On September 19

On this day in ...
... 2010 (today), it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Created by a couple of parodic Oregonians in 1996, the holiday's since sailed across the bounding main. Not U.N.-recognized but fun, mateys. Though a wee bit male-dominated in cyberform. Heave to, ye 'Grrls, and talk a while like yer foremother Grace O'Malley (image credit), and her sister pirates. Arrrrrrrr.

(Prior September 19 posts are here, here, and here.)

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!

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!

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

The pirates are highly organized. They work in teams. There is even a pirate spokesman (who could not be reached for comment on Friday).

-- Jeffrey Gettleman, in a New York Times article about 21st C. piracy, a phenomenon on which IntLawGrrls often has posted.
Think my 16th C. transnational foremother had her own advance team?

On September 6

On this day in ...
... 1593 (415 years ago today), in London, my transnational foremother, Grace O’Malley, met, as depicted at right, with England's Queen Elizabeth I. Grace, whose name in Irish is Gráinne Ni Mháille, is said to have extracted concessions permitting her to continue her trade -- piracy -- on the west coast of Ireland.
... 1965, declaring an intention "to prevent a direct attack by Pakistani forces" against it, India ordered its troops to invade West Pakistan, in movements that seemed to be directed at the city of Lahore. A ceasefire would be declared 3 weeks later. The boundary set in the ceasefire has been dubbed the "Line of Control." The dispute over this region continues to this day. (map credit)

The Jolly Roger Still Flies

Much of the world is familiar with Grace O’Malley (transnational foremother of IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann), Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver, and those who’ve delved into the history of the Alien Tort Claims Act (or Statute) (see our ATCA posts here) know well the importance of piracy to universal jurisdiction. But today’s pirates seem to have gone largely unmentioned in the mainstream press, despite their having taken some 3200 sailors hostage over the last 10 years, which they’ve ransomed for millions of dollars (paid by the shipowners). In fact, total worldwide losses due to commercial vessel piracy are estimated at USD 13-16 billion per year. Just a little over a week ago, for example, Somalian farmers cum pirates took control of a French luxury liner, the Ponant, in the Gulf of Aden. The passengers had been dropped off and the ship was taken after it pulled out of port, as are many ships in this Gulf, where they’d apparently have to be racing along at 200 nautical miles/hour to escape capture. The 22-member crew was hostaged for a reported $2 million, but the French military operation managed to net 6 of 13 pirates and some of the booty. The legal questions now are: where will these 6 pirates be tried and how should such cases be handled in the future? International maritime law does not provide a complete answer: a state seizing a ship from pirates is authorized to prosecute the pirates (indeed, the law of nations upon which the ATCA was built required states to prosecute alleged pirates and put them to death if convicted). However, these 6 pirates were captured on land, in Somalia, then taken aboard a French vessel. The transitional government in Somalia is apparently not contesting France’s going ahead with prosecution, but France is proposing both Security Council action to provide not only “regular international surveillance” and a right to hot pursuit in the waters off Somalia, but also a revision of the definition of piracy contained in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Article 101 of that treaty defines piracy as occurring on the “high seas,” thus not in a state's territorial waters (a 12-mile-wide stretch off the coast). But poor states unable to take the measures necessary to combat piracy in their territorial waters may be willing to cede sovereignty over these waters, at least with respect to pirate patrols. Now, I realize it would be useless to sue a penniless pirate, but why after 10 years of hostage taking and ransom collecting have none of these people been sued under the ATCA? Has the ransom always been recovered or returned as part of the criminal process? Or, hard to believe, are these 6 Somalians the first modern pirates to be captured?

On this day

On March 17, ...
... 2008 (today), women, children, and men who are Irish -- whether by nature or nurture -- celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It's an occasion for parades, like that on which we posted last year. This year, it's a day for sending our heartfelt commendation to Keltic Dreams, the transnational Irish dance team from P.S. 59 in New York's Bronx borough. The team's preteen dancers are from families with roots not in Ireland -- it appears from an article in the New York Times that only coach and teacher Caroline Duggan may make that claim -- but rather from places Belize and Puerto Rico and any number of countries on the African continent. Yet all have embraced the percussive excitement of the dance form, morphed as it's been with strains of salsa and hip-hop. And my transnational foremother, Grace O'Malley, would be delighted to learn of their visit to Broadway's "The Pirate Queen." Keltic Dreams' is story that uplifts; would that there were more of them.
... 1948 (60 years ago today), the Treaty of Brussels was signed in that Belgium capital by Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The treaty, which entered into force on August 25 of the same year, provided that the states parties would "cooperate" on matters of economy, society, culture, and collective self-defense. It thus proved a forerunner to subsequent treaties leading to close European integration.

