The Oxford Summer Program affords students an opportunity to live and study in stimulating and beautiful surroundings under the guidance of American and English legal educators. The Program also provides students the opportunity to visit and observe English legal institutions.
Oxford is one of the great architectural treasures of the world, containing examples of building styles from the 11th to the 21st centuries. Oxford University is one of only two universities in Europe that has preserved the medieval collegiate system.
For more information on the Oxford program, contact Registrar Becky Lucas.
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The 2025 Oxford Summer Program will run from July 6 to August 9. Students will reside, attend classes, and take meals at historic Trinity College. Originally founded by the Catholic Church as a training center for priests in 1555, Trinity College became a pillar of the Anglican establishment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and then a center of educational reform in the nineteenth century. Notable Trinity College alumni include William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham and Constantine Louloudis, 2016 Olympic Gold Medal rower.
Due to accreditation standards, students may enroll in 4 to 6 credit hours. Because financial aid providers typically require that student be enrolled in 5 credit hours to be considered full-time and receive aid, you may want to take that into account when picking classes.
The courses will be taught by American and English faculty and will be letter graded, with a final examination or equivalent work. Credit in all courses will be granted by the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Classes will meet approximately 2 hours per day, per class, Monday through Thursday for 5 weeks (for 3-credit hour classes), leaving several long weekends for travel and sight-seeing. When offered, 2-credit hour and 1-credit hour classes meet for 2 hours a day for fewer days. In addition to our classes, the Program will also offer formal and informal activities for students and faculty. Scheduled program activities currently include opening and closing multi-course gala dinners, a field trip by motor coach to “Legal London,” a trivia night, and a wine-tasting class. These activities are included in the cost of the Program.
The 2025 Program is limited to 50 students.
Housing and Meals
Most students chose to live in multi-bedroom “flats” provided by Trinity College. Each flat comes with two bathrooms, a small kitchen, large single bedrooms for each flat resident, desks, and Wi Fi access. Laundry and printing facilities are available in the building. Trinity College does not have accommodations for couples or families. Students who wish to bring spouses, partners, or children must secure housing elsewhere in Oxford at their own expense. dinners and housing.
Provided meals for students staying in Trinity College housing include breakfast and dinner Monday through Wednesday, and breakfast on Thursday. Meals will be served in the recently renovated Trinity College Dining Hall. Students opting to live elsewhere in Oxford will not receive meals at Trinity College outside of the opening and closing gala dinners.
Occupants of Trinity College are subject to standards of conduct applicable to Trinity College students. The privilege of residing at Trinity College may be terminated for misbehavior such as vandalism or trespassing into private areas of the College, plus any violation of law or Trinity College disciplinary rules.
Transportation
Students will be responsible for making their own travel arrangements to and from Oxford. As flights fill up early, students are urged to arrange for their travel as soon as possible. As the worldwide pandemic continues as of the date of this publication, students should seek to book airfare and other pre-paid reservations where the costs are fully refundable.
The University of Oklahoma requires that program participants purchase travel insurance. However, the insurance is only as good as the terms of the policy and the reliability of the insurance carrier. We strongly urge students to read through the travel insurance policy carefully to make sure the policy does not exclude coverage for program cancellation due to a pandemic, or given the current crisis in Ukraine, for acts of war or terrorism. If you plan on traveling outside the specifics of the program, examine your insurance needs carefully.
Special Assistance
England, Oxford, and Trinity College are accessible to individuals with disabilities. Any student with disabilities should submit documentation to the University of Oklahoma College of Law so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Students needing special assistance on examinations due to disabilities should contact the Director immediately.
The Program is open to students in good standing at any law school approved by the American Bar Association, and to graduates of an approved law school. For current non-OU students, applications for admission should be accompanied by a letter from the dean of the law school at which one is presently enrolled stating that he or she is in good standing. Practicing attorneys should present evidence of having graduated from an approved law school.
Will course credit transfer?
The University of Oklahoma College of Law became a member of the Association of American Law Schools in 1911, and has been on the approved list of the American Bar Association since this list was first published in 1923. ABA and AALS requirements will be met. Law schools whose students have attended previous sessions have regularly approved the transfer of credits for the courses taken by their students through the OU Oxford Summer Program. Acceptance of any credit or grade for any course taken in the Program is subject to determination by the student's home school.
What are the application and payment deadlines?
Applications will open on November 18, 2024. For OU students, find the application on The Courtyard. For non-OU students, please contact Becky Lucas at rlucas@ou.edu for a link to an application.
Applications must be submitted on or before April 15, 2025 and will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications must be accompanied by a $500 deposit. If a student is not accepted, this deposit will be refunded. The deposit will not be refunded if the student is accepted into the Program and does not attend for any reason (unless canceled due to the worldwide pandemic). Checks should be made payable to the University of Oklahoma.
