 And welcome to Global Connections. I'm your host, Carlos Juarez. And we've got a great conversation today. I'm going to be talking with a guest joining me, a colleague here at the University of the Americas Puebla in Mexico. It's Professor Sam Stone, who teaches law here at the university. He's a law professor in Mexico. And yet, as we'll hear a little bit more of his own background, he's recently relocated from the US. He's grown up in many ways like myself, bicultural, Mexican heritage, but educated and growing up in the US. But now in Mexico, helping train the next generation of young leaders, lawful lawyers, if you will. And so we're going to unravel a conversation that's going to help us understand more about some of the challenges, some of the issues, some of the puzzles, and maybe surprises of what it is like teaching in Mexico, teaching young university students, and also just some differences about the legal profession, the legal education itself. So on that, let me welcome you first, Sam. Thank you so much for joining me here on Global Connections. It's great to have you. Hi, fellas, thanks for having me. This is great to be with you guys here. And Sam, you know, for our listeners, maybe just give us a quick snapshot. You've been in Mexico now this past year, since the beginning of 2019, roughly. Tell us a little bit about what brought you here, where you came from. Yeah, so I've actually been back in Mexico now for three years. I've been here at the university since January. I was born in Chicago, Illinois. I grew up there for four years, and I lived in Mexico eight years as a kid, then in Ohio for nine years, then in DC, and then back here. So it's been a little bit of a race tour. But in many ways, by culture, by national, by lingual, and crossing borders, rather seamlessly, we live in a time of considerable mobility, this globalization of the world, and the deep global connections here. We try to connect people to the world, but also just show how the world, sometimes whether you leave it or not, it comes to you, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, my mom was born in Mexico City, educated there, my dad's from Green Bay, Wisconsin originally. So we're sort of all over the place. They met back in the 80s, and we're still connected today. So that's how that works. And tell me, some of your education background, you did your undergraduate studies. Where was this at? Yeah, I did everything in the States. I went to Baldwin Wallace University, which is a small liberal arts college in Berea, Ohio, Southwest of Cleveland. My bachelor's was in international relations and political science, double major, minor in history. Then I took a couple of years off, year and a half off, in between that and the JD. And then I went to the George Washington University in DC. From that law experience, after law school, you went on to do some while some work in the field as a young lawyer. And this was also in the DC area? Yeah, I was in DC for a few years after that. I clerked for three judges on DC Superior Court, which is Tennessee's local trial court, for two whole years, doing all criminal cases, which was pretty interesting. But also during and right after law school, I interned for, did some of our associate positions with big law firm in DC, Clair Gottlieb, and also with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia, and with another federal district. So really, a practical experience, obviously coming out of law school, getting your hands dirty, and understanding the criminal justice system from the inside. And as we continue after we talk a little first about maybe more of the legal profession and legal education, I'd like us to also maybe talk about some of the comparison and contrast of the criminal justice system. The United States, of course, itself facing a lot of challenges, criticism, need for reform, but Mexico, and one thing that is always interesting about the case of Mexico, on paper, and maybe in general structure, it has a political system quite similar to the U.S., a federal system with states, a separation of powers, free branches, but we'll continue to talk about that. The reality is often a little different. Mexico is a newer democracy, a fledgling democracy, still trying to consolidate the U.S., of course, although it has problems these days, a few steps back, but it is clearly one of the longest, continually established democracies, and that heritage, that history, obviously says something about the U.S. system. So we'll look to compare those, but maybe beginning with just your insights and a quick overview as well, you are now here teaching law as a law professor, and one of the things maybe to speak about is how is the education here in Mexico for lawyers fundamentally different, maybe the quick version that you can clarify is, in the U.S., you go to law school after you've done undergraduate studies, and here in Mexico, you begin it right as the beginning of an undergraduate degree, and you do it exclusively. It's also uncommon in a lot of other countries in Europe and maybe different areas of the world, but describe a little bit the general contrast, the differences of the legal education, as you know it now. Sure, yeah, I mean, I think actually in the States, we're probably, I don't know, we're the only country, but we're one of the only countries that does law as a degree after a bachelor's degree, or at least that is a long period of time, three whole years of additional study after a bachelor's degree. Yeah, and here again, the bachelor's degree for many in the U.S., there's no set specific one. It