Introducing: Countess Markievicz

I’d like to thank Diane and the rest of the IntLawGrrls for inviting me to contribute to the Blog from the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, here in University College Cork (Ireland). In keeping with the tradition here on the blog I have chosen an ‘international foremother’ as the subject of my first post: Countess Constance Markievicz.
Constance Gore-Booth was born in London in 1868 and acquired her title and her surname when she married a Polish aristocrat. (She's pictured at left at age 18.) Her aristocratic status notwithstanding, however, Markievicz was an egalitarian and an Irish nationalist, having come to live in Ireland as a child (her father was an Anglo-Irish landowner). Although she met her husband while they were both studying in Paris, they settled in Dublin 1903 where she was a successful landscape artist and moved in a circle of Irish literary, artistic and political talent that included William Butler Yeats and Michel Davitt. In 1908 she joined Sinn Féin and Inghinidhe na hÉireann (‘Daughters of Ireland’) and later founded Fianna Éireann in 1909 (an organisation that instructed boys in the use of firearms and paramilitary operations). She later joined the Irish Citizen’s Army (she's in uniform below right) and, by the time the 1916 Rising came around, she was a well-seasoned and well-known member of the Nationalist elite.
Markievicz was a lieutenant in the 1916 Rising commanding troops in St. Stephen’s Green where they held for six days before surrendering having been provided with a copy of Pádraig Pearse’s surrender order. She was then tried for treason and sentenced to death but, unlike the majority of the Easter 1916 leadership, she was spared execution because she was a woman. On commutation of sentence she is reported to have retorted to the Court “I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me”.
In 1918 she was elected to Dáil Eireann (the lower house of parliament). Although she was the first woman parliamentarian elected in the British Empire she refused to take her seat (all parliamentarians were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown). She was present at the founding of Fianna Fáil (Ireland’s dominant political party) in 1926 and was once more elected to the Dáil the next year. This time she planned to take her seat under Fianna Fáil policy but she died before the Dáil was called.
Markievicz was a terrorist to some and a freedom fighter to others, but above all she was an early example of female engagement in nationalist struggles and in parliamentary politics. Ireland now has an exceptionally low percentage of female elected representatives and it is perhaps worth recalling that we were one of the first electorates to vote a woman into a parliamentary position. Markievicz may have been an odd mixture of privilege, aristocracy and eccentricity but her role in Ireland’s history is an enormously influential one. Thus, with some circumspection about her methods and not a little pride in the results she helped to attain, I introduce Constance Markievicz to IntLawGrrls, to join Grace O’Malley and Mary Harris "Mother" Jones as Irish women of legal and political influence.

Good night, Gracie*

Even the best of deeds has unintended consequences, and so it is with IntLawGrrls' makeover.
On completing the switchover to our own names, discovered that all our prior posts had been transformed as well. To a new reader to the blog, it'll look as if we've all always written in our own names -- and not in the name of a transnational foremother, as we did for nearly a year. The sole exception is Eleanor Roosevelt. There's a technical reason for that, but we at IntLawGrrls prefer to think that it's because Eleanor simply must remain as an inspiration to us all.
Sadly, my own namesake fell prey to the technological erasure. Can't let her go without this tribute:
For centuries Gráinne Ni Mháille -- to anglophones, Grace O'Malley -- has enjoyed renown as The Pirate Queen. Earning that title was no small thing in the time and place that she lived, 1530 to 1603, in a castle on Clare Island that accepts visitors to this day. Legend has it that O'Malley overcame male prejudice to control a swath of the West of Ireland. She fought off an attack at sea while nursing her day-old son, and wrested from England's Queen Elizabeth I a concession to ply her pirates' trade along Ireland's Atlantic coast. (Am I mistaken, or is that the original ER bowing to Grace in the print at right?) In all this, of course, O'Malley proved herself an early and powerful nonstate actor.
Tales of her exploits still are told today, in children's books and travelogues, in songs like "Grace O'Malley" and "Óró sé do bheatha 'bhaile," in theaters on both sides of the pond, even on MySpace. Given the status of women in 16th C. Ireland, the tales may be taller than the reality, but they inspire nonetheless.
A heartfelt Go raibh maith agat to Grace, who'll remain honored in my profile and perched on my shoulder as I post in my own name.

* Know the origin of this catchphrase? If so, you're either: (a) Partial to Mid-20th Century Television; or (b) a Person of a Certain Age. No need to say which it is...

Grace-full missives

Sixeenth century pirate Grace O'Malley is riding a new wave of popularity.

Blog reader Eugene J. Flynn asks whether the inspiration for this IntLawGrrl namesake was the song "Grace O'Malley" by Cathie Ryan and John Doyle, featured on Ryan's "Somewhere Along the Road" album? No, haven't heard Ryan's song, but will it track it down.

As explained in an intro post, Emily Arnold McCully's children's book The Pirate Queen was the chief inspiration for choosing this "early, powerful nonstate actor." Another was a spectacular 2002 performance of "Grainne Mhaol" (a Gaelic version of Grace's name) by the spectacular Galway-based theatre troupe Macnas.

Now Grace is back on stage, this time in a Broadway musical called, of course, "The Pirate Queen," mounted by the creators of "Les Misérables" and "Miss Saigon." Barbara Sjoholm, author of a travelogue entitled The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O'Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, writes that the production is rich in Riverdancing and invented romance -- "and how cool is it to see a woman on stage with a saber in one hand and a baby in the other?"

Thanks to my colleague Jack Ayer, the brains behind Underbelly blog, for the head's up on the new play. Indeed, Jack points to further proof of Grace's 21st C. revival: her own MySpace page.