Happy 3d birthday to us! Again.

Today we IntLawGrrls celebrate our 2d 3d birthday.
Huh?
Well, in an unintended display of math anxiety, this founder/'Grrl declared it our golden birthday on this day a year ago -- that is, said then that we'd juist turned 3 on the 3d day of the 3d month. In fact, though we were entering our 3d year, it had only been 2 years since the launch of this blog on "international law, policy, practice." But no one called us on the arithmetic error, and so today we get to celebrate gold all over again.
Since we announced our birth on what folks in Japan marked as Girls Day 2007, we've grown like Topsy.
We're proud cosponsors of 2 autumn conferences -- 2009 and, yet to come, 2010.
We're proud that 'Grrls have been invited to speak at other conferences, to contribute scholarship, blog posts, and op-eds, on account of their work here.
Contributing more than 3,000 posts have been nearly 3 dozen permanent IntLawGrrls voices, plus more than 100 women who've joined us as guests. 'Grrls and guests/alumnae have ties to nearly 2 dozen countries in our world. As listed in full in our righthand column, we include, to name a very few, distinguished presidents Lucy Reed and Hélène Ruiz Fabri, distinguished scholars like Mireille Delmas-Marty and Hilary Charlesworth (and so many others), distinguished diplomat Diane Orentlicher, distinguished judges Patricia M. Wald and Marilyn J. Kaman, and distinguished U.N. expert Gay McDougall. And we've been proud over the years to honor no fewer than 70 transnational foremothers -- women who've inspired us, from "A" (Alice Paul) to "V" (Virginia Leary).
To all our contributors and all our readers -- today we will pass the milestone of 400,000 viewings since our founding! -- heartfelt thanks. We look forward to a Year 4 future of sharing lots more good things.

Guest Blogger: Mireille Delmas-Marty

It’s IntLawGrrls’ immense honor to welcome Dr. Mireille Delmas-Marty (right) as a guest blogger.
Mireille is a Professor at the Collège de France, a Paris institution of higher education founded in the 1500s. Holder of the Chair of Comparative Legal Studies and Internationalization of Law at the Collège, she publishes frequently in that subject area and also directs 3 scholarly networks on the internationalization of law: the French-Chinese, the French-Brazilian, and the French-American (participants have included 4 contributors to IntLawGrrls, Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Vivian Grosswald Curran, Naomi Norberg, and me).
I’ve had the honor of calling Mireille collègue since University of Vienna Law Professor Frank Höpfel, with whom I'd corresponded while researching global developments in criminal procedure for my Harmonic Convergence? article, kindly pointed me to her work. Then a Professor of Law at Université de Paris (Panthéon-Sorbonne), Mireille also was coordinating Corpus Juris, a project aimed at establishing for the European Union a penal code that bridged common law and civil law systems. At the same time, she’s written widely on international criminal law, and on transnational and international developments in other areas of law, among them trade and the environment.
In 1969 Mireille earned her Ph.D. in criminal law from Paris 1, whose law faculty she joined after teaching at Lille and Paris XI. Throughout her career, as detailed in her c.v., she’s been active in many organizations and earned many honors. Among them are honorary doctorates from the universities of Liège, Urbino, Uppsala, Beijing, Louvain, Montreal, and Ferrara. She’s served as a Visiting Professor of Law at universities throughout the world, as Vice President of the International Association of Penal Law, as Editor in Chief and then Director of the Revue de science criminelle et de droit pénal comparé, as a board member of the Journal of International Criminal Justice, and as a legal expert on many committees by appointment of the French government and European entities. Mireille is an Officer in France’s Légion d’Honneur and a Commander in the French National Order of Merit.
Our colleague William A. Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, gave this succinct yet apt description of Mireille:

She is one of the great thinkers of our time on issues concerning law and society.

As a guest blogger, Mireille contributes a 3-part series -- the 1st post is below -- comparing U.S. and French approaches to the evolving world of transnational law. It outlines ideas that Mireille sets forth in detail in her most recent book, Ordering Pluralism: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Transnational Legal World (2009) (prior post), translated into English by IntLawGrrl Naomi Norberg.
For reasons she sets forth in a bilingual guest post further below, Mireille's chosen to honor the abstract painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, who joins other foremothers in IntLawGrrls' list just below the "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Guest Blogger: Hilary Charlesworth

