Bachelor of Law

Introduction

The Department of Law has been serving as an academic and intellectual hub for students from across Afghanistan since the inception of Kateb University.  We hire some of the most qualified degree holders as faculty members from different parts of the world.

The study of law is about a system of rules that are created and enforced through social and governmental institutions to regulate behaviors of human beings, ensure societal justice and preserve societal integrity. Lawyers are held in high esteem in a civil society as they render valuable service to all segments of the society by getting their constitutional and legal rights enforced through courts-civil or criminal, at all level of judiciary, that is trial court, high court, Supreme Court or quasi judicial institutions.

Career Paths and Scope of Work

Some of the most famous career paths awaiting graduates of law are the business world, court rooms, government offices and self initiated legal profession or even a law firm. Wherever a law graduate steps, countless doors of opportunity will open up not just locally but internationally.

Afghanistan currently has only around 4,000 registered advocates with Afghanistan Independent Bar Association for a population of over 30 millions. This counts down to just one lawyer for every 7,500 Afghans. This can statistically indicate the scope of a degree in law.

Not just this, law graduates can pursue a career in well established law firms, private business companies, Multi National Corporations, banks, telecommunication companies, legal consulting companies and government run offices like that of AIBA.

Some of the students choose to work before they pursue a master’s degree. Graduates of Criminology and Public and Private Law will be able to work as international or national lawyers, become advocates or provide legal advisory to National and International Criminal Courts, Supreme Courts, Ministry of External Affairs, embassies and consulates, national and international NGOs, ministries and corporate firms.

After getting a BA in the field, students can choose to study Restorative Criminal Justice, Public Policy, Criminal Justice Management, Crime and Justice Studies for their graduate studies. Or they may have certain other choices for instance study Political Science after getting a BA in Criminology. Or a more unexpected scenario would be studying Economics for masters after getting a BA in Criminology.

Student Development Opportunities

Law Clinic and Legal Coursework

Identifying the fatal flaw in the legal education system in Afghanistan where students are poorly trained on practical skills such as legal research, writing, and analysis, as well critical thinking. In 2016, Kateb University started to adopt a series of new courses that will provide the much needed practical training for law students. We have brought in some highly qualified instructors to teach practical skills to students. We have come to believe that without providing practical legal training courses such as the legal writing course and the pre-clinic course designed and implemented by the Asia Foundation and/ or the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), we may not be able to compete in the market in the long term. Therefore, creating a legal clinic and offering a comprehensive legal research and legal writing course have been a top priority for us the in the last few years.

The primary purpose of the legal clinic is to help provide quality legal education and practical skills training opportunity for Law and Sharia Law students. The secondary purpose is providing quality legal aid services for indigent women, and children as well as indigent defendants in criminal cases. Students who are assigned to work at the legal clinics are evaluated by their supervisors and their performances scored based on their evaluation results. As mentioned earlier, the criteria for selecting students is gender-sensitive and we will use all our efforts to ensure gender equality and participation in the clinical education program.

Kateb University Department of Law plans to launch a public awareness campaign through radio and/or TV announcement targeting the specific populations in Kabul province. In addition to the public awareness program, we plan to hire an active defense lawyer with a good reputation among lawyers community as the clinic supervisor who might help in attracting more clients to the legal clinic.

Three of our full time faculty members including the dean of law faculty and head of law department, take the overall responsibility of the legal clinic and participate in any required training courses that will help them lead and manage the clinic in the best way possible. Benefiting from our contacts at the Asia Foundation, we have already started to teach the Foundation’s Legal Writing Course to our students as their credit for legal research courses. This course is designed to be offered in two semesters for a total of four credits. In addition, we are preparing to also teach the Foundation’s Pre-Clinic Course Manual designed to prepare students of Law and Sharia Law to assist defense lawyers at legal clinics as interns and legal fellows.

