IntLawGrrls is proud to announce our newest member: Rebecca Bratspies (right), Associate Professor of Law at CUNY School of Law in New York.Rebecca's teaching and scholarship focus on environmental and public international law, with particular emphasis on how legal systems govern the global commons and how law can further sustainable development. Before entering teaching, as a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, she was seconded to the Republic of China Environmental Protection Administration in Taipei, and later practiced litigation at Dechert, Price and Rhoads in Philadelphia.
Her publications, on topics such as environmental liability, international fisheries regulation, and genetically modified food crops, include “Rethinking Decision-making in International Law: A Process-Oriented Inquiry into Sustainable Development,” 32 Yale Journal of International Law 363 (2007), and Transboundary Harm In International Law: Lessons from the Trail Smelter Arbitration (2006), which she cowrote with with Russell A. Miller. This year she and Miller are set to publish Progress in International Organization, to which a panel was devoted at this month's annual meeting of the American Society of International Law. A member-scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform, Rebecca has experience blogging at BioLaw and Agricultural Law, both of which we've added to our "connections" list at right. Her 1st IntLawGrrls post below addresses the current food crisis, a topic on which I too post, still farther below.
Rebecca's chosen to dedicate her work on the blog to Harriet Tubman, to whom IntLawGrrl Hope Lewis here likewise gave special note. Tubman, as we've posted, was an escaped slave who helped other escapees to freedom on the Underground Railroad, served the Union "as a cook, a nurse, and even a spy," and agitated for women's suffrage. Rebecca explains her particular reasons for choosing Tubman:
Hercourage has always been an inspiration to me. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and one of my friends lived in a house that had been part of the Underground Railroad. As girls, we read everything we could about her life. To me, her story has always been a reminder that social transformation is possible, and a vivid example of תיקון עולם (Tikkun olam, or "repairing the world").
Tubman thus joins IntLawGrrls' other transnational foremothers in the list at right, just below the "visiting from ..." map. (credit for Tubman portrait, by Robert Shetterley)
Heartfelt welcome!
