PUBLISHED:July 09, 2012

The Judy Horowitz Scholarship honors architect of Duke’s international programs

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Alumni from across Japan gathered in Tokyo on March 7 to celebrate Associate Dean Judy Horowitz’s tenure as the head of Duke Law’s international programs. Dean David F. Levi and Associate Dean Jennifer Maher ’83 (flanking Horowitz, front row, center) attended the event with Horowitz .

 

"To me and to other students, Judy is the face of the Law School’s internationalization."

Li Xiaoming ’90

When Judy Horowitz began working with Duke Law School’s international programs in 1981, only a handful of international lawyers were enrolled as LLM and SJD students, and exchange relationships, summer institutes, and international alumni associations sim­ply did not exist.

Horowitz has worked closely with four consecutive deans of Duke Law School to build a top-notch International Studies program at Duke Law. In 2011–2012, 96 attorneys were enrolled in the LLM program and 15 students were in the SJD program. Duke Law now has exchange agreements with 21 foreign universities; the Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law and the Duke-Geneva Institute in Transnational Law are thriving, as is the Durham-based Summer Institute on Law, Language and Culture; and alumni have organized clubs all over the world.

Duke Law School’s international alumni now number more than 1,200 and are engaged in every manner of legal endeavor. They are partners in major law firms, lead­ing in-house legal departments, and promi­nent judges, prosecutors, public interest lawyers, and government officials. Without exception, all were affected by Horowitz during their Duke education, and most count their time at Duke as being transformative.

“To me and to other students, Judy is the face of the Law School’s internationalization,” said Li Xiaoming ’90, partner and head of the China practice at White & Case in Beijing and a member of the Board of Visitors. Li, who came to Duke as a Nixon scholar, credited former deans Paul Carrington, Pamela Gann ’73, and Katharine Bartlett for their “vision, audacity, and per­severance” in investing in programs that brought international students to Duke.

“Judy put all the pieces together. She is connected to students old and new, and she links all the continents,” Li said. “She has a great wealth of knowledge of different cul­tures, habits, and ways to communicate. She gives international Duke Law students and alumni a voice.”

To honor Horowitz’s pivotal role in trans­forming it into an international institution, Duke Law has created the Judy Horowitz Scholarship Fund, to which Li and others have made leadership gifts. Once fully endowed, it will provide a full scholarship each year to a deserving international scholar and create a permanent tribute to the architect of much of the Law School’s international success.

“One of the remark­able features of Duke Law School is how international it is, and no one has done more to further its international presence and reputation than Judy Horowitz,” said Dean David F. Levi. “The LLM program that Duke has is a result of her hard work. The program is notable, in large part, because the LLM students are so well integrated into the life of the Law School and sit side by side with JD students in their classes. Judy and, now, Jennifer Maher, work very hard to assure our foreign students that they will be welcomed into the intellectual community and student life of Duke Law School.

“This scholarship is our way of celebrat­ing Judy’s achievement, and nothing could be more meaningful for her than a scholar­ship in her name to assist deserving stu­dents to come to the very programs that she did so much to create,” Levi said.

To contribute to the Judy Horowitz Scholarship Fund, contact the Alumni and Development Office at (919) 613-7017 or alumni_office@law.duke.edu.