ICC Moot Court Competition

The International Criminal Moot Court (ICC) national round takes place every year in Kabul, and is organized with the support of the International Criminal Court. Teams of students from all around the country meet to discuss a fictional case where crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC seem to have been committed. Each team is composed of six members, who play the role of the Prosecutor, the Defense and the Victims’ Legal Representative. Each member writes a thirty page or fewer memorial according to assigned role.

The ICC Moot Court is an international competition among universities which simulates the real International Criminal Court. This education and social competition is organized in the city of Hague for a total of 6 days where international students gain skills of a future international lawyer by pretending to be one. An interesting fact about ICC Moot Court is that the final round of the competition is adjudicated by real ICC judges in the ICC Court Room.

The ICC Moot Court is important to us because it teaches students more about the Rome Statute, especially within the countries that have yet to ratify it; such as, Afghanistan. During the competition students argue a hypothetical case to gain better understanding of international criminal law and ICC’s mandate and jurisprudence. Moreover, once selected to attend, students get the chance to become familiar with the Hague based international Institutions. Our fulltime faculty members work throughout the year to prepare a team for this important event. Along the faculty members, a new team of students is trained for the national, and then, international competition by the team that participated the year before.

In 2016, a team of 10 students, 2 coaches and 8 participants participated in the international ICC moot court.

Center for Human Rights at Kateb University

There is no place on earth today that is not affected by Human Rights phenomenon. Values, politics, culture, law and economies are all affected by this very well-known phenomenon. Using the human rights tools many people around the world have made new demands from their governments, setup revolutionary movements to benefit the best out of their rights as human.

The Center for Human Rights at Kateb University was inaugurated on December fourth of 2013 and like any other Human Rights centers started working for the promotion of Human Rights locally, nationally and regionally through education, research and public awareness.

The center for Human Rights at Kateb University was established for the purpose of producing and expressing ideas for human rights intellectuals and activists to promote human rights values.

First ever journal on Human Rights was also released on December fourth with the inauguration ceremony that discusses the following ideas:

1. Inseparability of the Rule of Law and Human Rights
2. Human Rights and Peace Talks
3. Tolerance
4. Humanitarian Intervention

Debate Club

Our Debate Club is a place where participants can learn the art of logical argumentation. Debating is a formal discussion of subjects before a jury or a public assembly. Our debating teams along with their coaches prepare for and attend different tournaments to argue on a specific topics and defend their standing stance. The participants in this club learn about the structure and format of debating. Our coaches are prominent figures who have participated in different debate tournaments at national and international levels. Model debate tournaments are organized on quarterly basis to portray a sense of real debate competition at KPDI. Debating teams from different faculties and KPDI will compete against one another to get the first place. Recently, KPDI has participated in debating tournament organized by Kardan University in which we could defeat our rival teams until semifinals. Having the capacity and talented students, we believe to attain higher places in future debating tournaments.

Faculty

Our faculty members are divided into different categories to improve student development at the department other than only lecture delivery. Permanent faculty members are responsible for a number of important tasks such as delivering lectures, organizing field trips, supervising final thesis projects, supervising student research projects, organizing law clinic courses, preparing students for the ICC Moot Court and updating the curricula.

Each one of our faculty members are experts in their own fields and have contributed extensive years of their lives teaching and practicing criminology and public and private law concepts. Their experience helps ensure that our curriculum at the department is designed and updated on a timely manner.

1. Abdul Aziz Noori has written a book titled ‘Human Rights and Islam’ which is also used as a textbook at Kateb Department of Law.
2. Abdul Aziz Danish has over 7 case studies and published papers on topics such as ‘A Study of Child Labor from the Perspective of ILO Regulations’. He has two translated works; first ‘Images of Child Labor’ published in the Goftaman Naw Journal, second, ‘Work of Children and Young Persons’ published in Fasl Jadid Journal. Mr. Danish has attended and spoken at more than 16 national and international conferences.

