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Gerald Neuman

  • Australia urged to allow refugees to appeal ASIO ruling

    March 16, 2015

    Australia has been urged to comply with a United Nations ruling and allow more than 30 refugees to challenge the secret ASIO assessments used to justify their indefinite detention. Harvard University law specialist Gerald Neuman, who recently completed a four-year elected term on the UN's top human rights expert panel, said Australia's refusal to reveal the reasons for detention was shocking. "No one questions the ability of Australia to take steps to protect its security in proper ways," Professor Neuman said on Monday. "[But] I don't understand Australia to have ever said these men, women and children were a threat to the security of Australia." Professor Neuman, who served as the United States' representative on the UN Human Rights Committee until December last year, contributed to a scathing UN ruling against Australia's "cruel and degrading" practice to lock up refugees indefinitely without a right of appeal.

  • An audience of people

    Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program celebrates 30 years

    October 2, 2014

    On September 19, Harvard Law School hosted a celebration of the 30-year anniversary of the school’s Human Rights Program (HRP), a home for human rights scholarship and advocacy founded in 1984 by Professor Emeritus Henry J. Steiner.

  • Human Rights Program Celebrates 30 Years of Advocacy

    September 22, 2014

    Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program celebrated on Friday afternoon the increased awareness surrounding issues of human rights since its founding three decades ago and detailed the next steps for activists in the field....“It is wonderful to look back at the graduates we’ve had go on to have distinguished careers, the scholarship we have produced, and the engagement we’ve had in projects,” said Gerald L. Neuman ’73, director of the Human Rights Program. “We are looking back but also forward to the problems of the day.”

  • speakers at the “Reconsidering Insular Cases

    The Insular Cases: Constitutional experts assess the status of territories acquired in the Spanish–American War (video)

    March 18, 2014

    More than 100 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decided a series of cases that left citizens of territories including Puerto Rico, Guam and the American Samoa with only limited Constitutional rights, Harvard Law School hosted a conference to reconsider the so-called Insular Cases and the resonance they continue to hold today.

  • Neuman Q&A

    From Truth to Justice: Giving human rights scholarship real-world impact

    December 6, 2012

    Thirty-five years ago, after majoring in mathematics at Harvard and receiving a Ph.D. in the same subject from MIT, HLS Professor Gerald Neuman ’80 switched from the field of math to the field of law—from “truth to justice,” he said in an interview in his office in Griswold Hall. That decision has led to a career of teaching and writing on international human rights law and comparative constitutional law, and to his election last fall to the U.N.’s Human Rights Committee, a body of 18 independent experts who assess and critique countries’ records on civil and political rights.

  • Giannini and Neuman appointed co-directors of HLS’s Human Rights Program

    August 17, 2012

    Tyler Giannini, Clinical Professor of Law, and Gerald L. Neuman ’80, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign and Comparative Law, have been appointed co-directors of the Human Rights Program (HRP) at Harvard Law School.

  • Professors Discuss International Law: Alford, de Burca, and Neuman

    Professors discuss study of international law at HLS

    October 1, 2010

    In a recent panel discussion at Harvard Law School, professors William Alford, Grainne de Burca, and Gerald Neuman extolled the benefits of studying, interning, and working abroad in a legal context, and offered practical advice to internationally-minded students about how to get started.

  • Neuman: Human Rights

    Neuman elected to the Human Rights Committee

    September 9, 2010

    Harvard Law School Professor Gerald Neuman ’80 has been elected to the Human Rights Committee, the premier treaty body in the UN human rights system. The committee monitors compliance by 166 states parties with their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is part of the “International Bill of Rights.”

  • Neuman, Goldsmith, and five HLS alumni elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

    April 26, 2010

    Harvard Law School Professors Gerald L. Neuman ’80 and Jack Goldsmith are amongst the new class of members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

  • Battlegrounds

    September 2, 2008

    On executive power, war and anti-terrorism, scholars have a lot to say--and lawmakers are listening.

  • Professors Ayelet Shachar, Gerald Neuman, and Deborah Anker

    Panel looks at the "shifting borders" of U.S. immigration law

    February 11, 2008

    The distinction between citizen and non-citizen lies at the heart of immigration law, and is often drawn at the border. But where precisely does the “border” lie in U.S. immigration law and practice?

  • Gerald L. Neuman ’80

    Strangers at the fence

    September 1, 2006

    Neuman, formerly at Columbia, joined the Harvard Law faculty this summer as the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law. He is the author of “Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law” (Princeton University Press, 1996).