On March 22

On this day in ...

... 1956 (55 years ago today) an Alabama court convicted Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. of organizing African Americans in Montgomery to engage in a boycott of buses. The 27-year-old civil rights leader received a $500 fine -- converted into a 386-day jail sentence that was suspended pending appeal. The 17-week-old boycott would last till December of the same year. (image credit) It ended following the issuance in November of Browder v. Gayle, 352 U.S. 903, a Supreme Court judgment that outlawed segregation in public transportation.

(Prior March 22 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Nearby were framed photos of her idols: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. These days, though, Karman is most inspired by her peers. 'Look at Egypt,' she said with pride. 'We will win.'

-- Reporter Sudarsan Raghavan, in yesterday's Washington Post profile of Tawakkol Karman (right). The head of an organization called Women Journalists Without Chains, she's using the internet to push for change in her native country of Yemen, site of unrest for the last several days. Karman's received death threats, been attacked by a mob, and detained by police for 38 hours. (photo credit)

Breaking News: "Baby Doc" in Haitian Court

Former self-appointed “president-for-life” Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier was questioned by a Haitian prosecutor and a judge at his hotel outside Port-au-Prince and then “escorted” to court according to this BBC News report. At the time of posting, it is unclear whether he is being arrested or being subjected to further questioning. Reports indicate some unrest outside the courthouse.
International human rights NGOs and Haitian abuse survivors called for Duvalier’s immediate arrest after his mysterious return to the island on Sunday. Forced to leave Haiti during a popular uprising in 1986, “Baby Doc” Duvalier has been living in exile in France for more than two decades without arrest. His regime was characterized by widely and reliably documented human rights abuses.
Charges?

In addition to arguing Duvalier’s liability under Haitian law for alleged misappropriation of public funds and other violations, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bureau des Avocats Internationeaux (BAI) called for international human rights legal accountability (see press release here).

This legal documentation is supplemented by an extensive public record of Mr. Duvalier’s human rights violations, including the torture and disappearances of political dissidents at the Fort Dimanche prison and other crimes committed by organizations under his control including the Armed Forces of Haiti and the Volunteers for National Security (Tontons Macoutes).

Another Year...
For previous IntLawGrrls takes on Haiti, including by Marjorie Florestal, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, and yours truly, Hope Lewis, see here and here. One year after the 12 January 2010 earthquake, I wish I could suggest an accountable, effective, and sustainable pathway for rebuilding, recovery, and transformation. One thing is clear—the core of sustainability lies with the Haitian people and the Haitian Diaspora. Still, the rest of us must play our roles--even if that role is to remember the physician's oath "first, do no harm...."

As Dr. Martin Luther King said all human beings are “tied together in an inextricable web of mutuality.” Trade, humanitarian, human rights, migration, labor, tourism, and business laws and policies do have transnational implications. What "we" do has an impact in Haiti. What happens in Haiti matters wherever “we” are. Stay tuned.

Guest Blogger: Erin Daly

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Erin Daly (left) as today's guest blogger.
Erin is Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Faculty Research and Development at Widener Law School in Wilmington, Delaware. She earned her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan, then practiced 1st Amendment and employment law at the San Francisco law firm of Cooper White & Cooper.
Since entering academia in 1993, she's produced many publications on comparative environmental law, constitutional law, and transitional justice, among them Reconciliation in Divided Societies: Finding Common Ground (2006), for which a Nobel Peace Prizewinner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, wrote the foreword. Co-authoring the book (issued in paperback in 2010) with Erin was Jeremy Sarkin, the South African legal expert about whom we posted yesterday.
Erin has served as a Vice-Chair of the Young Lawyer’s Division Law and Media Committee of the American Bar Association. Earlier this month, Erin was elected the Chair of the Section on International Human Rights of the Association of American Law Schools (a position that IntLawGrrl Christiana Ochoa held a while back). In her guest post below, Erin recaps the Section's "new voices" programs during AALS' 2010 annual meeting, discusses Section plans, and welcomes suggestions for the coming year.
Erin dedicates her post to Coretta Scott King (1927-2006), about whom we IntLawGrrls have frequently posted. She was, of course, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (prior posts) -- and she was also a civil rights and human rights activist in her own right. Today the United States observes Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is, as Erin writes, a holiday that Coretta Scott King

named in honor of her husband, but which is really a testament to her own lifelong commitment to making the world a better place through service to others and to holding up ideals of equality and human dignity, whether in the context of literacy, poverty eradication, or the rights of minorities of all kinds in the United States and abroad. She took on each new challenge with grace and intelligence and continued throughout her life to push for greater rights for all.

