Speaker Series
Spring 2012 Speaker Series
Upcoming Events
Dr. Ekkehard Strauss, Former Human Rights Officer at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Popular Unrest in the Middle East & North Africa Region - Dawn of Universal Recognition of Human Rights for All?
Monday, March 26, 2012 - 12:00 PM - KH 1002 - Lunch served
Dr. Ekkehard Strauss holds a doctoral degree in international law and human rights from the University of Potsdam/ Germany. Following experience in academia, government and the private sector, he was seconded, from 1998-2001, to the OSCE to serve in different functions in Missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the, then, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He joined the petitions team of OHCHR in 2001. In 2002, he was assigned Desk Officer for the countries of former Yugoslavia. In 2004, he joined the Department of Political Affairs in New York to support the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide in establishing his office and develop his working methods. Following the end of the mandate of the first Special Adviser in 2007, he joined the OHCHR New York Office to participate in the development and implementation of strategies related to the protection of civilians, the responsibility to protect, peacekeeping, peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Throughout his career, Dr. Strauss published extensively on protection of minorities, prevention of human rights violations, post-conflict peacebuilding and human rights responses to mass atrocities. Currently, he is on leave from the UN and works as consultant and researcher from Rabat, Morocco. He has been appointed adjunct professor at Griffith University, Australia.
Naz Modirzadeh, J.D., Fellow at the HLS-Brookings Projects on Law and Security, Harvard Law School
Counterterrorism and Humanitarianism on a Crash Course?:
The Impact of "Material Support" Laws on Humanitarian Assistance in Situations of Armed Conflict
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 - 12PM - Room 1001, Kalmanovitz Appellate Advocacy Moot Courtroom - Davis, CA
Naz Modirzadeh is a Fellow at the HLS-Brookings Project on Law and Security at Harvard Law School. She is the former Associate Director of the Program on Humanitarian Conflict Research at Harvard University. At HPCR, Ms. Modirzadeh managed the international humanitarian law and Middle East portfolios. She previously worked for Human Rights Watch, and later served as Assistant Professor and Director of the International Human Rights Law graduate program at the American University in Cairo. Ms. Modirzadeh has carried out field research and trainings in the Middle East and Afghanistan, focusing on the intersections between Islamic law, international human rights and humanitarian law, and post-conflict legal reform. Her publications include policy and monitoring reports on the use of torture, the application of IHL, and human rights in post-war Afghanistan. Ms. Modirzadeh received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Ms. Modirzadeh’s recent article identifies two countervailing sets of norms for engaging in armed conflict. The first promotes humanitarian engagement with non-state armed groups (NSAGs), in order to protect populations in need, and promote compliance with the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL). The second prohibits such engagement with listed ‘terrorist’ groups, by curtailing financial and other forms of material support, in order to protect security, despite some of these groups qualifying as NSAGs under IHL. This lecture explores how this conflict of norms might affect the capacity of humanitarian organizations to deliver life-saving assistance in areas under the control of one of these groups.
Lamis Deek, J.D.
Islamophobia: The New McCarthyism?
January 26, 2012, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
KH Room 1001, Lunch Served
Lamis Deek is a Palistinian Attorney, Human Rights Advocate and Community Organizer with a private practice in NYC, co-Vice President of the New York Chapter of the NLG and convenor of the NLG-NY's Muslim Defense committee. She will focus on the legal tactics required to effectively fight widespread anti-Muslim racism, from media to court rooms. She will examine the powerful anti-Muslim movement and how it trickles into the legal system; give insight into the lawsuits arising from the mosque attacks in NYC's Sheepshead Bay, as well as the recent Rye Park Playland cases out of New York; and discuss the anti-Muslim racism in police dealings, and de-evolution in the criminal field, with detailed accounting of types of surveillance & daily practices of law enforcement in the survellances.
Fall 2011 Speaker Series
Professor Adrien K. Wing of the University of Iowa School of Law -
The "Arab Fall": The Future of Women’s Rights
Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011 - 4PM - Room 1001, Kalmanovitz Appellate Advocacy Moot Courtroom - Davis, CA
Global attention has been focused on the revolutionary changes taking place in the Middle East and North Africa throughout 2011. In this lecture, Professor Adrien K. Wing brings nearly thirty years of experience and expertise in the study of law, politics and the history of the Middle East and North Africa and a critical race feminist perspective to assess the amazing events of what many political scientists, academics and popular commentators have labeled the “Arab Spring” or the “Revolutionary Era.”
Emphasizing that women’s rights must not be forgotten, Professor Wing will begin with an analysis of women’s issues in the region prior to the events that sparked the Revolutionary Era in Tunisia and Egypt in December 2010-January 2011. Following an analysis about what has happened over this past year and what is likely to happen in 2012, the lecture will conclude with some discussion about next steps and the position of women's rights in the Revolutionary Era in selected countries. International human rights, international humanitarian law, constitutional law and family law are among the topics that will also be addressed.
Professor Wing is the Bessie Dutton Murray Professor of Law at the University of Iowa School of Law and Bette & Wylie Aitken Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law. She earned her B.A. at Princeton University, her M.A. at UCLA and her J.D. at Stanford Law School and teaches courses in International Human Rights, Law in the Muslim World, Constitutional Law and Critical Race Theory.
Reception to follow with light refreshments.
This event is co-sponsored by the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC).