Offered Majors in Law

BA in Criminology will give students a broad sight into how societies are affected by crime and criminal behavior. Moreover, they will learn about some of the challenges of the criminal justice system. As a criminal lawyer, graduates can only discuss and provide solutions to crimes when they understand its roots and consequences. There are two interesting opportunities for students to learn real world criminology concepts outside classroom. First, a team of criminology experts will help them gain skills to analyze and asses information related to different criminal cases. Second, during our field trips they will have the chance to meet professional criminal defense lawyers.

There are a variety of professions graduates with a criminology degree can choose to contribute to criminal justice and crime reduction such as the police, prisons, offender management, youth justice and victimization.

Students of BA in Public and Private Law get a deep understanding of concepts such as Administrative Law, Constitutional Laws, Criminal Laws, Municipal Laws and International Laws

The rule of law within states and among nations has significant implications for transactions, trade and regulation. Whether your business involves a state or province’s internal operations, relations with individuals and other states or regions, or the full array of planning, permitting, regulation and enforcement of national laws, study of public and private law equips students with knowledge to deal with matters likewise.

Curriculum Students study Constitutional Law (1 and 2), Criminal Procedure Law (1 and 2), Civil Procedure Law (1 and 2), Administration Law (1 and 2), International Private Law (1 and 2), General International Law (1 and 2), Commercial Law (1, 2, 3 and 4), Private Criminal Law (1, 2 and 3), General Criminal Law (1, 2 and 3), a total of 8 courses on Civil Law as their core courses. Because the language of instruction for BA in Criminology and Public and Private Law at Kateb University is Persian, students are required to take 2 courses on Legal Text in English. In addition to that, they also need to take 2 main courses on Jurisprudence Text. Other than these are the general and elective courses such as Forensic Medicine, Comparative Law, Contractual Law, Rights to Monetary and Financial Organizations, Labor Law, Humanitarian Law, Environmental Law, Violation of Children’s Rights, Islamic Studies, Introduction to Computer, Introduction to Economics, Public Finance, Rules of Civil Law, Rules of Criminal Law, Research Method, Intellectual Property Law, Juvenile Law, Human Rights, Criminology, Organized Crimes, Sociology, Introduction to Democracy, Criminalities and Crime Prevention.

We at Kateb University Department of Law since early 2016 has been working to update our curricula and have included a two- credit pre-clinic course as well as a legal clinic in the curriculum. The new curriculum provides for a total of four credit courses for legal clinical education program. 3rd year students of law faculty (both male and female) take the pre-clinic courses for one semester and after successfully completion of pre-clinic courses, they are introduced to the legal clinic lawyer and supervisor to work on real cases in family law, civil law, and commercial law, and/or possibly criminal law.

A number of courses such as Forensic Medicine, Public Finance, Environmental Law and Legal Text for English have newly been added to the curriculum in order to give students a broader introduction and choice of understanding of their future career.

Financial Information for the years of 2018 – 2019

Fee structure has been divided into two categories; Barchi campus and main (Darul Aman) campus. Main campus is expected to cost higher because of lower discount amount offered. Each student is required to pay a predetermined amount of AFN 12,000 each semester throughout their degree program. Tuition fee of AFN 850 is charged per credit hour. Students may register for a minimum of 14 credit hours and maximum of 22 credit hours each semester.

Indiscriminate Discount

The undergraduate program offers a discount of 45% and 20% towards the total fees of each enrolled student each semester depending on which campus they study in. This amount applies to students who study full time at KU.

Fee Chart for the Years of 2018 – 2019

Barchi Branch Tuition Fees Structure

1. Predetermined Fees: AFN 12,000
2. Tuition Fees Per Credit Hour: AFN 850
3. Discount Amount: 45%

Main Branch Tuition Fees Structure

1. Predetermined Fees: AFN 12,000
2. Tuition Fees Per Credit Hour: AFN 850
3. Discount Amount: 20%

Curriculum

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