(source for 1984 Charles Tasnadi/AP photo of her leading a picket of South African embassy in Washington, D.C.) Today we are honored to include Coretta Scott King in our list of foremothers just below the "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

On October 30

On this day in ...
... 2005 (5 years ago today), thousands waited in line all day to pay their respect at the coffin of Rosa Parks as it lay in state at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. (photo credit) In the words of The New York Times:

A seamstress by trade, Mrs. Parks became the first woman ever accorded such a tribute and just the 31st person over all since 1852, a list that includes Abraham Lincoln and nine other presidents.

Parks had died at age 92 5 days earlier at her home in Detroit. In 1955, as is well known (and posted), Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man, thus beginning the Montgomery bus boycott -- and a career as a civil rights pioneer, often allied with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(Prior October 30 posts are here, here, and here.)

Maybe rename it World Hunger Day?

Happy World Food Day.
In his 1964 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the world to confront the problem of hunger. He stated:

I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

(Watch the speech here.)

Almost 50 years later, we are still waiting.

It's not like nobody else noticed that we had a Hunger Problem.

The right to food has been at the heart of international discourse as long as the international community has been discussing human rights:

► Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized the right to food as a basic human right.

► Article 11(2) of the United Nations Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right to be free from hunger. (The United States is still not a signatory to that convention).

► The 1974 World Food Conference declared that "every man, woman and child had an inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition." It committed the international community to eradicating hunger by 1984. (Report available here.)

► The World Food Summit of 1996 set a goal of halving the number of chronically people by 2015.

► The Millennium Development Goals set a target of halving the proportion of people living with food insecurity by 2015. (Notice how much less ambitious the goals have become over time.)

In 1979, the Food and Agriculture Organization declared its intention to designate October 16th -- the date of its founding in 1945-- to be World Food Day. The reason for World Food Day was to "heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty." In 1980, recognizing that "food is a requisite for human survival and well-being and a fundamental human necessity" the U.N. General Assembly, in Resolution 35/70, endorsed observance of World Food Day.

Today marks World Food Day's 30th celebration. The clock ticks ever closer to the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium goals and the World Food Summit Goals.

So, how are we doing?

In its report entitled the State of World Food Insecurity 2010, the FAO states that almost 1 billion people are undernourished. That is more, in absolute terms, than were undernourished in 1979, and roughly the same in percentage terms.

How can it be that in all those years, with all those international proclamations, and all that investment we have made, basically no progress?

Or, phrased differently:

We produce more food today than ever before in the history of the world. So, why are more people hungry today than ever before in the history of the world?

Perhaps the problem is that we are thinking about hunger the wrong way.

This year, the Agricola Medal was given posthumosly to Dr. Norman Bourlag, the man commonly credited with starting the Green Revolution. (prior post) Dr. Bourlag was right when he said that

the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind.

With all due respect to Dr. Bourlag, who devoted his life to eradicating hunger, no amount of new and better technology will solve this problem -- because it is not a food production problem. The problem with Dr. Bourlag's technology-based approach is that today's hunger is a food distribution problem. We already produce enough food to feed all the people on the planet. We just don't use that food to feed the people who are hungry.

Hunger today revolves around the way that global trade is structured. Indeed, since the global food price crisis of 2008, Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the right to food, has been cautioning about the need for structural measures to address food price increases. Even though this year's wheat crop is one of the largest ever recorded, food prices are skyrocketing. The Special Rapporteur identifies main culprits responsible for increasing prices in a time of plenty seem to be commodity speculation on international food markets, disinvestment in social protection schemes, and a global governance scheme that hinders the ability of governments to mitigate price shocks.

Perhaps we should rename it World Hunger Day.

(Personal note: About 195 million children are part of that 1 billion who suffer from food insecurity. As I watched my 4 year old eat her dinner after writing this post, all I could think about was the unbearable pain that a parent unable to feed her child must suffer. I made a donation to Doctors Without Borders' Starved for Attention campaign. Please consider doing something similar.)

