Kudos to Colette Rausch

Happy to report that our colleague, Colette Rausch (left), has just been named Director of the Rule of Law Center of Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C.
I had the pleasure of working with Colette early in her 8-year career at the Institute -- I was among the hundreds of experts on the Model Codes for Post-Conflict Criminal Justice project for which she was a principal coordinator. Undertaken by the Institute of Peace undertook in tandem with the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway, the project involved meetings across the globe. The aim, as posted, was to draft a Model Criminal Code, Model Code of Criminal Procedure, Model Detention Act, and a Model Police Powers Act. They're intended to be made available for use in postconflict and peacekeeping settings. Consequently Colette, along with Vivienne O'Connor, has coedited Model Codes vol. I, published in 2007, and Model Codes vol. II, published in 2008. Additional volumes are contemplated.
These are just 2 of the many and varied publications that Colette's produced; another is her book Combating Serious Crimes in Post-Conflict Societies (2006).
Focusing on criminal justice and police reform, Colette also has worked at the Institute on projects to foster discussion between civil society and security forces in countries like Nepal, Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan.
Before joining the Institute she was, inter alia: Director of the Department of Human Rights and Rule of Law at the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; resident legal adviser for the U.S. Department of Justice in Hungary and Bosnia; and an attorney in offices of the state attorney general, federal prosecutor, and federal public defender in Nevada.
Colette earned her B.A. degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, and her J.D. degree from Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

Heartfelt congratulations!

More on peace: Post-conflict criminal codes

Imagine you're an international peacekeeper trying to do justice in a war-ravaged country that has none, perhaps because war ruined the criminal justice system in place, perhaps because there never was a criminal justice system to speak of. How can you quell violence by getting guns off the street in a country whose own law does not regulate firearms? How can you hold suspects if the local law of detention flouts international standards? What can you use to help people in the country build a criminal justice system useful both in the transition from war to peace and in the era that follows?
Questions like these gave rise to a multiyear reform joint venture, spearheaded by Neil J. Kritz, Director of the Rule of Law Program at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., and William A. Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, in cooperation with the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its Office on Drugs and Crime. The project's just published the 1st of 3 volumes that together will make up the Model Codes for Post-Conflict Criminal Justice. Volume I includes a Model Criminal Code; subsequent volumes will contain a Model Code of Criminal Procedure, a Model Detention Act, and a Model Police Powers Act. Editors are Vivienne O'Connor and Colette Rausch. Assisting them were hundreds of experts (among them yours truly) who met over the years in Galway, Geneva, and elsewhere to discuss drafts and make suggestions.
It's hoped that these codes will provide the basis for an off-the-shelf set of laws that peacekeepers may apply, in order to assure that as conflicts recede they are replaced by -- as the phrase goes -- peace with justice.