2011 Law Dialogs
Diane Marie Amann- Professor Amann is currently the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and is an expert in the interaction of national, regional, and international regimes in efforts to combat atrocity and cross-border crime. She earned her B.S. from the University of Illinois, her M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law, and a Dr.h.c from Utrecht Universiteit in the Netherlands. She now teaches Public International Law, International Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, Federal Jurisdiction, Evidence, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, International Human Rights Law, and Constitutional Criminal Procedure.
After law school she worked as a clerk for Judge Prentice H. Marshall in Chicago and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She has also worked on the Board of Advisors of the National Institute of Military Justice, the executive Council of the American Council of International Law, and co- chair of ASIL West, designed to enhance the regional presence of international law.
Professor Amann is also a founding contributor to IntLawGrrlsblog, which blogs on international law, policy and practice.
John Q. Barrett- Professor Barrett attended college at Georgetown University, and earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is currently a professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law. There he teaches legal history, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. He is currently teaching at St. John’s program in Barcelona Spain. Professor Barrett is also the Elizabeth S. Lenna fellow and a board member at the Robert H. Jackson Center. He has been named a ‘Professor of the year’ by students at St. John’s, and has received a Faculty Outstanding Achievement Medal from the University.
Professor Barrett is currently writing a biography of late Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, which will include an in depth account of Justice Jackson’s time as Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Professor Barrett also manages the ‘Jackson’ list, sending periodic emails to people interested in Jackson.
Before Professor Barrett worked at St. John’s he was a counselor to U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich, and a law clerk to Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.
M. Cherif Bassiouni- M. Cherif Bassiouni is a distinguished research professor of law emeritus at DePaul University College of Law and president emeritus of the law school’s International Human Rights Law Institute. He also is president of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy, and honorary president of the International Association of Penal Law in Paris, France.
Professor Bassiouni has served the United Nations in a number of capacities, including as co-chair of the Committee of Experts to draft the Convention on the Prevention and Suppression of Torture (1977); member, then chairman, of the Security Council’s Commission to Investigate War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia (1992-1994); vice-chairman of the General Assembly’s Ad Hoc and Preparatory Committees on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (1995 and 1998); chairman of the Drafting Committee of the 1998 Diplomatic Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court; independent expert for the Commission on Human Rights on The Rights to Restitution, Compensation and Rehabilitation for Victims of Grave Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1998-2000); and independent expert for the Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan (2004-2006).
In 1999, Professor Bassiouni was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of international criminal justice and for his contribution to the creation of the International Criminal Court. He also has received numerous academic and civic awards.
Professor Bassiouni is the author of 32 and books and over 240 articles on a wide range of legal issues, including international criminal law, comparative criminal law and international human rights law. Several of his publications have been cited by the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the United States Supreme Court.
Ambassador Hans Corell- From 1994-2004, Hans Corell served as the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations. Before joining the United Nations in 1994, Mr. Corell, a national of Sweden, was Ambassador and Under-Secretary for Legal and Consular Affairs in his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1994.
Born in Västermo, Sweden, on July 7, 1939, Mr. Corell received a Law degree at the University of Uppsala. Mr. Corell began his career in 1962 as a court clerk, later becoming a presiding judge in petty criminal cases and then an Assistant Judge in a district court, before entering the Ministry of Justice in 1972. From there, Mr. Corell rose to prominence in the Ministry of Justice serving as Legal Adviser (in 1972 and from 1974 to 1979), Assistant Under-Secretary (1979-1981) and Under-Secretary of Legal Affairs (1981-84).
Mr. Corell has also served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague from 1990 and has been a member of various international expert committees including the CSCE Moscow Human Dimension Mechanism to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (1992-1993), which presented the first proposal for the establishment of an international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Mr. Corell was Chairman of the Working Group at the 1992 CSCE Expert Meeting on Peaceful Settlement of Disputes, held in Geneva, as well as, the Secretary-General’s Representative to the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court.
Since his retirement from public service in 2004, Mr. Corell has engaged in many different activities in the legal field. Among other, he is involved in the work of the International Bar Association, the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University and the Hague Institute for the Internalisation of Law. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University, Sweden.
Mark Drumbl- Mark Drumbl, author of Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2007)—an important publication presenting a new perspective on how perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity should be punished—is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington & Lee University, School of Law. Mr. Drumbl also serves as Director of the University’s Transnational Law Institute. Mr. Drumbl received his J.D. in 1994 from the University of Toronto, graduating summa cum laude and holds an LL.M. and J.S.D. from Columbia University.