The balance of all costs (minus the $500 deposit) will be billed to each student in May 2025. Please access the OU Bursar's website for all applicable payment deadlines.
Trinity College will allocate rooms for students on June 1, 2025. Students withdrawing from the Program after June 1, 2025 will be charged a cancellation fee of $5,000.
Is there a cancellation or refund policy?
This Program is not subject to cancellation for insufficient enrollment or any other reason that OU can independently remedy. The program may be canceled by Trinity College or by OU due to the presence of foreign military operations impacting the United States or the United Kingdom, or terrorism events (see government guidelines), Acts of God, or a major disaster affecting the UK or the Oxford area particularly, or similar cause (for example, see world-wide pandemic during summers 2020 and 2021). See the U.S. State Department Travel Information for the refund policy in the event Oxford is declared an “Area of Instability” or becomes subject to a Travel Warning. In addition, the Program Director(s) shall use their best efforts to arrangement for each student who has enrolled to attend a similar program, if the student so desires, in case of cancellation. If the Program is canceled in advance, all money advanced by the student shall be refunded within twenty (20) days after the date of cancelation. The College of Law has never canceled its Summer Program at Oxford, except with mutual agreement with Oxford University, and as dictated by government action during the worldwide pandemic in summers 2020 and 2021.
If significant changes are made in the course offerings or other aspects of the Program, those changes will be communicated promptly to any applicant who has paid a deposit or registered for the Program, and an opportunity will be provided for that person to withdraw and obtain a full refund of all monies paid.
There are no prerequisites for any course. The maximum number of students for any course is 32 (tentative).
First Amendment
(5450) 3 Hours- Professor Carla Pratt
Individual rights of expression, assembly, association, and religion; permissible government restrictions and regulations in relation to activities protected by the First Amendment. 1. This is a “menu” course. 2. This is a “bar” course. Approximately half of the MBE questions on constitutional law focus on “individual rights,” including the First Amendment topics below. • Freedom of religion and separation of church and state a. Free exercise b. Establishment • Freedom of expression a. Content-based regulation of protected expression b. Content-neutral regulation of protected expression c. Regulation of unprotected expression d. Regulation of commercial speech e. Regulation of, or impositions upon, public school students, public employment, licenses, or benefits based upon exercise of expressive or associational rights f. Regulation of expressive conduct g. The course will compare US free speech law to that of other nations.
International Trade
(6100) 3 Hours- Professor Thomas Krebs
This course is concerned with the law of International Trade. Broadly defined, it covers transactions in which goods are transported (by ship) from one country to another. In particular, three types of transactions will be covered: (1) the shipping transaction: this involves two relationships, namely between the seller and the carrier, and between the carrier and the buyer; (2) the sales transaction: this is concerned with the relationship between the seller and the buyer; (3) the financing transaction: again, two relationships are involved: buyer/bank and seller/bank. The course will be taught by way of lectures and interactive seminars.
Professional Responsibility
(5323) 3 Hours- Professor Tracy Pearl
This course explores the duties that lawyers owe clients, courts, adversaries, and the broader community. While the course focuses on relevant rules of professional conduct, discussion will also include other sources of lawyer responsibility, like professional negligence, criminal liability, and professional identity. This is a problem-method course. Students will be organized into “law firms” of 3-4 students and will work with their law firm throughout the program to analyze and discuss practice problems based on real cases. Most of the problems put students into the shoes of a lawyer who must deal with a situation involving both legal strategy and legal ethics.
Statutory Interpretation
(6100) 3 Hours- Professor Alex Pearl
This course focuses on developing a critical skill for all lawyers—statutory interpretation. Regardless of practice area in which you specialize, the skill of closely examining statutes is essential. This course covers a range of topics related to legislation, legislative process, statutory interpretation, as well as the administrative state and federal agencies. Traditional tools and methods of statutory interpretation will be examined, including but not limited to, the application of textual and substantive canons, usage of legislative history, common law principles of interpretive methods, and underlying political and philosophical theories of legislative process and interpretation. This course will also include a comparative examination of certain international court systems and the usage of interpretive tools in assessing ambiguity in those statutes and rules. Although this course focuses on statutory interpretation, it does not simply explain the tools of interpretation used by judges in analyzing statutory provisions. Instead, the interpretative tools are situated within the context of the legislative process. This course will necessarily emphasize the federal legislative process, but the principles examined are likely transferable in the context of state legislative process and statutory interpretation.