can vary, common might be political sciences at the degree, sometimes it could be philosophy or English, you could be a biology major and decide if they take you a little extra preparation, but frankly, it means that those getting into the U.S. law school really have a more, maybe a broader and more diverse educational background. Absolutely, for example, at GW, they're very focused on international law and also on patent law and IP law in general, and they're actually the best school in the country for that. So I actually went to law school with a lot of engineers, folks who have their bachelor's degree, sometimes master's degree in engineering, because they come to law school and they say, hey, I have all this technical and scientific knowledge about how patents work, and now I wanna learn the legal side and go into that and it's very operative in the States. And yeah, so you have a broad base of folks, right? People who are in the classics, for example, I'm a friend who studied Greek and Latin literature for four years and then he came to law school. So that's sort of how it works in the States. Here in Mexico, it's completely different, right? You come in straight from high school, usually you're 18 years old. The program is set up to be four or five years, depending on the university, right? Some students take longer because they go on exchange programs and then they don't count some of those courses, different reasons, but the programs are four or five years. It's typical, but it's entirely, you're basically a law student for that entire year. Yeah, right, so in Mexico, like in also a lot of countries, there is no sort of, most universities don't have a common core, right? If there isn't courses that you can take because you wanna take them. You have to take a predetermined set of courses right from the first semester all the way to the last semester. And so you're pretty much taking law courses all the way through. So you have four or five full years of only taking law courses. Many semesters also, instead of taking four or five courses like we do in the States, students will take six or seven. Sometimes they'll even take more courses in a semester. And so they end up with somewhere between like 50 and 60 courses, basically, law courses over the course of this period. So they graduate as lawyers and they can practice, right? When they finish in 22 or 23 or 24, coming out of their bachelor's degree year, they can practice as lawyers, right? They have to. Now, is there an exam process here? I mean, to actually get your certificate of your cellular, as they might call it. Like in the US, generally you would call it passing the bar. You'd be getting certified by the state. So it's only gonna go to law school. Then you gotta pass this big hurdle. Similar here, there's obviously a final sort of tail end. Yeah, but it's not at the same level. You know, in the States, you can have your bachelor's and your JD. You could get perfect grades all the way through and with honors and everything. If you don't pass that bar exam. You can't practice as a lawyer. Practice, right? Maybe you can get jobs consulting. Maybe you can get jobs in some sort of legal related things, but you can't actually be the person on the legal document that's going to the court and can't appear in front of the judges, right? In the courtroom. And that's pretty intense, right? I think most people are at least familiar with the bar exam and it's different in different states in the US. And you take it by state. So to be able to practice law in Washington, DC, in California, in Ohio. Right, you have to take it in each state. The only one you can weigh it into, pretty much very easily is DC. So if you're barred anywhere else in the country, then DC will take you there. But other states sometimes have agreements. So if you're barred in one state, like Wisconsin, Minnesota, one other. Yeah, they have to be there. Surely the Dakotas must be in sync. I mean, I don't remember. But there are some ways, but yes, you're barred state by state. So in Mexico, there are two big differences. One is that when you are admitted to practice after your bachelor's degree, it's national. So there's no restriction by state. Some states are starting to talk about having additional requirements, but it's national, even though Mexico is a federal country. And the second thing is that the process here, you have to get your degree. You have to, many universities do us, they call it social service, which is like a national sort of service. It's a mandatory service, that is sometimes it's done during the degree and often they might put it off towards the tail end. But that's kind of a practical internship or part of the program or the curriculum, if you will. But it's a way of giving back to as well, but also giving you practical professional experience. Absolutely. But once you've pretty much done all that, you've come through, you can get your set with that. You can get it, and that's sort of the document. The credential that gives you the legal right to exercise that profession. It's common in many others as an engineer, as many other practitioner-type degree programs. And I wonder maybe if you could say a few words about maybe the role of lawyers. I mean, in the US, of course, we have, imagine here as well, lawyers who go into many different practice, corporate law, public defenders, maybe people dealing with environmental issues, the music industry, entertainment lawyers, whatever it might be, people go on to exercise. And is it fair to say those coming out of law school, most of them continue to practice