"Now is the Time:" Human Rights in the U.S. and Katrina 5 Years Later

This weekend presents both a time of remembrance and an opportunity to begin again.
29 August 2010 marks 5 years since Hurricane Katrina (soon to be followed by Rita) struck the Gulf coast of the United States. That disaster, one of many that devastates millions throughout the world each year, revealed catastrophic failures of federal, state, local, and private responsibility to the poorest people in one of the most highly-resourced countries in the world. It demonstrated that life chances are not necessarily determined only by which country one lives in, but also by where one lives on the socio-economic ladder in a divided society. It is the poorest and most vulnerable who bear the brunt of governmental failures to protect or fulfill rights. They also suffer from the deliberate effects of greed, neo-liberal privatizations, corruption, racial prejudice, and violence.
A Human Rights Lens
Shortly after the storm, Jeanne Woods and I submitted a statement
to the UN on the need for international human rights scrutiny on what was essentially a man-made and continuing disaster. The UN Independent Expert on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Arjun Sengupta, was holding hearings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at which survivors from all walks of life, lawyers, and human rights activists testified about Katrina's aftermath. Sengupta's report, Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: A Mission Report on the United States is available here.
That mission was to be followed by further efforts among local organizers to attract international and national attention to past, present, or potential U.S. human rights violations in the region. Reports, press releases, and official statements were issued by the following:
►the United States Human Rights Network
►Independent Expert on Minority Issues, Gay McDougall & Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Miloon Kothari
►the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
►Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, Doudou Diene
►Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Rachel Rolnik
Grassroots groups organized peoples’ tribunals to air continuing grievances and government failures to respond to the needs of the majority of survivors. (See here for a statement arising out of the 2007 International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and here for continuing advocacy by the Katrina Information Network about post-Katrina and BP oil disaster human rights issues.) I've reflected on these human rights efforts in Race, Class, and Katrina: Human Rights and (Un)natural Disaster, in Environmental Justice in the New Millennium: Global Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Human Rights (Filomina C. Steady, ed., 2009)
Linking Human Rights and Disaster

In the early days after the disaster, friends and colleagues asked “What does a storm have to do with human rights?” Certainly, international human rights standards cannot prevent, or provide a single effective response to, a storm or a massive oil gusher in the Gulf, toxic waste releases in Mossville, Louisiana, an earthquake in Haiti, or floods across Pakistan. But international legal standards recognize or impose obligations on state and non-state actors to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of individuals and groups before, during, and after such natural and man-made disasters. See, for example, the UN’s Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
Lessons Learned?
Civil and Political Rights. Katrina showed us how historical and contemporary discrimination results in racial and ethnic disparities in housing, education, and access to jobs and healthcare. We saw how minority status, internal displacement, and poverty can effectively strip individuals of their rights to vote or to participate in decision-making about rebuilding efforts. We learned that police and criminal justice systems intended to protect the security of communities can be abused or corrupted by some to turn against those same communities when an emergency occurs.
Economic and Social Rights. We saw how crucial hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and other physical and mental health facilities are to the survival of any community. The poorest suffered the effects, not only of the disaster itself, but also the loss of medical records, regular doctors’ visits, access to medicines, and mental health care as mortality and morbidity rates rose from suicide, treatable diseases, and barriers to disability access. Rental housing was priced beyond reach, insurance claims unpaid, and viable public housing demolished. Workers’ rights to decent wages and safe working conditions were ignored in some rebuilding efforts. Even obvious lessons about the implications of environmental abuse on human and other life forms seemed to remain largely unlearned—workers were exposed to toxic construction materials and survivors to toxic FEMA trailers. Now the BP oil catastrophe has exposed clean-up workers to further contaminants.
Cultural Rights. Katrina also illustrated the importance of the right to participate in cultural life. Many focused on the city of New Orleans, influenced at one time or another by Native American traditions, the TransAtlantic slave trade, French colonialism, African-American traditions, Cajun traditions, Haitian traditions, jazz, blues, Catholicism, Mardi Gras, fisheries and seafood industries, and much more. These rich traditions were cultivated over generations and extended neighborhood and family networks that are recognized and to be protected under human rights norms.
Another Anniversary
Perhaps not coincidentally, 28 August is the anniversary of the great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington was a historic call for the United States to make its constitutional aspirations a reality for all Americans, including African-Americans. King saw an end to poverty and the protection of economic rights as an important aspect of his dream of justice.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. …Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

For many, the images of Hurricane Katrina were a resounding indication that King's dream, either with regard to racial equality or economic justice, had yet to be realized.