It is IntLawGrrls' immense honor to welcome Hilary Charlesworth (right) as today's guest blogger.
A foremost scholar in international and human rights law, Hilary, about whom we've frequently posted, is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow, Professor in RegNet and Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice, Australian National University. She also holds an appointment as Professor of International Law and Human Rights in the ANU College of Law.
She has held visiting appointments at the law schools at Harvard, Washington & Lee, New York University, the University of Oregon, Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne, and UCLA. She was also the 2005 Sir Ninian Stephen Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Military Law at the Law Faculty, University of Melbourne.
Inaugural President from 1997 to 2001 of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law, Hilary served as a Co-Editor of the Australian Yearbook of International Law from 1996 to 2006 and a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law from 1999 to 2009. She has worked with various nongovernmental human rights organisations on ways to implement international human rights standards, and was Chair of the Australian Capital Territory Government's inquiry into an ACT bill of rights, which resulted in the adoption of the ACT Human Rights Act 2004. She is Patron of the ACT Women's Legal Service, the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture and Lawyers Without Borders.
In 2006 Hilary, along with London School of Economics Professor Christine Chinkin, received the American Society of International Law award for outstanding contributions to the development of international human rights law: the Goler T. Butcher Medal, whose namesake is an IntLawGrrls foremother.
For her own foremother, Hilary has chosen to share with IntLawGrrl Hélène Ruiz Fabri the 18th C. feminist and slavery abolitionist writer Marie Gouze, known as Olympe de Gouges (right).
In 1793, 45 years after she'd been born to a washerwoman mother and butcher father, Gouges died beneath the guillotine. Among her most famous works was the 1791 Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, which IntLawGrrls excerpted on a recent Bastille Day. Gouges also theorized the paradox of feminism; Hilary's guest post below considers that concept in this 30th year since U.N. adoption of a multilateral women's rights treaty.

Heartfelt welcome!

Go On! ASIL/ESIL in Helsinki

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Representatives of 2 of the world's leading learned societies, the European Society of International Law and the American Society of International Law, will take part in the ESIL-ASIL Research Forum, to be held October 2-3, 2009, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. The conference topic is "Changing Futures? Science & International Law."
Opening statements by 2 IntLawGrrls, ESIL President Hélène Ruiz Fabri and ASIL President Lucy Reed, will start the conference. Next will be a keynote address on "The Death of International Law?" by Judge Allan Rosas, Court of Justice of the European Communities.

A variety of panels will follow, including: "Hermeneutics and Interpretation" chaired by Duncan Hollis (Temple); "Intellectual Property Rights" chaired by Laurence Helfer (Duke); "The Science of International Law" chaired by Anja Lindroos (Helsinki); "Food Safety and the Protection of Animals, Plants, and Humans" chaired by Gregory Shaffer (Minnesota); "Global Health Issues" chaired by David Fidler (Indiana); "Scientific Evidence in International Adjudication" chaired by James Crawford (Cambridge); "Data Protection and International Law" chaired by Petri Kuoppamäki (Helsinki, Nokia); "The Metaphysics of Economics in International Law and Global Governance" chaired by Jan Klabbers (Helsinki); "Climate change and Global Environmental Protection" chaired by Edith Brown Weiss (Georgetown); "Genetically Modified Organisms and the Law of World Trade" chaired by Laurence Boisson de Chazournes (Geneva); "Developments in the Law of the Sea, including Maritime Delimitation" chaired by Bernard Oxman (Miami); "Arms Control and Disarmament" chaired by Johan Rautenbach, International Atomic Energy Agency); and "The Turn to Theory in International Law," a discussion between Martti Koskenniemi (Helsinki) and Friedrich Kratochwil (European University Institute).

Details available here and/or here.

Write On! "IntLaw in a Heterogeneous World"

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.) If you're at work on a paper within the broad theme of "International Law in a Heterogeneous World/Le Droit international dans un monde hétérogène," consider submitting it for presentation at a conference of the same name to be held September 4-6, 2008, in Heidelberg, Germany. Organizers are the European Society of International Law -- this'll be the 3d biennial conference of ESIL, the still-young society for which IntLawGrrl Hélène Ruiz Fabri serves as President -- and the Heidelberg-based Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.
2 types of papers're being sought for 2 types of panels, each of which'll comprise a chair and 4 presenters:
1st, for the 8 "Fora," papers that "directly address different aspects of the main topic of the conference," as follows: "International Law and Religions"; "Immigration/Migration: How states cope with increasing pluralism within their societies – the role of international law"; "The Multiplicity of Law-Making Processes/ International Law-Making facing Heterogeneity"; "International Law and the Media/Interaction between international law and the media in a heterogeneous world"; "Heterogeneity reflected in International Legal Traditions"; "The Role of the WTO in balancing Heterogeneity of Interests in the shaping of International Law"; and "International Law and the Millennium Development goals."
2d, for the 8 "Agorae," papers "that do not directly address the topic of the conference but should stimulatethe exchange of views on specific thematic areas of international law," as follows: "History"; "International Organizations, Institutions and Administration"; "Legitimacy of International Law"; "Social Justice"; "Sexuality and Gender"; "International Crime"; "Science"; and "Environmental Law."
Abstracts are due no later than January 21, 2008. Details here.