as lawyers? Because there may be some who, maybe become entrepreneurs or consultants, but a fair percentage go on to actually exercise as lawyers. In many areas. Yeah, I don't actually have a concrete percentage, but my impression both in the States and in Mexico is that most graduates of the law school go on to practice. There are people who go to law school or they're studying law because they want to go on to politics. That's pretty common both in the States, or they want to work in their family business maybe, and the business is not really legal, but they're going to do some legal work there. So there are folks who end up not practicing, but most I think want to practice and they will practice. And so yeah, there's a broad range of fields. I think in the U.S. there are some areas that are much more developed like IP, also for example, compliance, right? IP is intellectual property. Intellectual property, yeah, yeah, yeah. Intellectual property law, right? Which can be both patents, but also copyright. The other field in the States is pretty big, especially in DC, but everywhere. It's compliance is the idea of being a lawyer who here in house or through a firm, makes sure that companies are in compliance with all the rules and regulations. That's new here, right? It's a growing area. It's a growing area. And even the cons of the idea, and as I often find too, I've been myself teaching some years in Mexico, and one of the things as a political science professor, I've often had difficulty, I don't know when I throw this out to you, but there's the word that we have in the U.S. of accountability. It's not accounting, which is, you know, accounting pressure, but it's accountability that has more ethical, legal sort of, or even moral dimensions. That is, you have to be accountable for your actions. And what I'm getting at is, often that word, you can't translate it literally into Spanish. It's not cuentabedida, which is kind of accounting. And partly it's because maybe even the notion of there's more impunity here, there's maybe a less compliance. In fact, even why is there impunity? Why do people not pay taxes or whatever? Well, partly because it's got a weaker state in some ways and more difficulty enforcing, enforcing little laws. I wonder maybe continuing from that, you know, what would you describe? I mean, because on one hand, Mexico as a country where it has a higher percentage of the population, let's say in poverty or lower socioeconomic, maybe half easily. And what I'm getting at here is that the university students really are more so than in the U.S. They're really a small elite here, especially those studying law school or private institutions. So, I mean, in the U.S., we have a world now where today, compared to 50 or 100 years ago, a higher percentage of people going to university, which is a good thing in general. It's a challenge sometimes because there are some who may not be prepared or don't have even, you know, experience from parents who have gone to college so different challenges as first generation. Here in Mexico, we have a lot of other maybe challenges to social mobility is when I want to get in. I think in the U.S., there's a bit more of this openness. If you work hard, if you get right education, you have the ability to move into different social status. At least some people do, right? We like to think we do in the States. And I think we used to more in its upcoming classes. But here it just, it's almost not exist. That's right. There's less of that social mobility. There's more of a class structure. There's pretty much no, there's pretty little space to move up social and your socioeconomic level in Mexico. Classes are very marked, right? As you know, class, we don't talk about classes much over the states. We're not talking about courses. We're talking about social classes. Yeah, social economic classes, right? So in the States, they I think are pretty marked, but we don't see them, you don't see them as much on the street, right? And here in Mexico, you can pretty much by looking at people can often tell sort of where in the general socioeconomic level. So it's very ingrained in society. Number one, there is very little room, I think, to move up pretty much if you were born into a middle class, you're likely to stay there. Maybe you can get into an upper class. But if you're born in that 50% or so of the country, that is in some level of poverty, you're pretty much not going to get out, right? It's going to be very challenging. So yeah, especially at a university like this, it's a private university. It's expensive by Mexican standards. A lot of the students we have are sort of coming from an elite sort of level. And I guess that regardless of that, some of these problems you were talking about, the impunity and the corruption, the sort of the circle that creates, those kind of apply, I think, across the board. Unfortunately, it's permeated Mexican society at all levels and even though- Yeah, people opportunity. Yeah, that's the one area where there is equal opportunity. That's right. Let me hold you on that thought because we're going to take a very quick break right now for a short intermission and we'll come back to continue this conversation. I'm here talking today with Sam Stone, professor of law here at the University of the Americas, Puebla in Mexico. And we're going to return with more on the conversation. Join us here. Thank you. Aloha, I'm Catherine Norr and I'm the host of Much More on Medicine on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk about medical issues and I interview guests regarding medical matters. And I'm really excited about that upcoming guests. I hope you join us every other Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha and see you then. