IRE 400-1/SS 304-1

Public International Law

Fall Semester 2020-2021

Guidelines for the Midterm Assignment

Dear Students of IRE 400-1/SS 304-1 Public International Law,

As kindly and often discussed, fully agreed on, and announced in our class, this semester we
have a Midterm Assignment. As a comprehensive assignment, it covers all our course’s
learning outcomes. Its submission deadline is Tuesday 13 October 2020, 11:59 pm.

The Midterm Assignment allows us to apply all of the course knowledge and add value via prior
experience to a real-life, career-relevant, or industry-based scenarios or problems, and enhance
our learning, real-life career-relevant insights, industry processes and expectations. Most
importantly, we will have the time and resources to achieve better quality data. Hence we will
submit practice-based research papers of around 2000 words with a career-related or industry-
based application.

The midterm assignment expectations link to its time frame, supporting genuine, independent,
individual student research efforts. These include full transparency as to all used resources, to
be mentioned in a “Bibliography” section that includes website links to each of the cited
sources.

As practiced during this semester, and following established research principles, in this
individual assignment you firstly choose and define the International Law scenario to be
analyzed, either according to your academic or professional preferences, or related to (just not
literally taken from) our classroom materials, techniques, and example topics, for example and
especially, learning from our classmates’ and colleagues’ ways of finding and addressing their
own topics.

This will include brief explanations of your scenario’s political, diplomatic, professional or other
public international legal problems or issues, of your chosen focus’s relevance for international
law, of the public international law areas relevant and required to analyze and argue the situation,
of the intended target audience and the goals of your analysis, and finally of your suggestions
and solutions for the situation.

As previously often mentioned, a good and clear focus is key for a successful assignment,
especially in International Law’s potentially vast geographical and conceptual problem areas. So
instead of trying to address whole concept areas such as ‘Humanitarian Law’, it should be
specified whose international law(s) you look at, where you geographically locate yourself, and
for which specific legal situations (e.g. diplomatic, political, organizational or business) you
would like to offer tailored advice or solutions.

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Specific additions to our practically-oriented Midterm Assignment:

IRE 400 Public International Law is a specialization course. The Midterm Assignment will allow
us to apply all of the course knowledge and add value via prior experience to a real-life, career-
relevant, or industry-based scenario or problem. Practice-based research, usually carried out by
practitioners, has proven to generate fundamental knowledge based on new concepts and
methods.
The practical research process (from data collection to writing up results) may support and
enhance our personal learning, real-life career-relevant insights, and industry processes and
expectations.

Equally importantly, we will have the time and resources (online or other) to achieve better
quality data and writing beyond what could be achieved in traditional sit in exams. We will be
submitting a practice-based research paper of around 2000 words, appropriate to our study stage
and our professional perspectives, with a career-related or industry-based application.

Special attention to the university’s plagiarism policy, regulations, and instructions:

Following our university rules and regulations and our great leaders’ instructions, and for
fairness, any assignment that casts doubts on a student’s authorship or knowledge or competence
of any of the assignment’s aspects of content, construction, or language use, can be verified and
examined by the teacher before the entire class. In case of insufficient or unconvincing proof of
authorship, knowledge, or competence, a grade of zero (0) or any other suitable grade can be
assigned at the teacher’s discretion. For any disagreements, the verification or examination can
be delegated to a college or university committee. Please also see an excerpt of our university’s
plagiarism policy:

Types of academic plagiarism:

1. Purchasing an assignment from a term paper service, and submitting it as your own.
2. Copying someone else’s work or ideas and submitting it as your own without acknowledging
the source.
3. Allowing other students(s) in your class to copy your work and submit their own.
4. Paraphrasing or rephrasing someone else’s work without proper in-text citation and
references.
5. Translating the work from a language to another without proper in-text citation and
references.
6. Working as a group effort without previous written faculty agreement.
7. Provide a fake bibliographical information source in the assignment.
8. Sharing your own assignment with your classmate.

Submission Deadline on our AUE Class Portal: Tuesday 13 October 2020, 11:59 pm.
Please ensure timely submissions. No email submissions at all, at any time, please.

Please let us all ensure our full compliance with the Turnitin Plagiarism limits as per our
course syllabus, university guidelines, and frequent class reminders: let us not exceed 20%.

Wishing you the best of success, and all the best of health and happiness. 😊