International

In December, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of petitioners in a major Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. The brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. argues that corporations can be held liable for violations of the law of nations under the ATS.

Harvard Law School Professor Duncan Kennedy, whose scholarship has focused on juridical thought, economic analysis of the law, the links between law and literary theory, and legal globalization, has become the first law professor to receive an honorary doctorate from Sciences Po in Paris.

By the time Tope Lawani ’95 started law school, he knew he would not likely spend his career practicing law. Already the impact of his Nigerian childhood and a captivation with investment markets had planted the seed of an idea that would eventually pull him back to his homeland in hopes of reaping great returns for investors—and for Africa itself.

On Aug. 25, Benjamin B. Ferencz ’43, who served as a chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials, made the concluding remarks for the prosecution in the International Criminal Court’s first case.

In September, Sarah Carlson ’07 and Kobelah Bennah ’08 sent this update: “This past April, we left our Big Law jobs in Manhattan, got married and moved into a tent in Haiti.

HLS Professor William Alford ’77, a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of Special Olympics International and chair of its research and policy committee, met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in November to discuss disability issues. Alford was a participant in the meeting at the invitation of Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, and Na Kyung-won, a member of the South Korean Congress who has been at the forefront of disability rights legislation.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman was recently a guest on Voice of America’s “Press Conference” radio program, speaking with host Carol Casteil about the meaning of Sharia Law and the role that it could play in the burgeoning democracies of Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Libya.

Bill Frelick, director of the refugee program at Human Rights Watch, spoke at Harvard Law School at the end of October on European Union migration controls and access to asylum, at an event sponsored by the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program.

“Prospects for the Professions in China” (Routledge, 2010) edited by William P. Alford ’77, William Kirby and Kenneth Winston. Through its meditations on Chinese professional…

Thirty years ago, Laurent Cohen-Tanugi embraced internationalism by leaving France to attend HLS. Today, as a leading international lawyer and public intellectual, he is an architect of a European strategy for globalization.

HLS clinic helps teens who have been victimized by acts of violence.

The recent recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2011 International Press Freedom Award, Dr. Mansoor al-Jamri  visited Harvard Law School on Nov. 28 to discuss the fight for human rights and press freedom in Bahrain in light of the Arab Spring uprisings.

HLS Visiting Professor Chibli Mallat recently published an op-ed in the Egyptian newspaper Ahram Online entitled “Why and How SCAF must fold in Egypt.”

At an event about the national implications of state-led immigration reform, sponsored by Harvard Immigration Project, Advocates for Human Rights, and ACLU-HLS, Lucas Guttentag, senior counsel and former founding national director of the ACLU's Immigrants’ Rights Project, discussed Alabama's new immigration law, its significance for state efforts to regulate immigration, and where immigration advocates go from here.

In a lecture sponsored by the Human Rights Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, Andrew Cayley, co-prosecutor of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal, discussed his role as counsel on both sides of the aisle in international law.

On Nov. 4-6, Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems (PIFS) co-hosted the 14th annual “Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century: An Agenda for Japan and the United States,” with the International House of Japan. The event, held this year in Cambridge, Mass., brought together more than 100 hundred senior executives and government officials from the financial industry, policymaking, law and academic arenas.

What must lawyers know about litigation and public affairs communications in the global marketplace? Richard S. Levick, lawyer, president and CEO of Levick Strategic Communications, addressed this question in an event organized by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School on Oct. 13.

Universal Jurisdiction, the universal right to prosecute a perpetrator of heinous crimes anywhere in the world despite local amnesty laws, was the topic of discussion at Harvard Law School on September 26. In a talk hosted by the Human Rights Program, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon spoke about universal jurisdiction in today’s international criminal arena.

Gene Sharp, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and founder of the Albert Einstein Institution, is widely credited as one of the principal initiators of the Arab Spring. His 1993 book, “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” which promotes the principle of nonviolent struggle, is created with inspiring the revolution in Egypt, as well as in other countries all over the world.