Professor Tracy Pearl
Program Director Tracy Pearl is a Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma where she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, and Professional Responsibility. Prior to teaching, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Stephanie K. Seymour of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and to the Honorable Richard L. Williams of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Upon completion of her clerkships, she worked as a litigation associate at Hogan Lovells LLP in Washington, DC, where she litigated a wide variety of cases at both the trial and appellate levels. She has an A.B. in Public Policy Studies from Duke University, a M.Sc from Oxford University in Comparative Social Policy, and a J.D. from Boston College Law School.
Professor Carla Pratt
Prior to joining the OU Law faculty Professor Carla Pratt served as Dean at Washburn University School of Law and prior to that she served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Dean for Education Equity and the Nancy J. LaMont Faculty Scholar at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law. Professor Pratt has also served the legal profession and the greater community. From March 2012 to March 2018 she served as an Associate Justice for the Supreme Court of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in Fort Yates, North Dakota hearing cases that presented a constitutional question under the United States Constitution and/or the Standing Rock Sioux Constitution. She currently serves as a member of the Council to the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. The Council is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accrediting agency for JD programs.
Professor Alex Pearl
Professor Alex Pearl is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and a Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Pearl is a nationally recognized scholar in the field of Federal Indian Law. His academic scholarship focuses on the fields of Federal Indian Law, water rights, Constitutional Law, and statutory interpretation. Professor Pearl’s scholarship is forthcoming or has been published at journals from Yale University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, UCLA and many other legal publications. Professor Pearl’s work was cited by Justice Gorsuch in his concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision in Haaland v. Brackeen. In addition to his scholarly work, Professor Pearl serves as an Associate Justice on the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations Supreme Court. Professor Pearl obtained his law degree from the University of California, Berkeley—School of Law. While at Berkeley Law, he was a research assistant for the late esteemed scholar of federal Indian law, Professor Philip Frickey. After graduation, Professor Pearl clerked for the Honorable William J. Holloway Jr., of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and then worked as an associate at Kilpatrick Townsend in Washington, D.C. where he exclusively represented Indian tribes and individual Indians including the plaintiff class in the historic Cobell litigation. Professor Pearl joined the faculty at the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 2020. At OU he is affiliate faculty in the Department of Native American Studies as well as with the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center. For the previous six years, he was a member of the faculty at Texas Tech University School of Law, where he was the Director of the Center for Water Law and Policy and affiliate faculty with the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
Professor Thomas Krebs
Professor Thomas Krebs has been a University Lecturer in Commercial Law at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in Law at Brasenose College, Oxford, since 2003, achieving tenure in 2008. He specializes in Commercial Law, both domestic and international. Prof. Krebs is particularly interested in the law of agency, and is also pursuing research in international trade law. He is a barrister attached to Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, London. He is married and has two young daughters.
Students with Family or Guests
Students who bring family or other guests cannot be accommodated at Trinity College and must secure alternative housing arrangements at their own expense. A separate fee will be charged for anyone who participates in Summer Program activities.
Tuition and Fees for Courses
Tuition is $583.50 per credit hour for all students; fees are $193.80 per credit hour, plus an OU summer semester fee of $66.25.
Other Living and Travel Expenses
Students should expect to pay for lunch every day, for dinner on Thursday, and for all meals Friday through Sunday, plus other food, beverage, incidentals (laundry, school supplies, etc.), and entertainment expenses they choose to incur. Students are responsible for their own travel to and from Oxford and for sightseeing or weekend trips, and to protect themselves against possible pandemic or other world crisis cancellation.
Consular Information Sheet
- A link to State Department Consular Information Sheets for England will be emailed to each student who enrolls in the Program. Any "Areas of Instability" will be included. If the Consular Information Sheet is revised during the Program to announce an "Area of Instability" in the region in which the Program is being conducted, the updated information will be distributed promptly to students.
- If the area around metropolitan London (including Oxford), becomes an "Area of Instability," students will be permitted to withdraw upon learning the site has been declared to be such an area. All students shall be refunded fees paid except for room and board payments used before the date the site was declared an "Area of Instability."
U.S. State Department Consular Information Sheet for the United Kingdom
Travel Warnings
- If, prior to commencement of the Program, a U. S. State Department Travel Warning is issued for England, all registrants will be notified promptly of the warning and be given an opportunity to withdraw. Students who withdraw shall receive a full refund of all monies advanced within twenty (20) days after withdrawal. In the event the Program is canceled, students shall receive a refund of all monies advanced within twenty (20) days after the cancelation.
- If, during the course of the Program, a U. S. State Department Travel Warning is issued for England, students will be notified promptly of the warning and given an opportunity to withdraw. Students who withdraw will be refunded fees paid except for room and board payments used before the date of withdrawal. If the Program is terminated, students shall be refunded fees paid except for room and board payments used before the date the Travel Warning is issued.