Lessons from Iceland

Law Professor Mark S. Weiner  (pictured below) spent the fall 2009 semester as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Akureyi in Iceland, where he taught U.S. constitutional law and studied the country’s medieval clans, or kinship groups, and their relation to the growth of modern Icelandic law and society.

What he learned about the role of kinship in early Iceland shed light on efforts to develop the rule of law in current clan-based regions of the world, including those that nurture international terrorism. The Fulbright experience, says Weiner, “has fundamentally transformed my thinking about legal history and constitutional law in ways I hope to bring back with me when I return to Rutgers School of Law–Newark.”

Weiner will discuss kinship and the law in his February 23 Chancellor’s Distinguished Faculty Lecture and in a new book on the legal and cultural significance of clans.

He discusses his five-month Icelandic experience in this essay


For a slideshow of more spectacular photos from Iceland, go to
http://law.newark.rutgers.edu/files/u/WeinerIceland.pdf