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner inviting you to join us on Wednesdays at 1 o'clock for Cannabis Chronicles, a 10,000 year odyssey where we take a look at cannabis as food, cannabis as medicine, cannabis and religion, cannabis and dear old Uncle Sam. So please join us to learn all about cannabis. Again, Wednesdays at 1 o'clock. Thank you. I'm your host, Carlos Juarez and we're talking today with Sam Stone, who is an American who, well, American of Mexican heritage, a Mexican American, but he's here in Mexico teaching law, law school and basically educating and training next generation of Mexican lawyers. And we're talking a little bit about some of the differences, some of the similarities because clearly the U.S. has its own system, both of legal education, the legal profession. Mexico curiously, it's a country that is really a contrast paradox. You have on one hand parts of it, very modern, very connected to the first world, very globalized, and you turn the corner and there's obviously underdevelopment, poverty, inequality and on a very serious level. It's a wealthy country with resources and knowledge and what not, manufacturing capacity, agriculture, but it's also very poor and that half the population doesn't seem to benefit from that. It's a very wealthy country where wealth is terribly distributed. A very unequal distribution of the wealth. Mexico's usually in terms of GDP and I know GDP instead of GDP per capita. It's not always the best indicator, right? But Mexico's GDP is usually within the top 15 or so economies of the world, right out of 100, 95, 96, 98, however we wanted to find them countries, right? So it's a big deal. It's in the G20, it's a key player as an emerging power of Florida. But the wealth is terribly distributed. You could even argue that NAFTA, for example, in free trade over the last 30 years has created a lot of wealth for Mexico and it just has not at all been distributed in any way that helps really pull people out of poverty in a real sense, right? And so that to some degree in my view at least plays into the cycle of corruption and impunity which affects all society and it sort of is a challenge on the legal system. That's right. And the legal system to sort of mention about comparing it to the U.S. talking about how it is different from the U.S. So Mexico inherits a lot of its basic structure from the U.S., right? Federal system, three branches of government, separation of powers, right? Things that weren't necessarily inherent in systems of government before the U.S. or especially separation of powers and federalism. And so, yeah, Mexico basically looks at the U.S. Constitution, right? It becomes independent 35 years later, right? And says, hey, we like some of these ideas. So we're going to institute it. And so the basic structure looks very similar from the outside. It has a constitution, it has a Congress, yeah, three branches of government, right? Executive president, a legislature with two houses, the legislature that are pretty much the same thing, right? A chamber of deputies, the Senate, right? Supreme court, which is independent. There's a judiciary branch, the states, it's a federal constitution explicitly, the states retain some power, right? It's a lot quicker than it looks. Beyond that paper being, I mean, Mexico has a longer history of an authoritarian system and only in the last maybe 30, 35 years it's been becoming more democratic, making significant progress, but also a few steps back like always happens. And these days maybe they're growing in anxiety because people see change, but then they see injustice and equality. There are new rules and impressive, very progressive reforms of the legal constitution. But in reality, if you're a very poor person in Mexico, you don't have a system that is there working for you as well. You have wealth and money, you can find the right way. Yeah, it's difficult, I think, to live in Mexico if you are poor, right? Which is most people, not just because of the physical sort of material conditions, but because you're looking at, you know, all of this wealth around you that's not distributed. You're looking at all of this modernity to some degree. And then you go home and you're living in sort of these conditions that in some places, you know, could probably not be out of place in like Marx's descriptions of Manchester, England in the 19th century, right? I mean, that sort of that that. And so that also, like you're saying, plays into the legal system because the system is, in some ways, less adversarial than in the United States. There's more emphasis on reconciliation and sort of even in the criminal system, parties trying to sort of cut the victim and the perpetrator, the family of the victim trying to come together, right? And have a dialogue. But unfortunately, there's just such a high level of continuity, only about 2% of crimes in Mexico ever get resolved, 2%, right? And I mean, that sounds just by itself. It's like, wow, something's not worrying. I mean, the US system, not perfect, of course, at its own issues, but what would be a contrast, for example, what percentage of crimes get to their final conviction or go through the process? Yeah, I actually don't have the number of crimes. Certainly not two or three. It's very high, right? The vast majority of crimes are at least investigated in the United States. Whereas here, they never quite make it in. They often don't