Guest Blogger: Megan Fairlie

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Megan Fairlie (left) as today's guest blogger.
An Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, Megan's currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Albany Law School. She previously taught on the LL.B. and LL.M. programmes at the University of Ulster in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she was a member of the Transitional Justice Institute, under the directorship of IntLawGrrl’s guest/alumna Fionnuala Ní Aoláin. Prior to teaching in Belfast, Megan was a doctoral fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, where she earned her LL.M. in International Peace Support Operations and her Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law. Megan has since returned to Galway a number of times to teach at, the Centre’s International Criminal Court Summer School. Megan earned her J.D. with honors from Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, Virginia.
She teaches courses including Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Procedure and a seminar on the International Criminal Court, and her publications reflect those specialties. In her guest post below, Megan writes about her forthcoming article on the relationship between the United States and the International Criminal Court.
Megan sits on the board of Self Help Africa-USA, a charity is designed to assist rural communities in Africa to become self sustaining. It focuses in particular on supporting women via business and microcredit programs.
Heartfelt welcome!

Guest Blogger: Yvonne McDermott

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Yvonne McDermott (left) as today's guest blogger.
Yvonne is a Ph.D. candidate and doctoral research fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland-Galway, where she is also a Lecturer on Children's Rights. Her research focuses on due process in international criminal proceedings, and her guest post below examines the jurisprudential doctrine of abuse of process, an ongoing issue in 3 International Criminal Court cases now proceeding against defendants from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Yvonne holds a Diploma in Irish (Gaeilge), a Bachelor of Corporate Law and a Bachelor of Laws from the National University of Ireland, Galway. In 2008, Yvonne earned an LL.M. cum laude in Public International Law from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her scholarship includes the journal article Victims and International Law: Remedies in the Courtroom (2009), for which last year she was named the inaugural recipient of the Böhler Franken Koppe Wijngaarden advocaten Hague Academic Coalition Award for Young Professionals. Yvonne is the Managing Editor of the Oxford Reports in International Criminal Law.
Yvonne chooses to dedicate her post to 2 Irish women. Both "are perhaps better known for their associations with famous men," she writes, but both "deserve to be recognised in their own right." Yvonne continues:

Mary Ann McCracken [left; 1770-1886], the sister of executed United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken, was born in Belfast. She too was committed to social reform, and was a dedicated philanthropist and activist, committed to helping the poor of Belfast,
pioneering for equal rights for women and the abolition of slavery. There are descriptions of her at the age of 88 handing out leaflets at the docks of Belfast to those heading for the southern ports of the United States, where slavery was still practiced.
Maud Gonne [below right; 1866-1953] was born in England but her legacy is cemented as a pivotal player in the Irish struggle for independence. She was particularly involved in countering evictions and in famine relief in counties Connaught in the late 19th century. She was the founder of Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), an Irish nationalist feminist organisation, in 1900, and was fiercely devoted to the promotion and preservation of Irish culture through the arts. In spite of her own achievements, Maud Gonne is often celebrated as the muse of William Butler Yeats and the mother of diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Seán MacBride.

Today Gonne (prior post) and McCracken join the foremothers' list just below our "visiting from..." map in the righthand column -- and thus also join what Yvonne aptly calls "the wonderful Mná na hÉireann so honoured on this blog before me." The "Women of Ireland" to whom she refers are foremothers Grace O'Malley/Gráinne Ní Mháille, Eva Gore-Booth, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Eibhlín Dhubh Ní Chonaill, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Constance Markiewicz.

Heartfelt welcome!

Guest Blogger: Nadia Bernaz

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Nadia Bernaz (right) as today's guest blogger.
Nadia is a Lecturer in law at Middlesex University Business School in London, where she teaches Legal Method, Civil Liability, Contract Law, and the Criminal Justice System. She previously held a lectureship in human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway. She holds a Ph.D. in public international law from Université Paul Cézanne, Aix-en-Provence, France.
Her publications include several articles on human rights law as well as a monograph, Le droit international et la peine de mort - International Law and the Death Penalty (2008), which was the subject of this book review in the August 2009 edition of Human Rights Quarterly.
A chapter she published recently, on the subject of the United States' role as a global actor in the debate about the death penalty, is the subject of Nadia's guest post below.
Nadia dedicates her work on the blog to Marie-Louise Giraud (1903-1943), whose Vichy-era life and death were depicted in a 1988 film, Une Affaire de femmes/Story of Women (below, with star Isabelle Huppert, as no digital photo of Giraud herself could be found online). Of Giraud, Nadia writes:

Marie-Louise Giraud was guillotined in 1943 and is one of the last women to have been executed in France. She possessed no medical skills, but performed 26 abortions. One led to the death of the pregnant woman. She received money to perform abortions and even rented rooms to prostitutes. As such, it is hard to view her as one of the great figures of women’s rights. However, I believe that all people have their darkest sides -- even the women and men who are said to be the most exemplary -- and that the quest for a morally irreproachable foremother is probably pointless. Interestingly, Giraud's ‘immorality’ was strongly emphasized during her trial, and at least partially explains the capital verdict against her.
Marie-Louise Giraud helped many women at a time when reproductive rights were nonexistent and she died, her body literally cut in half, because of this.

