Princeton law fellowships

The Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University, whose Director is our colleague Kim Lane Scheppele, is seeking applications from outstanding faculty, independent scholars, lawyers, and judges for up to 6 residential LAPA Fellowships to be awarded for the 2011-2012 academic year.
Past Fellows include many international or comparative law scholars, including a number of IntLawGrrls' guests/alumnae: Jeannine Bell (prior posts), Mary L. Dudziak (prior posts), Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (prior posts), and Diane Orentlicher (prior posts).
Successful candidates for the 2011-2012 awards will conduct substantial research on topics broadly related to legal studies. Among the Fellows will be 4 general Fellows, 1 Microsoft/LAPA Fellow specializing in intellectual property or the legal regulation of the economy, and 1 Mellon/LAPA Fellow specializing in law and the humanities.
Applicants must have a doctorate, J.D., or equivalent postgraduate degree.
Details and the online application form are available here. Deadline is 5 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, November 8, 2010.

IntLawGrrls @ AALS

Kudos to all IntLawGrrls members and guests/alumnae who shone at last week's annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.
As mentioned above, yours truly was honored as new Chair of the Section on International Law. Here's the rest of the honor roll:
► Jeannine Bell took part in the Section of Law & Anthropology's panel on "Origins and Solutions to the Indian Freedmen Disputes"
► Johanna E. Bond presented at the "New Voices in Human Rights" panel of the Section on International Human Rights
► Vivian Grosswald Curran presented at the panel, jointly sponsored by the Sections on Comparative Law and Law and Economics, on "The Doing Business Reports by the World Bank and the Legal Origins Thesis: Is Economics Replacing Comparative Law?"
► Fiona de Londras delivered a great analysis of English, Irish, and American jurisprudence in the Section of International Law's panel on "Taking International Law Seriously: Will the United States Abide by International Law that is a Law of Rules?"
► Stephanie Farrior was elected to the Executive Committee of the Section on International Law
► Chimène Keitner presented at the "New Voices in Human Rights" panel of the Section on International Human Rights
► Linda M. Keller was elected to the Executive Committee of the Section on International Law, and further was elected, along with Annecoos Wiersema, as that Section's Newsletter Co-Editor
► Lisa Laplante was elected to the Executive Committee of the Section on International Law
► Hope Lewis was elected to the Executive Committee of the Section on International Law
► Christiana Ochoa was elected Chair of the Section on International Human Rights and Treasurer of the Section on International Law, and further served as Commentator for the latter section's "New Voices in Human Rights" panel
► Hari M. Osofsky was elected to the Executive Committee of the Section on International Law
► Annecoos Wiersema was elected to the Executive Committee of the Section on International Law, and further was elected, along with Linda M. Keller, as that Section's Newsletter Co-Editor
Heartfelt congratulations!

Guest Blogger: Jeannine Bell

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure today to welcome guest blogger Jeannine Bell (left).
Jeannine is Professor of Law and Charles Whistler Faculty Fellow at Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington. (As blogreaders know, the law school also is the home institution of IntLawGrrl Christiana Ochoa and guests/alumnae Hannah Buxbaum and Dawn Johnsen.)

After earning her A.B. degree in government from Harvard College, Jeannine earned a J.D., as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science, from the University of Michigan. At Indiana she teaches Criminal Procedure, Property, and seminars on the First Amendment and Law and Society. She's active in the Law and Society Association (about which IntLawGrrls also posts today): in addition to having served on the LSA board and chaired several LSA committees, she's an associate editor of the Law and Society Review. Her publications, which have focused on matters of criminal justice, include Policing Hatred (2004), Police and Police and Policing Law (2006), and, with Martha S. Feldman and Michele Berger, Gaining Access (2003). In her guest post below, Jeannine describes her article on torture, which grew out of questions that arose when she served as a member of a political science special task force on terror and political conflict.

Jeannine would like to dedicate her post to a woman about whom IntLawGrrls has posted before: the activist Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977, in the foreground of the photo below). Jeannine writes: "Though largely known for her work on behalf of civil rights in Mississippi, Hamer was also an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam. Rather that just fighting for the rights of Blacks from Mississippi, Hamer used her voice to call attention to injustice outside the U.S. Her fearlessness, courage, and refusal to accept the place to which society relegated her is truly inspiring." Today Hamer joins the list of IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers, just below the "visiting from..." map in the righthand column.

Heartfelt welcome!

The (In)Effectiveness of Torture

Grateful thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting this guest post on my recently published essay, entitled 'Behind this Mortal Bone': The (In)Effectiveness of Torture, 83 Indiana Law Journal 3493 (2008).

The essay isolates our assumptions about torture and provides a bit empirical grounding for a debate that has been largely theoretical.

I begin the piece by identifying widespread belief in what I have the termed the “torture myth” — the idea that torture is the most effective interrogation practice. Rather than continuing to believe in the torture myth, I argue that as part of our evaluation of the merits of torture, we should take a shrewd look at the quality of information brutal interrogations produce. In reality, as I describe in the essay, in addition to its oft-acknowledged moral and legal problems, the use of torture carries with it a host of practical problems which seriously blunt its effectiveness. The essay demonstrates that contrary to the myth, torture, and the closely related practice of torture “lite,” do not always produce the desired information. Moreover, in the cases in which they do produce such information, these practices may not produce it in a timely fashion.

In the end, the essay concludes, any marginal benefit these practices offer is low, because traditional techniques of interrogation may be as good, and possibly even better, at producing valuable intelligence.