even get investigated, right? I mean, they might call the police, they might show up, they might take a few notes and then that's where that ends, right? In some cases, if you really want to pursue a case, you might have to provide additional personal funds to the police to make sure that they actually investigate. Yeah, and that is crazy. It is, and it helps to erode trust in the system, legitimacy, confidence, credibility, everything. And the US is imperfect, right? I mean, it has serious, serious problems. I worked in the criminal justice system for two years in DC. I was a law clerk to judges in DC, as I mentioned. And I am personally convinced that sort of this theory that the US criminal justice system is structurally, has racist issues, a structural level, is true. I mean, that's not to say that I think most people in the system are racist, not at all, on the contrary. And most people are trying to do, they do what they think is right, but it's built up in such a way that it's going to pull in all these people who are black and brown pretty much and far higher rates than whites. And that's going, you know, that is a real problem, right? If there was a book, Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, that kind of puts this whole thing into perspective. And I think that's our biggest challenge in the States. But the general notion of how it works, I think is good. The problem is it's been structured in a way that has been not an official. I don't know if it's the term of an institutional racism, but they are a legacy of, obviously, decisions and rules made by a very, you know, narrow set of the, let's say, and the system is set up that way to some extent. It's not, you know, it's not like legal. I'm not saying, of course, there's legal segmentation. Yeah, right, right, right, right, right, right. That was the reality before the 60s, you know, civil rights reforms and all. And I wonder, you know, maybe just a quick thought of, after now you've been here some time of understanding a deeper knowledge, you come from the US, so you know that system well. But now as you're more familiar with the system here, are there anything that you can think of that like really surprised you or that's done interest very different and anything from maybe something that rather actually could have helped the US or that otherwise it's simply a different way of doing things here that, or even as you are educating your students here, they are pretty well to do upper middle class Mexicans, but they're also socialized where they have a knowledge and understanding of the US after all the US has this tremendous power. So people often see popular culture music, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, film, television, and they may assume certain things, you know, you have the right to remain silent, you're Miranda right, well, those are the US, that's not Mexico, and anything you could share like little differences or... Yeah, so I guess there are actually a bunch of things potentially. But one of the things I think that I like about here is that there is more of an emphasis on the legal system, on cooperation and on the nation. It's not automatically adversarial, right, in the US it's always adversarial, and that works in some ways, in many ways, but sometimes that can be... It may protect you if you're a contract to enforce it, but it creates almost this tension inherently, and even you can almost describe that, perhaps you can appreciate this, relations between usually the owners, managers, and the workers, it's a more tense and adversarial one. I know for example that in a lot of the European country, particularly Northern European, they have labor management relations that's almost inherently cordial, more cooperative, and they sit down to solve problems rather than wait until they're out talking to each other. So that aspect, I think that's more participatory, more idea of being more towards mediation, solving the problem, right? There's also, I think Mexico is much more in Mexicans in general, including our students here, and our colleagues and so on, just much more international than in the United States, at least in the world. Lawyers in the United States are not required to take international law at all, whether in law school, most of them, some law schools require it, but also there's a lot of sort of poo-pooing of international law. They just say, oh, it's not real law because it's not enforced in this sort of hard, traditional way to think of, like there's no police force, right? That's gonna show up and tell whatever country to do what it should be doing, and that leads a lot of American lawyers to kind of say, oh, well, then it doesn't matter, right? It's not real. Whereas in Mexico, that's not really the case. I think most people in law at least accept the notion that international law is part of Mexican law because it is under Mexico's system. They accept the notion of human rights, including social and economic rights as human rights. That's not really in question that much anymore in the Mexican legal system. And of course, in Mexico, it doesn't always get applied that well, but on paper, right? The Mexican constitution has been amended to include all of these social and economic rights but in the US, at least half of the country still doesn't see it as a right at all, right? And I think from that perspective, that's pretty interesting how that's developed so differently. Now, in the US, the rights that people do have are usually implemented in a much better way and you can actually exercise your human rights whereas here in