Guest Blogger: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (left) as today's guest blogger.
Fionnuala holds the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Planning and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis. She's also Professor of Law at the University of Ulster and cofounder and Director of the university's Transitional Justice Institute, with offices in Belfast and Derry, respectively the largest and 2d-largest cities in Northern Ireland.
In her guest post below, she discusses the release last week of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report on the 1972 paratrooper killings of civilians in Derry, placing the event in the context of transitional justice discourse.
Fionnuala's previously been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, Visiting Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Associate Professor of Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a Law & Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University. She received her LL.B. and Ph.D. from the Law Faculty at Queen's University in Belfast, and also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia.
As is evident from her list of publications (SSRN here), Fionnuala's an internationally published expert and scholar in the areas of human rights, gender, and other issues related to transitional justice, on feminist legal theory, and on states of emergency. Law in Times of Crisis (2006), which she co-authored with Minnesota Law Professor Oren Gross, received a 2007 Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law, the organization for which she just began a 3-year term as a member of the ASIL Executive Council. She's at work now on a book on gender, masculinities, and transitional justice, co-authored with IntLawGrrls Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn.
Fionnuala's many awards include a Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, and the Lawlor fellowship.
The Irish government twice has nominated her to the European Court of Human Rights. Fionnuala served as a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission by appointment of the Minister of Justice, from 2000 to 2005. She remains an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, and is also a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
She's just been invited to serve on the U.N. Roster of Experts for the Crisis Communications Unit, having already taken part: in a 2008 Expert Seminar organized by the Working Group "Protecting human rights while countering terrorism" of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force; in 2003 as U.N. Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making; and from 1996 to 1997 as a representative of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia.
Fionnuala dedicates her post to the woman who was IntLawGrrls' 1st transnational foremother, whose anglicized name is Grace O'Malley (a favorite not only of yours truly, but also of IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Gráinne de Búrca). (credit for photo of statue of O'Malley on grounds of Westport House, County Mayo, Ireland) Referring to Grace by her Irish name, Fionnuala writes that

Gráinne Ní Mháille (c. 1530 – c. 1603), also known as Granuaile, was an important figure in Irish folklore and a historical figure in 16th century Irish History. While primarily viewed as a romantic and complex female pirate figure she represents for me a figure of feminist agency in a highly patriarchial society with much vigor and uniqueness in her tapestry of her life's story and choices.

Heartfelt welcome!

Introducing Jocelyn Wolf

Eagle-eyed IntLawGrrls readers will have noticed a new byline gracing many of our "On This Day" posts this month. It belongs to Jocelyn Wolf (right), whom we're proud to welcome as the inaugural IntLawGrrls Legal Intern.
A member of the Class of 2011 at my own home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall), Jocelyn has an avid interest in international law, policy, and practice. Whetting her appetite was a semester abroad at the National University of Ireland-Galway in fall 2007. There she studied European Communities law with Dr. Laurent Pech, Jean Monnet Lecturer in EU Law and a contributing editors of International Law Prof Blog. (Jocelyn reports that she was fortunate to have used the used the EU Law textbook for which IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Gráinne de Búrca is a co-author.) Soon after, in spring 2008, Jocelyn earned her B.A. in International Relations and Linguistics from the University of California at Davis. This past semester, she was my student in Constitutional Law.

Jocelyn has chosen to dedicate her work on the blog to Benazir Bhutto (below left), the subject of many earlier IntLawGrrls posts. The U.N. General Assembly bestowed upon Bhutto a U.N. Prize in the Field of Human Rights in December 2008, a year after death ended her campaign to lead her native Pakistan once again. As stated in a 2008 account of that award:

An ardent advocate for democracy and for the human rights of the most vulnerable sections of society, particularly women, children and minority rights, Ms. Bhutto was twice elected prime minister of Pakistan. After returning to Pakistan late last year following years in exile, Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in an attack in Rawalpindi.

Today Bhutto -- whose assassination is currently the subject of a 6-month U.N. inquiry -- joins other IntLawGrrls transnational foremothers in the list just below the "visiting from ..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Guest Blogger: Gráinne de Búrca

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure today to welcome Gráinne de Búrca (left) as a guest blogger.
Gráinne has been Professor of Law at Fordham Law School since 2006. Before that she was Professor of European Union Law from 1998 to 2005 at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and Lecturer in Law from 1990 to 1998 at Oxford University, England. She has been a Visiting Professor at the law schools of New York University, Columbia, and Harvard.

Gráinne's field of expertise is European Union law, with particular focus on constitutional issues related to European integration, on European human rights law, and on transnational governance. She is the co-editor of the book series Oxford Studies in European Law and the co-author of the textbook EU Law (Oxford University Press 4th ed., 2007).

