Meet The First Grad of the Law School’s S.J.D. Program

Most attorneys are proud to serve as judges, but Mohammed Al Mulhim wasn’t.

The native of Al-Hofuf, Saudi Arabia, was just 23 years old and a recent graduate of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University when he began working as a Grievances Court judge in Riyadh.

“I realized I wasn’t qualified to decide cases between people,” he says. “I didn’t have sufficient training. I did not see myself as a judge.”

So he quit.

When his wife began studying physical education at St. Catherine University in St. Paul not long afterwards, Al Mulhim saw an opportunity to deepen his legal knowledge. He enrolled in the Law School’s LL.M. program, graduating in 2014 with a 3.56 GPA. A year later, the Law School launched a Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) program, and Al Mulhim, hungry for still more legal education, registered as its first student.

Although the S.J.D. degree—the equivalent, in the legal world, of a Ph.D.—is not common in the United States, it is often pursued by legal scholars from other countries. The Law School’s S.J.D. program currently has enrollees from South Korea and Qatar in addition to Saudi Arabia.

“Students in our program are required to produce original, significant research,” says Kara Galvin, director of international and graduate programs. “We have amazing scholars from all over the world who spend time here to earn their degrees.”

To gain admittance to the Law School S.J.D. program, students must have earned an LL.M. degree from an American university. To graduate, S.J.D. candidates need to complete 24 credits of coursework and 24 credits of thesis work, along with other requirements.

Al Mulhim’s nearly completed dissertation, “Judicial Independence in Saudi Arabia: Prospects and Challenges,” is a deep dive into Saudi jurisprudence. While writing the document, which runs to more than 200 pages, he’s consulted frequently with Professor Bob Stein ’61, the Everett Fraser Professor of Law and a 2016 recipient of the University’s Distinguished Global Professor award. Throughout every stage of the project, Stein has offered helpful critiques.

“Even if I write one page, he says, Come to me and let’s discuss it,’” Al Mulhim says. “He’s not just a professor. He treats me like a son.”

Stein is proud of his protégé. "We want the first student in the program to set a high bar and he will do that," he says.

When first studying at the Law School as an LL.M. candidate, Al Mulhim was involved in several activities, including co-founding the Saudi Student House at the University and working as a community human rights monitor for The Advocates for Human Rights in Minneapolis.

After earning his S.J.D. later this year, Al Mulhim plans to return to King Faisal University Law School—he’s previously taught administrative and constitutional law classes there—and establish a human rights center. He hopes the center will host lectures and conferences on labor, orphan, and women’s rights.

“I want to raise awareness,” Al Mulhim says.

In the meantime, the S.J.D. program will continue to grow, likely attracting students from around the world, says Galvin.

--By Todd Melby, a Minneapolis writer