Frank García

Faculty Exchange Luksic Grants

Professor of Law, Boston College

I’ve been teaching international economic law and working on collaborative projects with Latin America and other regions for over 25 years.

In the area of clinical education, we created an innovative partnership between our legal aid clinics and the PUC clinics, piloting an inter-disciplinary approach to community legal services that pairs law students and social work students under faculty supervision, and which has now become the model for all PUC law clinics. In the interface between fundamental research and law reform, the grant also funded two high-impact projects that brought together a number of BC and PUC law professors.

The Boston College Law School’s Luksic grant was transformative across our curriculum and in our growing relationship with the Pontifical University of Chile.”

The first project was an innovative community-level investigation of alternate hydroelectric projects in the Los Rios region of Chile and their social and environmental impact. The second, my own, was a project on reforming international investment law that produced a volume of new scholarship, a global network of reform-minded scholars, and a major international conference co-organized by our two law faculties.

The Boston College Law School’s Luksic grant was transformative across our curriculum and in our growing relationship with the Pontifical University of Chile.  Leveraging our shared tradition of Catholic legal education, the grant funded the first translation of St. Alberto Hurtado’s masterpiece, Social Morality, and an international conference on the life and work of this great Chilean, Jesuit and PUC alum.

As a scholar actively engaged in global law reform efforts and a former Associate Dean for Global Initiatives, I know first-hand the critical role that funding plays in making good work—and work that does good for society—possible.  We are grateful for the Luksic family’s generosity.