In her guest post below, Gráinne discusses challenges to European integration by reference to current events and her paper, The Lisbon Treaty No-Vote: An Irish Problem or a European Problem?

Had not Grace O'Malley (in Irish, Gráinne Ni Mháille) not been the very 1st of IntLawGrrls' foremothers, Gráinne would have dedicated her post to that 16th century pirate and transnational nonstate actor. As it is, she's chosen to honor Eva Gore-Booth (below right). Born in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1870, Gore-Booth was a writer-activist involved both in "the Celtic revival that swept over her homeland at the turn of the twentieth century" and the political ferment of the day. (photo credit) Her "poetry, especially such later works as The One and the Many and The Egyptian Pillar," is said to "include themes of social change and sexual liberation." Equally important were her political writings and actions: working with peers like Alice Stopford Green and Esther Roper, Gore-Booth was a pacifist, trade union leader, and equal rights agitator, "one of the first female suffragists to advocate extending the vote to both female property owners and women in the working class." She died from cancer in London in 1926.

Today Gore-Booth joins other Irish-born women -- not only Grace O'Malley, but also Gore-Booth's elder sister, Constance Markievicz, as well as Mary Harris "Mother" Jones -- on the list of IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers, just below the "visiting from ..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Europe’s Political Deficit

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to do this guest post!)

The Irish government has announced that a second Irish referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty will be held in the autumn. As IntLawGrrls have posted, the treaty was rejected by Ireland’s voters in a referendum last June. (photo by Peter O'Neill of "No to Lisbon" poster in the west of Ireland, June 2008)

The Lisbon Treaty is effectively a ‘de-constitutionalized’ version of the EU Constitutional Treaty, which French and Dutch voters had rejected in popular referenda in 2005. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts).

At the same time, recent newspaper reports are suggesting that across Europe in one month's time, the turnout is likely to be lower than ever for European Parliament elections.

Each of these news reports highlights an aspect of what might be called Europe’s political deficit – in other words, the chronic lack of political engagement of ordinary European citizens with the EU, and the failure or unwillingness of Europe’s political leaders to fully grasp this fact.

In a recent paper, I criticized the EU’s response to Ireland’s no vote to the Lisbon Treaty on the basis that the EU leadership chose to treat the referendum result as essentially an Irish problem rather than as a European problem. According to the Europe’s political leaders, the no-vote reflected concerns specific to the Irish population. The solution proposed was for the Irish government to suggest ways for the EU to respond to these particular concerns -- ultimately, through a package of largely redundant legal and political ‘guarantees’ -- so that the Lisbon Treaty could be ratified.

In this sense, Ireland's no-vote to Lisbon was treated very differently from the French and Dutch no-votes to the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. On that occasion, the complex but overwhelming tide of discontent reflected in the no-votes was quickly recognized as a collective European problem rather than as a specifically Dutch or French problem, and the Constitutional Treaty in its original form was rapidly declared to be dead.

My paper argues that despite the various plausible reasons for distinguishing between the Constitutional Treaty no-votes and the Lisbon Treaty no-vote, the EU strategy of treating Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty as primarily an Irish problem is a short-sighted one which is likely to backfire in the longer term. Ireland's no-vote is merely the latest manifestation of an ongoing crisis of popular legitimacy in the EU, and the European Council's strategy of treating it as essentially an Irish problem is part of the ongoing failure of Europe's political leaders to acknowledge the link between this crisis of popular legitimacy and the deliberately de-politicized nature of the European Union.

If you’re interested in reading more about the debate on whether and how to politicize the European Union, have a look at this exchange on the subject between Simon Hix of the London School of Economics and Stefano Bartolini of the European University Institute.

Go On! "Rethinking Constitutionalism"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest.) How the shrinking of the globe and the move toward private management of public goods have reshaped constitutional systems is the subject of "Rethinking Constitutionalism in an Era of Globalization and Privatization," to be held November 4 & 5, 2007, at New York University and Cardozo law schools in New York City. Among the speakers, academics and judges from the United States and Europe, are Gráinne de Búrca, New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye (left), Bosnia Judge Constance Grewe (below), Francesca Bignami, Suzanne Stone, and IntLawGrrls' own Hélène Ruiz Fabri.
Panel topics: "Transnational Networks and Constitutionalism," "Constitutional Scholarship in an Age of Globalism and the Legacy of the European Tradition," "Constitutional Judges' Forum," "Effect of Intergovernmental Global Dealings on National Constitutional Protections," "Incorporating Constitutional Norms into Private Orderings," "Global Fundamental Religion's Challenge to Constitutionalism," and "Constitutionalism and Secularism in an Age of Religious Revival."
Cosponsors along with the New York-based law schools: Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne); I*CON, the International Journal of Constitutional Law; and the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law. For information and registration, contact floersheimer@yu.edu.