Human Rights in the United States: Under Review
On 20 August 2010, the United States released an important report on its compliance with international human rights standards. Under the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, the U.S. will be subjected to formal human rights scrutiny on 5 November 2010. (A U.S. Department of State webpage available here provides links to the official country report, summaries of civil society consultations, and summaries of the UN process.) In preparation for this historic review, a coalition of U.S. NGOs organized by the U.S. Human Rights Network has compiled 24 reports on human rights conditions as of April 2010 available here.
Five years after Hurricane Katrina, and nearly 50 years after Dr. King's speech, a quick read of these reports indicates that there’s still a great deal yet to be learned to make the full enjoyment of human rights a reality in the U.S. At least, the U.S. has begun to recognize the importance of shining the human rights light on its actions at home as well as abroad.

On July 31

On this day in ...

... 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Dr. Margaret Joy Tibbetts to serve as U.S. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Norway. Tibbetts presented her credentials on October 6 of the same year, and left the post on May 23, 1969. During that tenure she would "escor[t] Martin Luther King, Jr. and his family when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1964." She also was quoted in The New York Times story announcing King's award:

As an American and representative of the American people, I want to express joy and gratitude that one of my fellow countrymen has been awarded this prize.

Tibbetts had been on August 26, 1919, in Bethel, Maine, and earned a Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1944 she became a career officer of the U.S. Foreign Service, serving in Washington, London, Brussels -- and eventually as officer-in-charge of the consulate general at what was then Leopoldville, Belgian Congo (today, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo). In 1971 she received the Distinguished Honor Award (ribbon at right), "the highest decoration bestowed by the United States Department of State," and retired from government service. She became a professor, teaching foreign policy, at Bowdoin College near her hometown. Miss Tibbetts, as her obituary referred to her, died in Maine this past April 25, at age 90.

(Prior July 31 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 11

On this day in ...
.... 1968, U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It included, in Title VIII, the Fair Housing Act, which outlawed discrimination in housing, as well as a separate title that protected persons working for civil rights. At the signing ceremony (right), Johnson "voic[ed] outrage at the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King," which had taken place earlier in the month, "and the violence that followed it." (photo credit)

(Prior April 11 posts are here, here, and here)

On October 14

On this day in ...
... 1964 (45 years ago today), 35-year-old civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest person named a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, established in 1901 to recognize acts "for the furtherance of brotherhood among men and to the abolishment or reduction of standing armies and for the extension of these purposes." He was due to receive the award in Oslo on December 10 (right (credit); audio clip here). The New York Times reported that in Oslo, the woman who 8 days earlier had presented her credentials as U.S. Ambassador to Norway, Margaret Joy Tibbetts, said:

'As an American and representative of the American people, I want to express joy and gratitude that one of my fellow countrymen has been awarded this prize.' She praised the role of Dr. King 'among his fellow countrymen.'

King was the 12th American so honored (the 21st, as we've posted, is Barack Obama); he said in he would donate the $54,000 prize to the civil rights movement. (King would later become the namesake of my home institution and the California International Law Center at King Hall.) He was in his hometown of Atlanta with his wife, Coretta Scott King (above, far right), who said:

'For many years we have had to contend with the other side. For something like this to happen makes it all worthwhile.'

(Prior posts are here and here.)

Peace 2009

"Peace 2009" is the label that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has given to its on-the-web information on today's announcement, reprinted below in full, that U.S. President Barack Obama is the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," with special attention paid "to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons."
The news comes exactly 45 years after the same committee awarded the same prize to another American, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Today's news is a most welcome endorsement of the efforts of all in the new administration -- the President, of course, but also many of our colleagues and many others -- who are doing the very hard work of reinforcing the United States' position as a leader in the global community. Obama himself said as much today:

Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

It is a vision of leadership that seeks to maintain U.S. superpower status, yet accepts the messiness of genuine engagement with our diverse world. Indeed engagement -- even to the extent of risking an occasional loss, as with the failed Olympics bid, or the inevitability of criticism -- is seen in this vision as a sign of strength, a marker that the U.S. role is well earned.
Some are questioning the decision to give this award a scant 9 months after the onset of this Presidency. Such questions ignore just how much Obama and his administration in fact have accomplished in that short time. By way of a few examples, they have:

► Immediately upon taking office, ordered the closure of the detention camp at Guantánamo, and labored since then to make this happen;

► Simultaneously ordered an end to unlawful interrogation practices;

► Reiterated a vision for a nuclear-free world and pressed for nuclear arms reduction through U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, strengthening of the existing nonproliferation framework, and negotiation of a new U.S.-Russia treaty (prior posts here and here);

► Taken part in the 1st high-level face-to-face talks with Iran in 3 decades (prior post);

► Pledged U.S. contribution to global combat against climate change; and

► Joined the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.

Much, of course, remains to be done. Guantánamo is still open, and the ultimate fate of it and other post-9/11 programs is still unclear. The securing of ratification of the test ban and other treaties -- the Women's Convention and the Convention on the Law of the Sea, to name 2 on which we 'Grrls have posted -- has yet to occur. Policy on the International Criminal Court, subject of the forthcoming 2010 review conference in Uganda, remains to be set. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pose a host of problems, as do lower-intensity efforts in countries like Pakistan.

Let's hope the administration continues to work to resolve such issues consistent with the "new climate in international politics" that inspired today's award of the Nobel Peace Prize.

(Cross-posted at The HuffingtonPost)

On June 17

On this day in ...
... 1924 (85 years ago today), Althea Simmons (left), who from 1979 until her death in 1990 would lead the Washington, D.C., branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and so serve as the NAACP's chief lobbyist in the capital, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. She was a graduate of that state's Southern University, of the University of Illinois, and of Howard University School of Law in Washington. According to her obituary, Simmons

successfully lobbied for the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, the creation of a holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sanctions against South Africa and the subsequent Congressional override of President Ronald Reagan's veto.

After Simmons' death, a tribute to her was read into the U.S. Senate record.

... 1944 (65 years ago today), the birthday of independence leader Jón Sigurðsson, Iceland became independent from Denmark and formed a republic. This day is celebrated every year as Iceland National Day. The Old Covenant of 1262 had established the sovereignty of Norway and ended the independent republic in Iceland. Late in the 14th century, Iceland became a Danish dominion. In 1918, by the Act of Union agreement, Iceland was declared a free and independent state, but the Danish king continued to function as king of Iceland. In a May 1944 referendum, Iceland voted to end the union. (credit for 2007 photo of national day procession in Reykjavík, Iceland)

(Prior June 17 posts are here and here.)

On April 6

On this day in ...
... 1994 (15 years ago today), Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprian Ntayamira, respectively the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, were killed in a plane crash that some said was the result of rocket fire from the ground. The crash occurred just outside of Kigali, Rwanda's capital, to which the 2 were flying after having taken part in a discussion among African leaders meeting in Tanzania on how "to end the ethnic violence in Burundi and Rwanda." The incident would have the opposite consequence, touching off massacres in Rwanda. Earlier last month the Chief of Protocol for Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Rose Kabuyé (prior post), submitted to interviews by a French investigating judge in connection with charges, levied against Kagame in France, relating to the 1994 deaths. Yesterday Uganda's Daily Monitor reported that she has returned to Rwanda on grant of "'extra-territorial bail.'" The paper quoted Kabuyé as stating upon her arrival back in Kigali "to continue with her duties" as protocol chief:

'After two days of interrogation with judges, I was requested to come back to Kigali. I was granted permission and was also informed that my arrest warrant has been suspended.
'I can continue with my job and travel anywhere in the world unlike before when I had to only travel in Rwanda and France. I am set to go back in the first week of May.'

... 1968, "[d]ozens of major cities in the United States have been rocked by an escalation in the race riots which began two days ago ... provoked by the assassination of black civil rights leader Martin Luther King" Jr., the BBC reported. More than 100 cities would be affected in days of rioting, which resulted in deaths, injuries, arrests, arson, looting and shootings. (credit for photo of riot-damaged store in Washington, D.C.)

(Prior April 6 posts are here and here.)

