2.4 Guidelines for Visiting Scholars

  • 2.4 Guidelines for Visiting Scholars

  • A visiting scholar is defined, for these purposes, as someone who does not have teaching responsibilities at Capital.

  • 2.4.01 Goals

    Capital takes pride in being a service-oriented, friendly and open law school and therefore encourages students, staff and faculty to be friendly, open and receptive to visitors. Capital recognizes that granting access to its facilities is meant to benefit both the visitor and the community at Capital. Therefore, care should be taken before accepting or soliciting a visiting scholar, to determine that the anticipated benefits may be feasibly achieved (in order to be fair to both the potential visitor and the Capital community).

  •  2.4.02 Limitations

    Our ability to accommodate visiting scholars is necessarily limited by financial, administrative and other factors. Fairness requires that we disclose our limitations to a potential visitor before the final decision to visit has been made.

    A. Library

    One of the most important limiting factors in our ability to host a visiting scholar may be our library facilities, both in terms of personnel and collection. It is therefore important to ascertain before accepting a visiting scholar that we have clearly disclosed these limitations.

    1. We should determine in what area the potential scholar would like to do research, and evaluate what resources we have in our collection to accommodate such research.

    2. We should be clear that the primary responsibility of the library staff is to serve the students and faculty; however, they will provide assistance to visitors as these commitments allow.

    3. We should be clear that librarians at Capital do not perform research for any group they serve. Instead, they provide access and assistance for individuals engaged in their own research.

    4. We should be clear that we cannot provide access to general non-legal materials, or reference resources from other schools or libraries.

    5. We should be clear that we cannot provide visitors with the ability to utilize inter-library loan arrangements.

    6. In appropriate circumstances (e.g. when a potential scholar wishes to work in the following areas) we should disclose the limitations of our collection of foreign law materials:

    a. We have a meager collection in the area of international law.

    b. We have an extremely modest collection or comparative law materials.

    c. We should indicate that almost all of our materials are English language versions.

    7. We should disclose that contractual limitations preclude offering visitors access to LEXIS and WESTLAW computer services.

    B. Other Resources and Support

    We should be clear with any potential visitor that we cannot provide secretarial or ministerial services, a private office, or a computer.

    C. Language Concerns

    If a potential scholar who wishes to visit does not have great facility with the English language, we should make clear that most of the students, staff and faculty speak primarily English. Further, we need to be clear that Capital is not equipped to provide interpreters.

    We presume that clear communication is necessary to achieve the goals of any visiting scholar. Therefore, we should ascertain in advance of the final offer to visit, whether there exist language barriers significant enough to make the achievement of the scholar's goals impossible or unlikely.

  •  2.4.03 Procedure

    Access by all persons to Capital University Law and Graduate Center is a privilege and not a right. Our goal is to provide access to the extent it does not negatively impact our ability to serve those constituencies to which we are already obligated.

    A. Those wishing to be designated visiting scholars may make a request for such access to Capital in writing to the Dean.


    B. The Dean may also issue institutional invitations to potential visitors.

    C. The Dean, pursuant to these guidelines, may grant a visitor:

    1. permission to study law in the library, or

    2. permission to attend classes (with faculty consent), or

    3. other rights and privileges appropriate to the occasion

    D. When a visiting scholar has difficulty with the English language, Capital will take extra steps in order to facilitate the realization of the goals stated above. We will:

    1. determine that there is a faculty member willing to be an academic mentor to the visitor (that faculty member should be one whose area of intellectual curiosity involves the subject being studied by the visitor), and

    2. determine that there is a faculty member willing to be an administrative mentor to the visitor in order to help with social and cultural contacts

    3. determine whether these mentors should be available to all visitors

    E. Prior to granting permission for a scholar to visit, the Dean, with the help of the Director of the Institute for International Legal Studies will:

    1. determine in advance that sufficient Capital resources exist in the following areas:

    a. library

    b. personnel

    c. space

    d. academic mentor, where appropriate

    e. administrative mentor, where appropriate

    2. have a discussion with the potential visitor concerning the limitations discussed above, as they apply specifically to the individual

    F. After granting permission for a scholar to visit, the Dean will circulate a memo announcing the forthcoming visit to the law school community. It should include biographical and other general useful information about the visit. The distribution of this information is reflective of the faculty commitment to host and encourage visitors. It is also designed to encourage and facilitate the faculty's effort to make the visit a pleasant and worthwhile experience for the visitor and the law school community.