Prior to entering law teaching, Mr. Drumbl was judicial clerk to Justice Frank Iacobucci of the Supreme Court of Canada. His practice experience includes international arbitration, commercial litigation, and he was appointed co-counsel for the Canadian Chief-of-Defense-Staff before the Royal Commission investigating military wrongdoing in the UN Somalia Mission. Professor Drumbl has served as an expert in ATCA litigation in the U.S. federal courts (expert for the successful plaintiffs in Almog v. Arab Bank, 2007 WL 214433 (E.D.N.Y., 2007)) and in U.S. immigration court.
Mr. Drumbl has published numerous critically-acclaimed legal articles regarding human rights abuses and international humanitarian law. His current scholarly project examines the challenges in reintegrating child soldiers who have been implicated in acts of mass atrocity. This book, entitled Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy, will be published by Oxford University Press early in 2012.
Mark Ellis- Mark Ellis is the Executive Director of the International Bar Association (IBA), comprised of 198 national bar associations and 40,000 members from around the world. Prior to joining the IBA, Mr. Ellis served as the first Executive Director of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative, which provides legal assistance to twenty-eight countries and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Mr. Ellis has also served as Legal Advisor to the Independent International Commission on Kosovo and was appointed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to advise on the creation of Serbia’s War Crimes Tribunal and was actively involved with the Iraqi High Tribunal. Mr. Ellis is currently a member of the Advisory Panel to the Defense Counsel for the ICTY.
A frequent speaker and media commentator on international legal issues, he appears regularly on CNN International, Al Jazeera, and BBC and has published extensively in the areas of international humanitarian law, war crimes tribunals, and the development of the rule of law. His latest publication – _Sovereignty and Justice: Creating Domestic War Crimes Courts within the Principle of Complementarity_– will be published by Oxford University Press in 2011.
Mr. Ellis earned his J.D. from Florida State University and his Ph.D. in international criminal law from King’s College, London. He is the co-recipient of the American Bar Association’s World Order Under Law Award, and the recipient of Florida State University’s Distinguished Graduate Award. In 2010, _The Lawyer _magazine selected Mark Ellis as one of the top 100 lawyers in London.
Mike Newton- Mike Newton is a professor of practice at Vanderbilt University Law School and is an expert on accountability and conduct of hostilities issues. At Vanderbilt, Professor Newton developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Lab and develops externships and other educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues.
Professor Newton began his career as military officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor division out of Fort Carson, Colorado until his selection for the Judge Advocate General’s Funded Legal Education Program. As an operational military attorney, he served with the United States Army Special Forces Command (Airborne), Fort Bragg, North Carolina in support of units participating in Desert Storm. Following duty as the Chief of Operational Law, he served as the Group Judge Advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).
From 1993-1995 Professor Newton was reassigned as the Brigade Judge Advocate for the 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), during which time he organized and led the human rights and rules of engagement education for all Multinational Forces and International Police deploying into Haiti. Professor Newton subsequently was appointed as a Professor of International and Operational Law at the Judge Advocate General’s School, Charlottesville, Virginia from 1996-1999.
From January 1999 to August 2000, Professor Newton served in the Office of War Crimes Issues, U.S. Department of State. As the Senior Advisor to the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Professor Newton implemented a wide range of policy positions related to the law of armed conflict, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide.
Professor Newton has also served on the American Society of International Law’s Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward the International Criminal Court and on an Experts Group in support of the Task Force on Genocide Prevention established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
In recent years, Professor Newton assisted in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal, and served as International Law Advisor to the Judicial Chambers in 2006 and 2007. He has also served as the U.S. representative on the U.N.Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court.
In addition to his educational duties at Vanderbilt University Law School, Professor Newton presently serves on the Executive Council of (ASIL).
Leila Nadya Sadat- Professor Sadat is the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law. She also is the director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at the School of Law. She is the Director of the Crimes against Humanity Initiative, which seeks to study and address the punishment and prevention of these crimes. Professor Sadat will begin at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in Paris France as the Distinguished Fulbright Chair beginning in the spring of 2011.
Professor Sadat is trained in both French and American Legal systems and is especially well known for her expertise on the International Criminal Court. In addition to serving as a delegate to the United Nations Preparatory Committee and the 1998 Diplomatic Conference in Rome that established the ICC, she represented the government of Timor- Leste at the eighth session of the Assemble of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC and served as a delegate of the American Branch of the International Law Association at the 2010 ICC Review Conference in Kampala Uganda.