Today Giraud joins other foremothers on IntLawGrrls' list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Go On! "Human Rights & Forensic Science"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) On April 24th & 25th 2009 the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland-Galway, in association with the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, University of Dundee, will host a conference on Human Rights and Forensic Science. This one and a half day conference will explore current and potential future application of forensic science disciplines in the field of human rights. Issues of both a practical and theoretical nature will be discussed and a range of speakers will include significant scholars from various fields including law, sociology, medicine and forensic anthropology.
Confirmed speakers include Professors Marie Cassidy, the Irish State Pathologist, Sue Black, Head of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee, and William Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights.
The conference will be divided into five thematic panels: war crimes and forensic investigations; human identification; sexual violence and forensic evidence; investigations of ongoing human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and fair trial issues.
Further information is available here, or you can contact the conference organisers Eadaoin O'Brien at e.obrien9@nuigalway.ie or Niamh Hayes at niamh1@gmail.com.

Guest Blogger: Margaret deGuzman

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure today to welcome Margaret deGuzman (left) as a guest blogger.
A Ph.D. candidate at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland-Galway, Margaret's an Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law at Georgetown University’s Institute for International Law and Politics. Previously, she practiced criminal defense law for six years at a San Francisco firm. While attending Yale Law School, from which she earned her J.D. in 1999, Margaret served as a legal advisor to the Senegal delegation at the U.N. Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court, held in Rome in summer 1998, and at subsequent Preparatory Commission meetings.
Margaret's publications focus on international criminal law issues -- not only the ICC, but also crimes against humanity and efforts to secure accountability in Cambodia. Her guest post below discusses her most recent article, an examination of the concept of "gravity" as it pertains to offenses within the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Margaret is a candidate for law teaching positions this fall.
Heartfelt welcome!

Go On! Galway ICC Summer School

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia or related events of interest.)
Every year the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland-Galway is the site of an intensive, weeklong International Criminal Court Summer School. This year's course will be held June 21-26, 2008; registration here. Topics to be covered will include the matters specific to the ICC -- its establishment, its applicable law, its structures, and its operations -- as well as those of concern throughout international criminal law, such as universal jurisdiction and immunity from prosecution.
Among the ICC/ICL experts who'll be lecturing are 1 ICC judge and 1 ICC prosecutor: Judge Daniel David Ntanda Nsereko of Uganda and Fabricio Guariglia of the Office of the Prosecutor.
The faculty also includes:
Professor Diane Marie Amann, University of California (yours truly)
Professor Megan Fairlie, Florida International University
Hakan Friman, Deputy Director, Swedish Ministry of Justice; Honorary Professor, University College London
Dr. Ray Murphy, Senior Lecturer, Irish Centre for Human Rights
Judge Kimberly Prost, Ad Litem Judge, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY); Chief, Legal Advisory Section, Treaty and Legal Affairs Branch, U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime
Professor William A. Schabas, Director, Irish Centre for Human Rights
David Scheffer, former U.S. Ambassador at Large on War Crimes Issues; Professor and Director, Center for International Human Rights, Northwestern University
David Tolbert, ICTY Deputy Prosecutor
Sharon A. Williams, Professor, Osgoode Hall, York University, Toronto; former ICTY Judge

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.

For human rights doctoral students

Summer saw the launch of another new blog, PhD studies in human rights, now the latest addition to our list of "connections." It's run by our colleague, William A. Schabas, Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights and Professor of Human Rights Law at the National University Ireland, Galway, now visiting at Cardozo Law School. Provided are head's ups on recent developments of note in the human rights world. Recent posts've covered a range of human rights matters, from commentary on Bosnia v. Serbia, the February 2007 decision of the International Court of Justice (see IntLawGrrls' takes here, here, and here), to an amicus brief from Dick Marty (strike 3 in the above blograting) to the U.S. Supreme Court, to Bill's recent human-rights-lecturing gig at the Venice Film Festival. (Jealous? You bet.)

Heartfelt welcome.