an administrative court that dealt with complaints against government bureaucrats and disputes within the bureaucracy.

"The culture of northern Thailand is just so rich and complicated," Engel said. "And everywhere you look, it is just so beautiful.

"I was so touched by the reactions of the students. They came back saying their view of everything had changed. When it is another culture, you can see more clearly how the law is linked to its cultural surroundings. And my hope is that they will now see it in their own cultural situation.

"I was not sure that two weeks would be enough time, but it was such an intense experience. We were busy every minute."

Two students who made the trip say it has changed their lives in ways large and small.

Law students in Wat Phra Sing.

For second-year student Aparnaa Bhatt, a native of India, the course was a chance to reconnect with her cultural roots. "It was essential for me to go," she said, "because it really helped me to establish this Asian-American identity I have been fighting with. I spent 17 years in India growing up, and now six years in the United States. Going to Thailand brought my Asianness back. That gets lost when you are living in the U.S. It was really, really important for me to do this."

Bhatt was impressed by the group's visit to the village monk. "We were in this small hut outside the temple," she said. "We are all sitting on the ground with the monk, and we had prepared questions to ask him, questions like how and why he became a monk. It was just fascinating to hear his story, and to see that there are paths beyond going to high school, going to college and then going to work."

Another formative experience, she said, was a visit to a small hospital where they heard about a successful strategy to fight AIDS in Thailand. "They did not follow any U.N. or Western protocol," she said. "They had their own way of appealing to the villagers and showing them how to eliminate AIDS."

The students kept reflection journals throughout the trip. When Bhatt read hers over, she said, "It brought everything back. I do not think I will ever recover from it."

Says her classmate Daniel Horner, a third-year student: "We did cover quite a bit of legal material, but that is not what stands out in my mind. The experience was so much beyond that. We could have learned all the legal materials without ever going to the country. That whole added element of seeing it in operation and hearing contradictory statements – it is not always as clear-cut as a textbook might make it sound. Contradictory statements can speak volumes."

More broadly, he said, the trip introduced the students to the local effects of global economic forces.

"Seeing the problems they face makes me think of the problems we face," Horner said. "They are dealing quite heavily with the ways in which the forces of globalization are starting to shuffle populations around, and what impact that has on public safety, on the availability of resources and institutions. There is a degree to which you can look at Western culture as pushing them in particular directions. Is our way of doings things always the right way? Maybe not, when you see it overlaid on somebody else."

The course was life-changing in another way, Horner said. He had planned on a career in litigation, but now hopes to work for the State Department at an embassy or consulate – and he has started the application process for the Foreign Service.