International

Marissa Vahlsing raised her hand in the first week of law school and spoke her mind. Right away, Ben Hoffman wanted to be her friend. Three years later they are off to work in Peru together, "the Siegfried and Roy of human rights law."

In recent debates over reducing the budget deficit, even politicians adamant about not raising taxes have been discussing the elimination of tax loopholes, or “tax expenditures.” We turned to Professor of Practice Stephen Shay, and asked the former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Treasury: What are tax expenditures, and should they be repealed as a means to lower tax rates, reduce the deficit or both?

On Nov. 9 the Harvard Law & International Development Society, an HLS student group, held its annual symposium, this year highlighting the increasingly global nature of anti-corruption efforts. The day-long event, “Development amidst Corruption | Developments against Corruption,” began with vivid personal narratives from the trenches: speakers included undercover agent Robert Mazur, Ombudsman of the Philippines Conchita Carpio-Morales, and El Cid Butyayan, senior litigator for the World Bank.

Over the course of four days between Nov. 8 and 11, at the sixth annual Harvard Arab Weekend, Arab leaders from government, business, academia, and the professions gathered at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School to assess the impact of these changes and what may lay ahead. The event, “The Arab Up-rising: Sustaining the Spring—Avoiding the Fall,” was sponsored by the Harvard Arab Alumni Association and various Arab student organizations on campus.

In October, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued two rulings bolstering the rights of persons with psycho-social disabilities. Both cases were brought by Hungarian-Slovakian disability rights activist János Fiala-Butora LL.M. ’10, an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and an associate of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, known as HPOD.

Professor Einer Elhauge ’86 is author of the e-book “Obamacare On Trial” (Edward Elgar), focused on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case decided by the Supreme Court in June. Elhauge raises points that were not aired in the courtroom, including the fact that the constitutional framers themselves had approved mandates to buy health insurance.

Like many HLS students, Arvin Abraham ’09 took a job as an associate at a law firm after graduating. Yet, he did not leave his law school academic pursuits behind him. Thanks to a collaboration with a former professor, Lynn LoPucki LL.M. ’70, and a colleague, Bernd Delahaye LL.M. ’11, he is seeing the topic of his 3L paper expanded into a lengthy law review article to be published this fall.

"The view from Tunis: Fire, tear gas, and normalcy," a piece by Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman, appeared in Bloomberg View on Sept. 14. Feldman, who is the Bemis Professor of International Law at HLS, is a regular contributor to Bloomberg View and the author of many books, including “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Justices” (Twelve Books 2010), and “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State” (Princeton University Press, 2008).  

Young-Joon Mok LL.M. ’89, a Justice of the Constitutional Court of Korea, spoke at Harvard Law School on “Constitutional Adjudication in the Republic of Korea,” on Tuesday, Sept. 11 at an event sponsored by East Asian Legal Studies, International Legal Studies and the Korea Institute.

David Kennedy ’80, Harvard Law School’s Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law and director of the Institute for Global Law and Policy, recently joined a team of former political leaders and diplomats from across Asia in founding the new Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council (APRC), which will work to promote peace and reconciliation in the Asian region through quiet diplomacy.

Stephen Gageler LL.M. ’87 was appointed to a judgeship on Australia’s High Court on Aug. 21. He joins six other judges on Australia’s most powerful court.

Over the past 40 years the role of the general counsel has changed dramatically, according to HLS Professor David Wilkins '80, “so that it has become, in my view, the most important position in the legal profession, particularly in the corporate legal world,” he says. But until recently, that model remained uniquely American.

In the mid-1990s, Dennis Davis, then a judge of the High Court of Cape Town, sought out HLS Professor Frank Michelman ’60 to advise South African officials on constitutional interpretation. “From that moment on, he became a resource person for us. We regard him as one of ours,” said Davis. “It’s a very, very deep relationship.”

At the airport in New York one day last year, Alex Dimitrief ’85 was on a call regarding a problem that his company, faced in China. When his plane landed in London, he took a call on a different matter in Vietnam. And late that night, when he arrived in Lagos, he fielded yet another call, dealing with an issue back in the U.S. “It was an incredibly complicated day,” recalls Dimitrief, vice president and general counsel of GE Energy. And it illustrates the emerging role of today’s global general counsel.

Fasil Amdetsion ’07 has been writing about relations between Ethiopia and surrounding states since he was a student at Harvard Law School. Since last fall, he’s gone from writing about Ethiopia to working for its government.

Human rights lawyer Thomas Buergenthal LL.M. ’61 S.J.D. ’68, author of “A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy,” wrote that his experience as a Holocaust survivor made him a better judge. "I understood, not only intellectually but emotionally, what it is like to be victim of human rights violations. I could, after all, feel it in my bones."

By her 2L year, Regina Fitzpatrick ’08 was dead set on working for the U.N. on a peacekeeping mission. She’d come to HLS with a master’s in human rights after a stint with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The U.N.’s “legitimacy and access to hot spots,” she says, made it her goal. She is now working in Juba, South Sudan, living her dream.

Last summer, Professor Robert Mnookin ’68, found himself wanting to know more about U.S.-Cuba relations. “I had an idea that there was a very interesting set of questions related to when, how and whether the two countries would ever negotiate a reconciliation,” he says. He decided to investigate by teaching a reading group—a small, 1-credit class, where 2Ls and 3Ls are able to dig deeply into a given topic in a way that provokes extended discussion among the group. “I am not an expert on Cuba; I’m an expert on negotiation, and what a reading group allowed me to do is learn with the students about an area I didn’t know much about,” he says.

There she stood, in northern Libya, a spread of explosive weapons before her: mortars and rockets and surface-to-air missiles almost 20 feet long. For all her work in post-conflict zones, senior clinical instructor Bonnie Docherty ’01 had never seen anything like it. The weapons stretched on for miles. It was March, five months after the revolution had ended, and Docherty was supervising a team from the International Human Rights Clinic on a trip to assess the humanitarian risks of abandoned weapons. As the team traveled from city to city, the scale of the problem was startling.

The World Trade Organization has appointed Harvard Law School alumnus and former HLS Visiting Professor of Law Seung Wha Chang LL.M. ’92 S.J.D. ’94 to serve on its seven-member Appellate Body. Chang will settle international trade disputes alongside distinguished trade experts from the U.S., the E.U., China, India, Mexico and South Africa.