Professor Sadat has been published in numerous journals in the United States and beyond. She wrote The International Criminal Court and the Transformation of International Law: Justice for the New Millennium, published in 2002.
Professor Sadat is currently the Vice President of the American Branch of the International Law Association, and the International Association of Penal Law, and is a member of the American Society of International Law.
Professor Sadat earned her B.A. from Douglass College, her J.D. from Tulane Law School, her L.L.M. from Columbia University School of Law and a degree from the University of Paris I – Sorbonne (diplôme d’études approfondies).
Beth Van Schaack- Professor Beth Van Schaack joined the joined the Santa Clara Law faculty after working in private practice with Morrison & Forester LLP, where she practiced in the area of commercial law, international law, and human rights. She was trial counsel for Romagoza v. Garcia, a human rights case that resulted in a plaintiffs’ award of $54.6 million, and on the defense team for John Walker Lindh. She also served on the United States delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda.
Prior to entering private practice, Professor Van Schaack was involved in human rights litigation as the Executive Director and Staff Attorney of The Center for Justice & Accountability, a non-profit law firm in San Francisco dedicated to the representation of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses. Professor Van Schaack also clerked with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia from 1997-98.
During the 2009-2010 academic year Professor Van Schaack was a visiting Scholar with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. In addition to teaching a number of courses on international and humanitarian law at Santa Clara Law, Professor Van Schaack remains a legal advisor for The Documentation Center of Cambodia, a position she has held since 1995.
William Schabas- Professor Schabas earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in History from the University of Toronto, and his L.L.B., L.L.M., and L.L.D, degrees from the University of Montreal Canada. He has received honorary degrees from Dalhousie University, and Case Western Reserve University. He has taught at the University of Quebec, McGill University, Queen’s University Belfast, the National University of Rwanda and others.
Professor Schabas currently teaches at the National University of Ireland in Galway, and directs the Irish Centre for Human Rights within the University. He is also a Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick School of Law.
Professor Schabas has authored twenty-one books dealing in whole or in part with international human rights law. He was recognized by the American Society of International Law with a Certificate of merit or his book on UN International Criminal Tribunals. He has also published more than 250 articles in academic journals, primarily in the field of international human rights and criminal law.
Professor Schabas is the editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, Criminal Law Forum. He is the President of the Irish branch of the International Law Association. He has also served as a delegate of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy to the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court. Professor Schabas served on the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2002.
Michael P. Scharf- Professor Scharf is the John Deaver Drinko- Baker & Hostetler Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, where he is also the director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, the U.S. Director of the Canada-U.S. Law Institute, and the director of the Henry T. King War Crimes Research Office. He teaches International Law, International Criminal Law, the Law of International Organizations and the War Crimes Research Lab.
Professor Scharf co-founded and continues to direct the Non Governmental Organization Public International Law and Policy Group. The group was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Prosecutor of an International Criminal Tribunal and six governments for the work the group has done to help the prosecution of several major war criminals. Professor Scharf worked as Attorney Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney- Adviser for United Nations Affairs, and delegate tot the United Nations Human Rights Commission in the office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.
Professor Scharf earned his J.D from Duke University School of Law. He has been widely published with several award winning books, numerous scholarly articles, and some opinion editorial pieces in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, and International Herald Tribune. He was awarded the Distinguished Teacher Award from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law Alumni Association. While on sabbatical in 2008 Scharf served as a Special Assistant to the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal.
Ambassador David J. Scheffer- Ambassador David Scheffer is currently the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law at Northwestern University Law School and is the Director of the Center for International Human Rights.
Graduating with a BA from the Honour School of Jurisprudence, Oxford University and an LLM with a concentration in International Human Rights from Georgetown University, Ambassador Scheffer has had a distinguished career in the field of international criminal law.
Prior to teaching at Northwestern Law, Amb. Scheffer served as the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes issues and subsequently as the Senior Advisor and Counsel to the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. As Ambassador, he participated in the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodia
Prior to these appointments Amb. Scheffer worked at the international law firm Couder Brothers, went on to work as a fellow for multiple foreign affairs think tanks and eventually served as a senior consultant to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs. Amb. Scheffer has also written numerous scholarly articles regarding international law and human rights.
