Bringing a world of study to the classroom
The first course Ievgen Zvieriev will teach in the BA in Law program seems almost impossibly broad: an introductory survey called Law 101.
But Zvieriev, who joins the UB Law faculty this fall, brings substantial teaching and scholarship experience, with a particular interest in legal interpretation. And having taught both undergraduates and graduate law students at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in his native Ukraine, he knows the nuances of engaging students at all levels of their legal education.
“I will start with very, very basic topics and cover a little bit of everything,” he says of the 101 course. “I try to show them what law is, how it works, how different institutions use the law. We’ll look at different areas of law they might end up working with.
“You can make students talk over some difficult stuff, but you have to keep their attention to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.”
He’ll also help students to learn the distinction between the common law tradition in the United States, which is based on case law precedent, and the civil law that prevails in much of Europe. In Ukraine, he notes, “we try to codify everything, try to have written rules for every moment of life. American students are very unlucky because they don’t have a code, so they have to read a lot of cases.”
Zvieriev earned his bachelor’s degree in law from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, a master’s in law from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, and a PhD in law at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, focusing on the theory of law and its application to international law. He also has been a guest researcher at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany; at the University of Glasgow in Scotland; and at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Along the way he has learned several languages: English, German and Hungarian in addition to his native Ukrainian and Russian.
Zvieriev began teaching law students at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2016, where he also serves as managing editor of the Kyiv-Mohyla Law and Politics Journal. He also taught introductory courses in law to students from other departments, such as political science, sociology and economics.
The Russian invasion of his country in 2022 presented unique challenges. Bomb and drone attacks on Kyiv meant that professors sometimes had to improvise in the name of safety. “I was teaching in basements, on front porches, in so many different places,” Zvieriev says. “I could give a lecture on different teaching styles for different places. But if you have to do that, you have to do that.”
He taught for one semester once the war began, then a lucky connection presented itself. Way back in high school, Zvieriev had spent a school year with an Alabama family as a foreign exchange student. (“It was a very hot experience,” he reports.) His host family, which had since moved to Tennessee, invited him to return to the United States, accompanied by his mother.
Now he is settling into life in Western New York and looking forward to cooler weather this fall. In addition to Law 101, Zvieriev is developing a course on the use of research in legal interpretation, as well as another on legal propaganda.
The situation in Ukraine, of course, is never far from his mind, but Zvieriev remains philosophical. “These are the times we live in,” he says. “Life is full of challenges, and these are the challenges that are written somewhere in Heaven for me.”