Maastricht Part 3: The Faculty of Law

I wrote a little about the university in my first post; here I will discuss the Faculty of Law a little and provide some pictures.

As a general introduction, the university has six faculties: Arts and Social Science; Business and Economics; Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences; Humanities and Sciences; Law; and Psychology and Neuroscience.  So within the university there are a number of sub-units known as faculties.  In the US we would refer to them as schools, but with a little difference for the law faculty.

Law schools in the US are part of larger universities (sometimes), but they are separate in the sense that law schools normally occupy their own buildings and are somewhat insulated from the undergrad (and other master-level degree schools) part of the university.  Here, the faculty of law encompasses everyone who is studying law from the first year undergrad to the Ph.D. candidate.  We don't mix classes (some exchange students will jump between masters and bachelors classes), but you can never be sure what level of education a person in the hallway has.  Additionally, unlike the US, the faculty of law does not have a separate library, so it is still a surprise to me when I go to study and the people sitting next to me are working on the quadratic equation (it is also a little surprising since that was high school math).

The faculty of law has its own building:

The building used to be the seat of the regional government of Limburg.  Because of the history of the building, it has some pretty stately rooms.  Here are the two rooms where most of the lectures are held:

The first picture is of the Festzaal.  The Festzaal is also the room used for the moot court competitions.  It is a gorgeous room, but it is quite formal so it really feels like the lecturer is talking at you.  The second room is the Staatenzaal.  Despite the brightly colored chairs (if you've ever been to continental Europe, you have probably seen how the Europeans love to mix the old buildings with contemporary decorations), it is a very beautiful room with great windows that are populated by the coat of arms of the towns in Limburg:

You can see the red shield with the white star of Maastricht in the upper right.  Unfortunately, not all of the rooms are as nice.  The tutorial rooms are much smaller and normally cramped.  Of course, the one I took a picture of is probably the nicest tutorial room in the entire building.  Either way, it gives you an idea of where the "real" learning happens:

As I mentioned earlier, because of the building's previous purpose, there are many impressive features:

Of course, the faculty does their best to make this place seem less like the former seat of a regional government and more like Hogwarts:

This was the best one, but it seems that each (I'm assuming) former dean chooses a ridiculous pose for their picture.

Below are some pictures of the library.  It is a nice building, but is way too crowded since it is the only library (there is another one but it is about a 15-minute bike ride away) in the downtown area.  I really miss having a separate law library when I go there and can't find any place to sit and study.  The entrance is through this gate:

The building has three US floors (two and a ground floor if you're European) and what would seem like plenty of seating:

All in all the faculty of law is a nice place to learn (I have only walked through one other university building and it seemed quite nice as well), just like the city of Maastricht itself.  In fact, the university was ranked the 19th best university under 50 years old in the world.

As a side-note, if you are interested in seeing the horrible pictures I took of the World Championship Road Race a couple weeks ago, they will hopefully be posted here soon.

As a preview of the next installment, I ran through three countries this weekend in the span of about three seconds.  Till then, doei.