International Law - Tara Fitzgerald, J.D. Oklahoma State University

Hello! What is your name? My name is Tara Fitzgerald. Alright and what year did you start at Spears School of Business? I have been at Spears School of Business since 2001. Okay, and which department are you with? I am with the management department and I teach legal studies in the management department. Alright so which courses of the legal studies section do you teach? I teach legal studies 3213, and I teach legal studies 4633 which is international law, 3213 is business law that everyone has to take. 4633 is an international business law and then I also teach 4323 which is commercial transactions.

Alright. what's your background? My background? Yes. I'm from Los Angeles and I went to UCLA undergrad, and then I went to a small stand alone law school in Los Angeles called Southwestern for my JD, and then I'm one of those crazy people who went for another year and got a master's in tax law and that is from Boston University. So. that was a lot of fun going on the east coast and experiencing that after coming alive on the west coast. Yeah, and then you decided to come Central! Yeah, then it was in the middle. 

 

So we touched on International, so what do you think are the three main things students should take away from, in that class? So in international law, it's an elective and so the people that are there usually are International Studies students or they could be doing pre-law, or it's just a great elective because it also counts for a writing requirement class. From an international perspective, I like it because it looks broadly at the world and all the legal issues that we face when you're involved in international business and like even if you are a small stand alone business in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you still compete with International brands so you know International and is just part of how the world works you know, globalization has brought everything so much closer and so much more in front of us. So it's important to have a little bit of understanding of how the world works and then the other thing I really like about International is it opens students eyes to how many different kinds of jobs there are out there. Like you could be a specialist in importing stuff into China. You could be a specialist at exporting stuff to the UK. There's so many different jobs, and that's one of the things you don't know like when you're an undergrad, sometimes you have no idea what you want to do or what you want to be, and that's fine! So this class kind of helps you, you know see how many different kind of jobs there are, and what other other kinds of things you can get involved in.

What are some of the differences of U.S laws and then other International laws? So what's really interesting to understand is like in the US and in most countries, we have law and you can go to the library or even look online and find all the laws that you need to, you can find any physical cases, you can find it all. It's all you know it's pretty readily available. The difference with international law, is it doesn't come from just one place. It's not just "international law." It comes from treaties, so agreements between countries. It comes from all kinds of regulations that different countries have, because if you are a company from France, and you're doing this in the U.S, well then you have to follow U.S laws. So that basically becomes International. international law comes from lots and lots of different sources. Like the U.N., the United Nations, provides guidelines and rules that we have to follow if you've signed the U.N. treaty. The WTO, which is a World Trade Organization, those provide guidelines for if you're a member of the WTO. How do you deal with importing/exporting tariffs? How do you treat other countries? So it comes from a lot more sources.

Why would it be good to take international law? Well, I think that again it opens your eyes to how many different kinds of jobs there could be out there available, in the international market. Once you graduate with a business degree, there's so many different things you could do, and so if you have a little understanding of international laws and what it means, and how complicated it can be, then you could be a little part of that cog, you could be a little part of it, you know? Be in the process somewhere.