On September 2

On this day in ...
... 1838 (170 years ago today), Lili‘uokalani (right) was born in Honolulu to high-ranking Hawaiian chiefs. Upon the death of her brother, King Kalākaua, in 1891, she became Queen of Hawaii. (portrait credit) Two years later she was overthrown and imprisoned, and a "provisional government" put into place. As we've posted, the deposed queen objected to the Treaty of Annexation that this new regime entered with the United States in 1897. IntLawGrrl Kathleen Doty has named Lili‘uokalani her transnational foremother.
... 1898 (110 years ago today), in the Battle of Omdurman, troops led by Britain defeated an army of Sudanese who'd ruled "a large part of Egyptian Sudan" since 1881. The defeat in the city, which lies on the western banks of the Nile opposite Khartoum, secured British dominance over Sudan.

Guest Bloggers: Kathleen Doty & Megan Knize

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure today to welcome 2 new guest bloggers, Kathleen Doty (left) and Megan Knize (right). The problem of counterfeit medicines -- a particular concern in anti-malaria efforts -- and the corresponding lack of legal frameworks to address the issue is the subject of their post above.
Both, I'm proud to say, were my students in intlaw courses at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, last year. (That makes 3 law students who've contributed as guests; the 3d was Deborah Popowski, who wrote on accountability for torture back in December.)
Kathleen is a 3d-year law student at Davis. As coach and oralist on the school's Jessup International Moot Court Team, she was part of the team that, as posted, won the 2008 Pacific Super Region Competition last weekend. She'll be arguing in the Shearman & Sterling International Rounds in Washington D.C. in April 2008. Kathleen is interested in public international law and global health policy. She graduated cum laude from Smith College, where she majored in Latin American Studies and minored in Film Studies. She has traveled extensively in the Hispanic Caribbean and, most notably, studied abroad at La Universidad de la Habana in Cuba. Before entering law school, she worked for Engel Entertainment, where she was a production assistant and sound recordist on adventure, science, and travel documentaries for cable broadcasters.
Megan, also a 3d-year law student at California-Davis, is Editor-in-Chief of the UC Davis Law Review (vol. 41). She's most interested in the intersections of poverty, rurality, and law, and she's spent considerable time living and traveling in Europe and the Middle East. After graduating with honors in American Studies from Stanford University, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Daily, Megan worked for a nonprofit in California’s Central Valley and spent a year teaching English in France. She's also worked for the Centre d’Etude de la Vie Politique Française in Paris and the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest. While working for that Centre, she organized a research mission to Istanbul; there she interviewed Roma victims of forced eviction. In the fall Megan will start work as an associate at the law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf.
Each dedicates her IntLawGrrls contribution to a transnational foremother. Kathleen's is Queen Lili‘uokalani, the last monarch of Hawai‘i. As for Megan? "In honor of Women’s History Month, I’ll go with Betty Friedan," she says, referring, of course, to the 2d wave feminist and author of The Feminine Mystique (1963), which "detailed the frustrating lives of countless American women who were expected to find fulfillment primarily through the achievements of husbands and children."
Heartfelt welcome!

On June 16, ...

... 1976, a march in Soweto, South Africa, by more than 10,000 students opposed to the apartheid government, turned into a riot in which police killed hundreds. Another hundred died soon after in rioting throughout the country. International attention made the event a watershed in the path to majority rule in South Africa.
... 1897 (110 years ago today), the United States and the Republic of Hawaii signed a Treaty of Annexation of Hawaii in Washington, D.C. The following day Lili‘uokalani (right), who'd become Queen of Hawaii in 1891 and objected for years to the "provisional government" that purported to represent the islands, wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Sherman:

I ... do hereby protest against the ratification of a certain treaty ... purporting to cede those Islands to the territory and dominion of the United States. I declare such a treaty to be an act of wrong toward the native and part-native people of Hawaii, an invasion of the rights of the ruling chiefs, in violation of international rights both toward my people and toward friendly nations with whom they have made treaties, the perpetuation of the fraud whereby the constitutional government was overthrown, and, finally, an act of gross injustice to me.