Utah Law’s International Law Clinic, directed by Associate Professor (Lecturer) Jackie Morrison (JD ’12), launched in January 2025. Morrison designed the clinic to give students hands-on experience and bridge international law classes with practical skills-building.
“One of the joys of teaching this clinic is providing opportunities for students to integrate the doctrine and theory of international law with the development of key professional skills,” she says. “They learn problem-solving, strategic planning, fact-finding, listening, reasoning, self-development, and reflection—skills that will serve them throughout their legal careers, regardless of the fields in which they ultimately practice.”
Austin Edens, who graduated from Utah Law in May 2025, says participating in the inaugural class of the International Law Clinic was a perfect capstone to his experience as a law student.
“It was incredible to use, for the first time in law school, the rules and norms of international law I’d been learning about to help people in the real world. The clinic offered a healthy response to the oft-used critique of international law that it is ‘good in theory but not in practice,’” he recalls. “In the clinic’s early stages, I got to see our research provide a positive impact to Indigenous communities.”
One of the clinic’s first projects has focused on transboundary mining and the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States. This project is in partnership with the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment’s Law and Policy Program, directed by Research Professor John Ruple (JD ’04), which researches emerging issues that affect public lands, Indigenous peoples, climate change, resource management, and agency decision-making.
Attending the Indigenous-led Transboundary Mining Conference
The partnership between the clinic and the Law and Policy Program led to a trip to the 2025 Indigenous-led Transboundary Mining Conference hosted by the Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi’it First Nation in September 2025. Morrison, Ruple, and eight clinic students traveled to Fernie, British Columbia, for the five-day conference, which rotates between the United States and Canada each year.
Attendees included Tribes, First Nations, the U.S. State Department and Environmental Protection Agency, Global Affairs Canada, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. British Columbia’s deputy minister of environment and parks and delegates from Alaska, Montana, and Idaho also attended, along with consultants, activists, non-governmental organizations, and coal mine industry representatives.
“The International Law Clinic has been an amazing opportunity,” says Joshua Sudekum, a 3L student in the clinic. “I learned about the dangers that transboundary mining poses to First Nations and other Indigenous Tribes in North America, hearing firsthand from Tribal leaders and other key experts and stakeholders. No other law school class has provided me such ample opportunity to interact and forge relationships with impacted communities or create work product that provides value for real people.”
Ruple notes that student trips are essential to building understanding, trust, and relationships.
“In-person attendance at conferences like this one strengthens relationships between students and our Tribal Nation partners as the clinic collaborates to address complex legal issues,” he says.
3L Hayden Ridd, who attended the conference, says one of the most meaningful parts was hearing directly from Indigenous leaders about how transboundary mining impacts their communities on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.
“From an international law perspective, it really brought home how issues like environmental protection, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights don’t stop at national boundaries and have real effects on real communities.”
Sydney Brubaker, a 3L who also participated, said that it was powerful to meet the people involved and witness the legal process.
“The mining conference helped me appreciate the complexity of the situation we’d been studying and understand it better. In law school, it’s easy to get caught up in the legal issues, which can make the process feel siloed from the reality. Attending the conference was a lesson in how the work we do affects real human beings and their rights. It was a great reminder that the clinic’s work has real world impacts and isn’t one of the law school hypotheticals we’ve grown used to.”
Strengthening Indigenous pathways in New York City
Ridd, Sudekum, Brubaker, and Morrison also presented at United Nations headquarters in New York City in December. In partnership with the University of Kansas School of Law’s Tribal Judicial Support Clinic and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the team delivered a half-day program on Strengthening Pathways for Indigenous Peoples Representation at the UN. Co-presenters included Judge Shawn Watts of the University of Kansas School of Law, 3Ls Keali Myrick and Paulina Rivera-Soto from KU, and Nyle Pierre of UNITAR.
Morrison was proud of the International Law Clinic students’ contribution.
“The students put a lot of work into preparing for the presentation, and they did an excellent job,” she says. “The presentation was designed to be interactive, and there was lots of great dialogue.”
Being part of the UN training was exciting because it allowed the students to collaborate directly with UN staff, Ridd says.
“We ran a training on the UN’s existing efforts to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples globally. It was quite meaningful to see how engaged those who participated in the training were in learning about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the mechanisms that work to promote it,” Ridd says. “It helped me better understand both the potential and the limitations of international law when it comes to protecting human rights.”
Brubaker says she never thought she’d be able to say that she’d presented at UN headquarters. Now she can.
“In international law classes, we talk a lot about the UN and its bodies, but it was entirely different to experience the UN in person and be a part of the process. International law often feels amorphous when you’re studying it,” Brubaker says. “Our experience at UN headquarters highlighted for me how important cooperation among nations is for furthering any issue, including the rights of Indigenous peoples.”
And for Sudekum, the presentation provided an invaluable opportunity to learn key lawyering skills.
“Developing a professional presentation for delegates across the world was such an important way to build communication, time management, and collaboration skills. I am so grateful for the resources and opportunities the school’s clinical program provides, as well as such great, hands-on teachers and mentors like Professor Morrison,” he says.
Looking ahead to future projects
Projects this semester continue to focus on the intersection of Indigenous rights and the environment under international law. Students are taking a deep dive into two bilateral treaties between the U.S. and Canada to explore additional pathways for representation in decision-making for Indigenous communities on both sides of the border. Morrison and the team of Brubaker, Ridd, and Sudekum will be traveling back to New York to present on the topic of free, prior, and informed consent later this semester.
Morrison is also collaborating with the Legal Clinic at University of Murcia (Spain) on a project related to the rights of Indigenous women and girls under international law. She is eager to continue her partnership with the Law and Policy Program and is grateful for the International Law Clinic’s sponsors this year, including Professor Emeritus Wayne McCormack‘s Global Engagement Fund and the International Law Section of the Utah State Bar.
“Students who take the clinic should walk away with a deeper appreciation for the complexities of international law, along with stronger analytical and communication skills,” she says. “I’m excited to see what our students do, and I look forward to seeing the clinic’s work grow and evolve.”
Edens (JD ’25) has since begun an LLM program in international law and continues to look back fondly on the International Law Clinic.
“Professor Morrison and the research I did for the clinic had an immense impact on me and my pursuit of a career in international law,” he says. “Professor Morrison masterfully reminded us of the importance of finding our ‘why’ and staying grounded to this source of action—using it as a reminder for why we chose the profession of advocacy in the first place.”