Mexico, oftentimes you can't. So Mexico has this great system on paper and hopefully eventually we can implement it, right? But the US could learn, I think, take some of that from Mexico and say, hey, there's no reason why we can't see some of these things as rights, there's no reason why we can't integrate international law into our own law without ceding sovereignty, right? The argument is always, oh, the US is gonna lose sovereignty and it becomes more involved in these international institutions and that doesn't have to be the case at all, I think. And so that's a model from Mexico that the US could look at. Yeah, I find it fascinating and as I think about it now, in the US, most lawyers at law school, they really aren't learning about international law because it's not central to what they're doing all year. And yet, as you know, I'm in the area more of international relations and foreign policy and obviously international law is central to that, understanding human rights violations, sovereignty issues of states and territorial claims, but that's a very narrow area that's just, for some. And nevertheless, like you were saying here, Mexican lawyer that I would think too, I mean, lawyers in other parts of the world have to be more connected to what's happening in legal issues, doing business across borders. And for Mexico, the United States is such an important, all important player, the main economic partner. And again, even if you never leave Mexico to the youth, go to the US, the US is here and breathing on you and then investing and pushing trade wars, whatever it might be, and maybe more specifically, people here educated young leaders need an understanding of the American system, the legal system, the political system that helps inform them to understand how to do business, how to, and also how to make sense of the way the US thinks. A hundred percent. I think if you're gonna be a professional person in Mexico, almost regardless of what area you're in, you need to understand how the US works. And a working knowledge of English to be able to communicate effectively. There's a final thought I had as we had a great chance to contrast some of these things, but one thing I know that I often hear this from Mexicans looking towards the US, the United States has this obsession with suing everybody and going to court over everything. And if my tire got broken, then the city has to pay for that. And of course, it takes on different levels, but in general, there is a sense in the US that that's what lawyers do. They just find ways to collect money from somebody with deep pockets. Today, it might be the pharmacy industry or the tobacco in the past, or again, making sure that you're holding accountable public officials or private companies. And this is, I guess, my thought on this. I was just talking with students about this yesterday. This is one thing I do like about the US legal system. I like that it is relatively easy to bring a lawsuit. Why? Because the more barriers you put up to bring the lawsuit in the first place, the less you're actually gonna be able to hold people accountable, which should be held accountable, right? I mean, asbestos, seatbelts, right? Those are things in the US that were only achieved, eliminating asbestos from construction and putting seatbelts in cars because of lawsuits. It wasn't something that states with a better, right? Or the government didn't mandate it. For many years, those things were not mandated by government. Companies simply said, hey, we're going to start doing this because otherwise we'll get sued and we'll lose. Right? My God, it's a coffee case, right? Someone's got coffee in their land. But if you actually go and look at it, that was actually a real case, right? The coffee was much hotter than it should have been. The person was actually injured. And the point is, having worked for judges, I can tell you that if a lawsuit comes in that it's completely frivolous, the judge will toss it. I mean, the other side will make a motion. It'll be tossed. It'll be done, right? So while sometimes you do see these cases, right? To make the news or, you know, oh, someone sues because they put their cat in the microwave and they should have known better, you know, they're suing the microwave company anyway. That stuff does happen. But to me, that's a price that's sort of, I'm willing to pay to make sure that people can bring their lawsuits in the first place and hold people accountable about government and industry when they need to. Well, Sam, you know, we've just scratched the surface of this. I want to say, you know, we'll keep our conversation going, have opportunities to continue the dialogue. But this has been very fascinating just to get a snapshot of your own insights, experience coming to teach law here in Mexico, train the next generation and help them understand the U.S. as well because you've got insights into that and it's necessary for them here. Well, we're gonna have to close on that. It's been a great conversation. I can look forward to continuing it as we'll open some other areas to push towards. And my host, I'm sorry, my guest here, I'm your host, Carlos Guadiz. Glad that you could join us here and get a little insight into understanding this important relationship Mexico and the U.S. in areas of education and understanding the future lawyers who are gonna always be around. You need a lawyer like it or not. They're gonna have to help us sift through everything. So we're gonna close on that. Thank you for joining us and we'll look forward to seeing you here on our next episode of Global Connections.