Go On! "The Honorable John Paul Stevens"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Throughout IntLawGrrls' 1st 2 years, occasions have presented themselves for posts on the work of Justice John Paul Stevens, who's served on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1975. Having had the privilege of clerking for the Justice in the Court's 1988-89 Term, I'm delighted to announce that on Friday, March 6, 2009, the University of California, Davis, School of Law, my home institution, will host a daylong conference entitled "The Honorable John Paul Stevens."
This Law Review symposium is a core component of our celebration of the 40th anniversary of the day that our law school building was dedicated as Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall, with Chief Justice Earl Warren presiding and members of Dr. King’s family participating.
The conference will begin with videotaped remarks from Justice Stevens. Thereafter an exciting group of panelists – some former clerks, as well as other legal experts drawn from academia, journalism, and the practice – will examine the Justice’s jurisprudence respecting topics such as capital punishment , counterterrorism, equal protection, abortion, and the environment, all considered within the umbrella of 3 themes, liberty, equality, and security.
Here's the lineup:

Liberty

David F. Levi (moderator), Dean of Duke University School of Law, former U.S. District Judge, Eastern District of California, former U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of California, and former Adjunct Professor of Law, University of California, Davis, School of Law; Jeffrey L. Fisher, Associate Professor of Law & Co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Stanford Law School; Jamal Greene, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; Linda Greenhouse, Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence & Joseph M. Goldstein Senior Fellow in Law, Yale Law School, and former Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times; and Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the Death Penalty Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.

Equality
Cruz Reynoso (moderator), Boochever & Bird Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Davis, School of Law, former Justice of the California Supreme Court, and former Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Diane Marie Amann, Professor of Law & Director, California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law; Teresa Wynn Roseborough, Chief Litigation Counsel at MetLife in New York and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General; and Andrew Siegel, Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law.

Security
Kenneth A. Manaster (moderator), Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law, and author of Illinois Justice: The Scandal of 1969 and the Rise of John Paul Stevens (2001); Daniel A. Farber, Sho Sato Professor of Law & Director, Environmental Law Program, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; Eugene R. Fidell, Florence Rogatz Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School, and President of the National Institute of Military Justice; Deborah N. Pearlstein, Associate Research Scholar, Woodrow Wilson School for Public & International Affairs, Princeton University, and former Director, Law & Security Program, Human Rights First; and Kathryn Watts, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law.

Details and registration (California MCLE available) -- and, following the conference, a webcast of the event -- may be found here.

California International Law Center launch

This Wednesday will mark yet another inauguration -- that is, the Inaugural Celebration of the California International Law Center at King Hall, the newest initiative of my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Am proud to say that Dean Kevin R. Johnson has named yours truly founding Director of the Center, which we've short-named CILC (pronounced "silk").
Our February 4 noon-hour kickoff, cosponsored by the Black Law Students Association and the International Law Society, will feature a very special program (tape to be posted at our new website). 1st, opening remarks from Kevin and me. Then we'll hear about the Global Vision & Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., from Dr. Clayborne Carson (left), Professor of History and founding Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, and editor of the King papers. Dr. Carson will talk from an international perspective about the namesake of our law school, Dr. King, who in 1964 became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and who later invoked international law to explain his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Indeed, in a speech delivered 7 years before the Peace Prize, King himself linked civil rights at home to human rights abroad. He asked:

As we move to make justice a reality on the international scale, as we move to make justice a reality in this nation, how will the struggle be waged?

Events, projects, and programs of CILC will work toward answers:
► The new Center's already cosponsored -- along with the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas and College of Letters & Sciences at the University of California, Davis, the International Justice Network, New York, and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School -- a 2-day exploratory discussion concerning a commission of inquiry to examine U.S. detention policies and practices after September 11, 2001.
► And CILC's already partnered with the the 40-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, to help drafting a framework for peace and reconciliation in Darfur. More later on this Darfur Project, to which a host of guest lecturers also are contributing teir time and expertise.
Wish us well as we endeavor to meet the challenge posed by Dr. King.

(A grateful hat tip to Legal History Blog for posting on our new Center)

On January 15

On this day in ...

... 1929 (80 years ago today), a son was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to a minister and a former schoolteacher. The child would become a rights activist about whom we've written frequently, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The U.S. day in honor of King will be next Monday, January 19 -- "Not a Day Off," urge those who for the last several years have made it a Day of Service. You can find your opportunity to serve here.