Rebecca Cohen, J.D.
Producer of WAR DON DON, Guest Lecturer at Harvard Law School
Monday, Oct. 24, 2011 - Time and Location TBD
Ms. Cohen is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School. She graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where she now teaches. She is the producer of the international human rights film WAR DON DON, and interned as an investigator at the Bronx Defenders doing investigative work at the Special Court for Sierra Leone for Alex Tamba Brima in the AFRC-accused case.
WAR DON DON profiles the trial of a leader of a separate warring faction in Sierra Leone. For her work on WAR DON DON she was awarded the Cinereach Award for excellence in vital, artful storytelling and the Hugo Munsterberg Award for psychology of human nature in cinema. WAR DON DON also won the Special Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival and was nominated for two Emmy Awards: Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story (Long Form) and Outstanding Editing. In 2010 Ms. Cohen was profiled in Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces in Independent Film as an "up-and-comer poised to shape the next generation of independent film." JILP may screen her movie sometime this school year, so look out for it!
The Honorable Judge Joan Donoghue presents, "International Law and Today’s Global Challenges: A Briefing from the Hague"
Tuesday, August 30, 4 PM, Room 1001 - Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom - Davis, CA
The Honorable Judge Donoghue will deliver a public lecture in the Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom about contemporary challenges for international law. The Honorable Judge Joan Donoghue is the first American woman on the bench of the International Court of Justice and only the third woman elected to the Court.
This event is co-sponsored by the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC).
Previous Events:
Spring 2011 Speaker Series
Dr. Nidal Jurdi, Ph.D. - American University of Beirut
Dr. Jurdi arrives at UC Davis Law upon return from a recent visit to Tunisia. Accordingly, Dr. Jurdi hopes to provide his initial take as a scholar on current events and the movement for constitutional reform in Tunisia, as well as a brief Q&A session on key human rights protections available to active participants in emerging popular democratic movements throughout the region.
In August 2005, Dr. Jurdi joined the ICC as a Law Clerk at the Office of the Prosecutor, focusing primarily on Darfur and the Middle East. In September 2006, he worked as a Legal Consultant for a UN International Independent Investigative Commission (UNIIIC) in the Middle East. Dr. Jurdi has frequently been called upon as an expert resource for a number of Human Rights and International Criminal Law trainings in Morocco, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon. Dr. Jurdi has also published a number of works on the ICC, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), and on human rights in Lebanon and the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.
Since 2007, he has worked as a Human Rights Officer at OHCHR-ROME, and currently serves as a Lecturer in International Law and Organizations at the American University of Beirut.
Winter 2011 Speaker Series
Judge Fausto Pocar - Italian Jurist; Professor of International Law
March 3, 2011 - 12pm - Room 1001 - Kalmanovitz Appellate Moot Courtroom - Davis, CAJudge Pocar was an elected member of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations from 1984 to 2000, serving as the Committee's chairman from 1991 to 1992. He served in the Italian delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York and to the Commission of Human Rights in Geneva several times. In 1999, he was appointed as a judge to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and was President of that tribunal from November 2005 to November 2008. He is also a member of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda since 2000.
This event is co-sponsored by the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC).
Judge Christopher Greenwood - Judge, International Court of Justice; Professor of International Law
March 1, 2011 - 4-6pm - Room 1001 - Kalmanovitz Appellate Moot Courtroom - Davis, CA
Judge Greenwood is currently a judge on the International Court of Justice (ICJ). From 1996 until 2009 he was a professor of international law at the prestigious London School of Economics. He has numerous appearances as Counsel before the ICJ, the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Communities, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and various international arbitration tribunals.
This event is co-sponsored by the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC).
Fall 2010 Speaker Series
Professor Gabriella Venturini - Professor of International Law
September 7, 2010 - 12pm - Room 1001 - Kalmanovitz Appellate Moot Courtroom - Davis, CA
A renowned international law scholar from the University of Milan, Professor Venturini has worked as a consultant for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was part of the Italian delegation for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. She is member of the Space Law committee of ILA.
During the last decades, international criminal justice has been dramatically developing, and a number of courts and tribunals have been established aimed at prosecuting persons responsible for the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, committed either in international armed conflicts or in situations of internal strife.
In the 1990s, the international community made a significant effort to build up purely international institutions, even in situations connected to a single country, such as the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda. During the last decade, in similar cases – such as those of Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Lebanon, East Timor, Kosovo – the international community has increasingly turned to mixed tribunals, which gather resources from both the international community and the state where the alleged crimes have occurred.
Professor Venturini’s presentation focused on these two different vehicles of international criminal justice. While international prosecutions and mixed tribunals share much in common, they also differ in important ways, from subject-matter jurisdiction to applicable law and procedure.
Professor Venturini also explored the general merits and pitfalls of international criminal justice, and more specifically, the relative advantages and disadvantages of international prosecutions and mixed tribunals.
This event was co-sponsored by the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC).
Welcome
The staff of the UC Davis Journal of International Law and Policy (“JILP”) is excited to publish its eighteenth volume this year. The UC Davis Journal of International Law and Policy publishes semi-annually and strives to contribute pertinent and interesting scholarly works to the field of international law.
Speaker Series
JILP is pleased to host several speakers throughout the year, ranging from lectures given by renown professors to judges on international tribunals. The series will continue throughout the year, in place of our annual symposium. Read more »