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.

Go On! ESIL conference in Budapest

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest.) "The Power of International Law in Times of European Integration" is the theme for the Biennial Research Forum of the European Society of International Law, to be held September 28 and 29 in Budapest, Hungary. Opening the conference will be Sorbonne Law Professor Hélène Ruiz Fabri (left), ESIL President and IntLawGrrls' own Olympe de Gouges. Panel chairs include Professor Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva; Judge Ineta Ziemele, European Court of Human Rights; Professor Anne Peters, University of Basel; and Professor Iulia Motoc, University of Bucharest.
Presenters include: Zsuzsa Csergo, "Negotiating Boundaries: Language of Inclusion and Exclusion"; Ieva Kalnina, "Assessment of Citizenship Policy in the European Context"; Daphné Richmond, "The New New Peacekeepers? Private Military Companies and the Future of Peacekeeping Operations"; Ann Pauwels, "NATO as a Peacekeeper"; Dessislava Cheytanova, "Separatism or Legitimate Aspirations to Independence"; Agnes Hurwitz, "Where Have the Refugees Gone?"; Mercedes Guinea Llorente, "Tales of 'Civilisation': Transfer of Values through the Eastern Neighbourhood Policy"; Barbara Delcourt, "Peut-on réellement considérer que l'action de l'UE au Kosovo participe d'une stratégie de construction d'un Etat et quelle est la place réservée au droit international dans la mise en place de ce projet?"; Milica Matijević, "Multiculturalism as a Foundation for a New Legal System: The Case of Kosovo"; and Fernanda Fernandez Jankov and Vesna Čorič, "The legality of uti posseditis in the Kosovo's dissolution."
Full program here; registration here.

Déclaration des droits de la femme

To mark the 218th anniversary of the storming of the Bastille that led to the demise of the French monarchy, we quote from Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen penned in 1791 by a Revolutionary woman, namesake of IntLawGrrl Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Olympes de Gouges (below right):

Preamble. ... Considering that ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of women are the sole causes of public miseries, and of corruption of governments, they have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration, the natural, unalterable and sacred rights of woman ....
Article 1. Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. ...
Article 2. The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man and woman. These rights are liberty, prosperity, security and above all, resistance to oppression.
Article 4. Liberty and justice consist in giving back to others all that belongs to them; thus the only limits on the exercise of woman's natural rights are the perpetual tyranny by which man opposes her; these limits must be reformed by the laws of nature and of reason.
Article 7. No woman can be an exception: she will be accused, apprehended and detained in cases determined by law; women, like men, will obey the rigorous rule.
Article 10. No one ought to be disturbed for one's opinions, however fundamental they are; since a woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to address the House, providing her interventions do not disturb the public order as it has been established by law.
Article 13. For the upkeep of public forces and for administrative expenses, the contribution of woman and man are equal; a woman shares in all the labours required by law, in the painful tasks; she must therefore have an equal share in the distribution of offices, employments, trusts, dignities and work.
Afterword. Women, wake up! The alarm bell of reason is making itself heard throughout the universe; recognize your rights. ... The enslaved man multiplied his forces but has had to resort to yours to break his chains. Once free he became unjust to his female companion. O women! women, when will you stop being blind? What advantages have you received from the revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a more marked contempt? During the centuries of corruption, your only power was over the weaknesses of men. Your empire is destroyed, what then is left to you?

Gouges' exhortations were dismissed out of hand, according to Lucy Moore's Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France. Indeed, Gouges died on the guillotine in 1793. Of the women profiled, Judith Warner wrote in review of Moore's "marvelous new book," only 1 "escaped the revolution more or less unscathed." "The revolution," Warner writes, "brought women many tributes to their maternal graces, their high-minded morals, their 'natural' homebound virtues. Yet veneration of Woman and hatred of real women were one and the same." Her review concludes with a quote about men that, though from Lucile Duplessis (left), another Revolutionary woman, could well have come from Gouges' pen: "'That they would worship us less and set us free!'"