... 2009, the Tamil culture celebrates the multi-day harvest festival of Pongal. Pongal coincides with similar festivals in other Asian cultures, called, variously, Sankranti, Makar Sankranti, Uttarayan, and Lohri. (credit for making of a kolam, or sand-painting decoration, outside house during this festival)

On November 13

On this day in ...
... 1956, by means of a per curiam opinion, reported at 352 U.S. 903, which comprises 1 sentence and cites to Brown v. Board of Education and 2 other precedents, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that Alabama segregation laws that provoked the Montgomery bus boycott were unconstitutional. Among the leaders of that year-long boycott were Rosa Parks (left) the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Court's ruling in favor of the decision of a 3-judge district court in Browder v. Gayle (1956), the New York Times wrote,

was interpreted as outlawing state or municipal enactments anywhere that require separation of the races on public vehicles. It was thought to have placed a headstone at the grave of Plessy v. [F]erguson.

(credit for 1956 booking photo of Parks following her arrest for violating the segregation law)
... 2000, the 6th session of the Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (logo below right) convened at The Hague. Later in the month this meeting of the so-called COP6 would collapse, primarily "due to the US wanting carbon sinks as part of the agreement (as well as other provisions like nuclear energy, etc.), which received enormous criticism," and to which European Union countries refused to accede.

Afriqueries Answered

Answers to the IntLawGrrls puzzler above, "Afriqueries," put together courtesy of an African Union webpage:

a) 3 of the 18 Nobel laureates are women: Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Muta Mathaai (right; prior IntLawGrrls posts) and South African author Nadine Gordimer (left), and from the African diaspora, the American author Toni Morrison (below left; prior post).

b) 10 of the 18 won the Peace Prize. From Africa itself, they are (in addition to Mathaai, introduced in (a) above): International Atomic Energy Agency leader Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt (prior post), former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (prior posts), former South African Presidents Nelson Mandela (prior posts) and F.W. de Klerk, the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (prior posts), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (prior post), and the late South African anti-apartheid leader Albert John Lutuli. From the African diaspora, 2 Americans, the late diplomat Ralph Bunche (prior post) and the late civil rights activist Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (prior posts).

c) The other fields of achievement are Literature, with 6 prizewinners from Africa and its diaspora, and Chemistry and Economics, each with 1 African prizewinner.

On November 2

On this day in ...

... 1983 (20 years ago today), in a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House, with Coretta Scott King and civil rights leaders of many races attending, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that established Martin Luther King Day. (photo credit) A decade earlier, Illinois legislator Harold Washington, who would become Chicago's 1st African-American mayor, had succeeded in making the day a state holiday in Illinois; however, efforts on the national level stalled for many years. Among those opposing the measure was U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), today the GOP nominee for President. As a result of the 1983 U.S. law, the 3d Monday in January now is the only holiday that honors an individual American.

... 1963 (45 years ago today), the military seized power in South Vietnam, killing President Ngo Dinh Diem (below right). Investigating the matter years later, the Church Committee, a mid-1970s congressional group that investigated CIA activities, concluded

that the United States government offered encouragement for the coup, but neither desired nor was involved in the assassinations. Rather, Diem's assassination appears to have been a spontaneous act by Vietnamese generals, engendered by anger at Diem for refusing to resign or put himself in the custody of the leaders of the coup.

Obama: It's About Us...

(Warning: This post has very little to do with international law. Instead, it’s about all those people with tears in their eyes in living rooms, bars, classrooms, conference centers, and a big sports arena in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday night. It’s about the smile on my mom’s face (she doesn’t get to smile often enough) when she got a glimpse of Senator Barack Obama at a campaign event last winter... Or maybe it is about human rights after all.)

