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As a distinguished global educator, Professor Derek Wilson has a breadth of international academic experience. Wilson holds both an LL.B. Honours Degree in Scots Law specializing in jurisprudence and a Diploma in Legal Practice from Glasgow University. He teaches Legal English and comparative law courses at the Université de Nantes and assists with international relations and exchanges.
Since June 2003, Wilson has co-taught a course on developments in European legal systems in the Drake Law Summer in France program. Prior to his position at the Université de Nantes, Derek taught from 2001 to 2006 at the Institut Catholique d‘Etudes Supérieurs (ICES).
As a global scholar, Wilson has authored and translated numerous articles for publication in English and French. He contributed an article on orality in Scots law for a major research report submitted in July 2004 on orality in litigation in Common law countries for the National Gendarmerie in Paris – France’s national police force. Recently, he translated a majority of a book containing articles for publication by the European Commission-sponsored project, Lascaux’s English version of their “dictionary” on food security law, Legal Dictionary of Food Security in the World.
Wilson is an experienced practitioner in law in the courts of Scotland. For over a decade, Derek practiced in numerous law firms principally in litigation, both civil and criminal.
As the Drake Law Global Practitioner in Residence, Prof. Wilson will teach a course entitled Separatist Movements. This course will examine the implications of separatist movements using the Scottish referendum as a starting point. The referendum will occur as the class takes place, on September 18, 2014 and will see the first real possibility that Scotland could leave the United Kingdom since it joined with the 1707 Treaty of Union.
The main topics will include the creation of new nations as a matter of international law; an exploration of national identity and its impact vis-à-vis other factors creation of a new state; the creation of new constitutions and an exploration of the British unwritten constitution; sovereignty and currency unions; the impact of a diminished United Kingdom internationally, and the possibility of a fresh look at the United Nations Security Council which may change the balance in international relations. The course is open to both law and non-law students.