Guest Blogger: Charlotte Ku

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Charlotte Ku (left) as today's guest blogger.
Charlotte's the Assistant Dean for Graduate and International Legal Studies and Co-Director of the Center on Law and Globalization at the University of Illinois College of Law, positions she assumed after having served from 1994 to 2006 as Executive Vice President and Executive Director of the American Society of International Law. She joined Illinois following interim service as Acting Director at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, England. Holder of a B.A. from American University, and an M.A., M.A.L.D, and Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Charlotte's been a professor at John Hopkins University and the University of Virginia.
At Illinois, Charlotte coordinates international legal programs, including the LL.M. program, and spearheads efforts to increase awareness of law as a global profession through the Global Fellows Initiative.
A member of numerous editorial boards, Charlotte's published more than 40 scholarly papers, and serves or has served on ACUNS, the Academic Council on the United Nations System, AALS Membership Review Committee, American Council of Learned Societies, Stichting Foundation for Hague Joint Conferences, International Judicial Academy, and International Studies Association.
In her guest post below, Charlotte discusses plans for the upcoming launch of ASIL Midwest, and encourages ASIL members to launch similar projects in their own regions.
Heartfelt welcome!

ASIL, Midwest & beyond

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post about a new venture, ASIL Midwest)

On February 22 and 23, IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed (left) and Elizabeth "Betsy" Andersen (below right), the President and the Executive Director, respectively, of the American Society of International Law, will travel to Illinois for two days of ASIL outreach and programming.

While in Champaign as the guests of my home institution (and an ASIL Academic Partner), the University of Illinois College of Law, Lucy and Betsy will meet with faculty and students both from the College of Law and other university units, as well as with local attorneys and judges.

Specific program elements will include:

► Betsy’s “appearance” on a local public radio program, discussing the intersection of international and domestic law in the area of human rights; and

► Lucy’s teaching of the International Commercial Arbitration class.

More public events will include a panel on Careers in International Law and a panel on International Law and the Global Financial Crisis.
Lucy, Betsy, and I (below left) will then travel to Chicago, where, as the guests of the University of Chicago Law School, we'll take part in two panels on International Law and the Global Financial Crisis. Lucy’s and Betsy’s visit to the Midwest will conclude with a lunch at the American Bar Foundation, as the guest of the University of Illinois College of Law and the American Bar Foundation’s Center on Law and Globalization, to meet members of the Chicago practice, corporate, and philanthropic community.
We hope for a good turnout at these events, which follow on an earlier regional project, the ASIL West interest group that was launched a few years ago on the West Coast, and for which Co-Chairs have included IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann and guest/alumna Andrea K. Bjorklund. (prior IntLawGrrls posts) We would like to encourage other ASIL members -- and particularly Academic Partner schools -- to consider hosting such programs in their own regions.

As ASIL members, we have all heard that ASIL did not have enough programming for those of us living outside the New York and Washington areas. We can do something about that by organizing programs. Of course, there are the challenges of resources and distance, but programs need not aspire to be mini-ASIL annual meetings. They should just be occasions for attention to international law, our work as international lawyers, and ASIL. The key is to make programming flexible enough so that any of us who might want to be part of a regular schedule of ASIL programming in our regions can do so. And, if we share hosting duties, then perhaps no one and no institution will be unduly burdened.

What are the benefits of such ongoing efforts?

► For ASIL, the opportunity to fulfill one of its core mandates, to promote the use and understanding of international law.

► For those of us working in international law, opportunities to connect and to re-connect with colleagues. But perhaps most importantly, it gives us all an opportunity to understand more broadly where international law is a factor in our communities and to know more of the people who now play active roles in its effective operation.

Information about the ASIL Midwest program is here.

If you’re an ASIL member interested in hosting a program in your area, please contact ASIL’s Sheila Ward at sward@asil.org, or me, Charlotte Ku, at chku@law.illinois.edu. We would be happy to work through programming ideas with you.