Then and Now
As a child of the 60s and 70s, I was constantly instilled with the belief that individuals or groups could change the world. The problems of the day were clear even to children — war, racism and apartheid, sexism, violence in streets and homes, political corruption, abuses against immigrants, and grinding poverty in urban centers and rural valleys.
But the sense that we could participate in broad social movements and thereby could DO something about these things was palpable. We had the optimistic expectation that grassroots action and organized political pressure on governments could result in real change.
This sense of commitment to social justice was both substantive and enmeshed in popular culture. People flashed peace signs and Black power salutes to strangers on the street. We called each other “sister” or “brother.”
Women marched for “liberation” and passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Music and art called for cross-cultural and cross-gender respect and dialogue.
Young people joined the Peace Corps.
Civil rights laws were passed, a massive anti-war movement took place, and anti-poverty, early childhood education, and healthcare programs were organized. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (see photo left: courtesy of UBM.com), testified about state-sanctioned racism and violence at the Credentials Committee before the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. (Prior IntLawGrrls post here; click here for audio and text of speech). Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm spoke out in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment and ran for President (lower right). (Prior IntLawGrrls post here.)
Such efforts had their successes and failures, as have the movements that came before them. Since then, however, we’ve seen the Gulf War, the September 11 crimes against humanity, the Iraq War, the Rwanda genocide, “ethnic cleansing” in the violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, systematic rape and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Darfur genocide, and other violent conflicts throughout the world.
We’ve seen governments fail to protect the economic and social rights of the poor, persons with disabilities, the elderly, and other marginalized groups among us on a daily basis, as well as during massive crises such as Hurricane Katrina and Cyclone Nargis in Burma. We’ve seen too many young men in prisons or hospital emergency rooms who should have been in high school classrooms.
Fundamental human rights are under attack. Over the last 8 years, the absolute legal prohibition on torture under international law and the international and domestic laws protecting privacy and due process have been put up for grabs.
So, instead of the urge toward social change, a sense of cynicism, helplessness, and despair began to pervade the atmosphere and our popular culture. That included those of us in the academy.

“Rock Star” or Leadership?
What many pundits missed from the beginning about Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is that Americans need to believe that THEY can do something that matters again. All the remarks about “rock star” status and “Obamania” aside, it is that desire that primarily motivates the crowds to show up in Iowa and New York, Wisconsin, and Illinois, South Carolina, Oregon, and now, Colorado.
Charges of “elitism” ring hollow. If anything, Obama’s life story fits the classic American Dream narrative instead. African-American son of a white working-class single-mother and a Kenyan immigrant rises to attend Ivy League schools on scholarship and loans. He ends up vying for the presidency of the United States. Elitism involves looking down on, or mistreating, others because of class bias, not whether one did well at a high-profile university.
Of course, many are engaged by the senator’s individual charisma, intelligence, oratory, and political savvy. We tend to be an image-driven society after all.
But when I talk with young and older people who are committed to the campaign, it is apparent that they have a sense of relief and renewed energy. Even the young felt beaten down and silenced by immoral and illegal official policies, unreliable or superficial news coverage, fears about relatives and friends sent off for third deployments in an ill-conceived war, anger that Americans had become hated targets for some, and frustration that the promises of the American Dream are still largely unattainable for most poor, working-class people, and people of color.

“Yes We Can”
That is why, like some other crusty skeptics of my generation, I found myself in tears in front of my computer when I first saw the “Yes We Can” music video making the rounds on the internet (and about which IntLawGrrls posted here). Nice song, yes. Stylish images, yes. Famous young entertainers, yes (although I was sufficiently out of touch not to know who most of them are). And evocative of Martin Luther King Jr.’s great oratory. (IntLawGrrls posted video examples of Dr. King's speeches here and here.)
What was most moving, however, was the evidence that young people had been inspired to believe that THEY, in diverse coalitions, could help create social change. Everything was possible.

The End of Racism? Or A Step in the Right Direction?
The Iowa primary was another such moment. No matter what followed, the buzz on the phonelines and e-mails was that change is possible. Possible, despite pundits that said racism would always prevail in presidential elections. Possible, despite the ingrained belief that voters would never think outside traditional race, class, and gender demographic expectations.
Yet, neither Obama himself, nor the rest of us can believe that a single primary, nomination, or election victory signals the end of racism in the United States. There are some who prefer to believe this, I know. But every long-time activist is aware that the ascendancy of “firsts” are an important beginning, not the end. Real change is broad, deep, and complex.

History
Still, it is those historic and symbolic moments—Rev. Dr. King proclaiming his dream for America in Washington, DC, and his vision for an end to the war in Vietnam and an end to poverty at home (click here for audio of his “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence” speech) and the Obamas’ potential to be the First Family of the United States — that inspire us all to keep working for change.