On January 9

On this day in ...
... 1961, Emily Greene Balch died at a nursing home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 94 years + 1 day after she'd been born into an affluent family in Boston. Her New York Times obituary succinctly told the life story of this American academic/activist/social worker/economist:

Miss Balch lost her college teaching job because she was an outspoken pacifist.
Some years later she won the Nobel Peace Prize for the same reason.

Balch (above right), whose biography marking her 1946 Nobel is here, is the transnational foremother of IntLawGrrls' guest/alumna Chimène Keitner. Balch's IntLawGrrls profile is here. (photo credit)
... 1951, the New York Times reported:

The United Nations today opened the press headquarters at its international enclave on the East River. Simultaneously correspondents filed their first dispatches under the dateline 'United Nations, N.Y.'

Reporters were expected to divide their time between the new building and Lake Success, where U.N. sessions were expected to continue pending full opening of the Manhattan headquarters (left), set for July 1 of the same year.

Guest Blogger: Chimène Keitner

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome as our guest blogger today Chimène Keitner (right).
An Associate Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco, Chimène specializes in International Law and International Tribunals, International Law in U.S. Courts, Comparative Law, and Complex Litigation. Among her publications is her 2007 book, The Paradoxes of Nationalism: The French Revolution and Its Meaning for Contemporary Nation Building.
Born in Canada, Chimène earned her bachelor's degree from Harvard; her J.D. from Yale, where she was awarded a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, served a student director of the immigration clinic and an editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of International Law; and her doctorate from Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Following law school she clerked for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, then practiced at a firm in San Francisco before entering academia. She's worked on human rights litigation and advocacy in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights First, and the Center for Justice and Accountability.
She guest-posts today on her forthcoming article respecting the Alien Tort Statute -- a most timely topic, given the début today in San Francisco of a trial based on that human rights statute.
Chimène wishes to honor Emily Greene Balch, the 1946 Nobel Peace Prizewinner whom we've profiled below.
Heartfelt welcome!

Honoring Emily Greene Balch

A few words about Emily Greene Balch (left), whom today's guest blogger, Chimène Keitner, has chosen to honor:
Born in 1867, Balch was a member of the 1st class to graduate from Bryn Mawr College; thereafter she studied sociology and economics in Europe and, eventually, back in the United States. She started teaching at Wellesley College in 1896, and became a Professor there 15 years later. During this time she was active in movements for women's suffrage, racial justice, and fair treatment of immigrants.
When World War I broke out in 1914, she found her life's calling; that is, "furthering humanity's effort to rid the world of war." Among many other activities, Balch:
► took part in the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague;
► helped to found what's now known as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom;
► collaborated with Jane Addams and others on Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results (1915); and
► participated in the work of the League of Nations that was formed in the wake of World War I.

(credit for photo below right of American delegation to the 1915 Hague Conference; Balch is standing at far left in the 3d row from the front, while Addams is sitting 2d from left in the front row)
By the time that Balch was named a Nobel Peace Prizewinner in 1946, she had altered "her strong pacifistic views" somewhat on account of the "the excesses of nazism." She came "to defend the 'fundamental human rights, sword in hand'" in World War II, even as she "concentrated on generating ideas for the peace, most of them characterized by the common denominator of internationalism." Today Balch, who died in 1961 at the age of 94 years + 1 day, joins Addams -- her friend and a 1931 Peace Prizewinner -- and other distinguished women on IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers list at right, just below our "visiting from ..." map in our righthand column.