Stanford Law's Afghanistan Legal Education Project Releases English Translation of Afghan Civil Code
The Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) publicly releases its English translation of the Afghan Civil Code this week. This is very significant for the legal and private sectors in Afghanistan, which have been operating without reliable English translations of two of the country’s three most important sources of law (the others being the Criminal Code and Commercial Code). The lack of reliable translations is debilitating, particularly in light of the number of international lawyers and consultants operating in-country. ALEP conceived of the project when students (Sam Jacobson, Chris Jones, Pete DeMarco, Ian Aucoin, Joy Basu, Tarana Riddick, and Arash Aramesh, all JD 2014) were tasked with writing a textbook on the law of obligations and couldn’t read the contracts or personal responsibility portions of the Code. The Civil Code also covers family law, property law, inheritance, and a virtually all laws governing private life in Afghanistan. We mobilized our textbook translation resources to produce a professional-quality translation. We are doing the same with the Afghan Commercial Code, which we plan to release in late 2014.
Founded in 2007 as a student-driven initiative, ALEP develops innovative legal curricula to help Afghanistan’s universities train the next generation of lawyers and leaders. ALEP has developed an extensive law curriculum at the American University of Afghanistan with strong support from INL/State Department. In 2012, ALEP was awarded a $7.2 million grant from the US Dept. of State to expand AUAF’s legal studies program into a Bachelor of Arts and Laws degree-granting program. Together, ALEP and AUAF established a Department of Law to administer the degree program and support the top-notch law faculty. There are currently over 370 students enrolled in AUAF’s law classes with many classes oversubscribed, attesting to the great need and demand for quality legal education in Afghanistan. Since 2007, ALEP has published five textbooks, which are among the first to specifically address Afghanistan’s post-2004 legal system: An Introduction to the Laws of Afghanistan (3rd ed), Commercial Law (2nd ed), Criminal Law (2nd edition), Constitutional Law, and International Law from an Afghan Perspective. The books have been translated into the native Dari and Pashto languages and are available for free download online. Three additional textbooks- Professional Responsibility, Property Law, and the Law of Obligations- are currently in production. For more information about this and other Stanford Law Rule of Law programs, go to https://www.law.stanford.edu/
Megan Karsh, JD ’09, joined Stanford Law School as the Rule of Law Fellow in September 2012. She works with Professor Erik Jensen to manage the Rule of Law Program’s country-specific projects and contributes to the Program’s courses and scholarship.
