Diane Amann talk at GW

Earlier this week, just before President Obama addressed the nation on why the US is involved in Libya, I was privileged to hear Diane Amann give a talk at an International Law Colloquium at George Washington University Law School. Her talk, which was titled The Value of Peace and the Crime of Aggression, explores the contradictions involved in pursuing "a peace envisioned as the absence of war, yet often pursued through military intervention."
She began by pointing out that, even though President Obama had received the Nobel Prize for Peace, the US is now involved in three different conflicts, and previewed how President Obama would defend the US role in Libya. Indeed, as I listened to Obama's speech that evening, Diane's talk repeatedly echoed in my mind; she had presciently predicted his approach almost to a word!
The main part of her talk focused on the crime of aggression. She reviewed the adoption in Kampala last year of amendments to the Rome Statute that define the crime and how the ICC will exercise its jurisdiction over this crime. She described the eloquence of Ben Ferencz, the 90-plus year old former Nuremberg prosecutor, at the Kampala conference as he urged development of the crime of aggression. In addition, she discussed the US approach to securing peace around the world, and then analyzed the proposed aggression amendments in the context of this history. It was fascinating to hear her explore the paradoxes in American policy as we use force to achieve peace and as we hail mechanisms for international accountability while seeking to avoid such accountability ourselves.
The article is part of a work in progress that I very much look forward to reading!

Guest Blogger: Sue Westwood

It is IntLawGrrls great pleasure to welcome Dr. Sue Westwood (pictured left) as today's guest blogger. Sue is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Law, Keele University, England, where she also teaches tort law to undergraduates. She has a prior career in health and social care provision, with associated academic and professional qualifications, and has recently re-trained in both gerontology and law. Sue is also a freelance equality and diversity researcher and trainer, specialising in the needs and rights of older people with minority identities.
Sue’s doctoral thesis is on aging lesbian, gay and bisexual identities and experiences of harassment in housing, health and social care provision for older people, within the context of new UK anti-discrimination legislation which has specific exclusions from protection from harassment on the grounds of sexual orientation. Sue's guest post below discusses the very well-received talk she gave at the Aging As A Feminist Concern conference last month at Emory Law School, about which IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn posted here.
Sue has selected Emmeline Pankhurst (pictured below right) as her transnational foremother. Born in 1858, Pankhurst was the leader of the UK suffrage movement. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts.) After initially pursuing political lobbying to get women the vote without success, she later advocated more militant activism, particularly after her husband died. Her militant attitude caused a split with other women activists, including her daughters, and Emmeline went on to form the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).
The suffragists in the WSPU chained themselves to railings, smashed windows and committed acts of arson to call attention to their campaign for women to be given the vote. Many, including Emmeline herself, were imprisoned, and then went on hunger strike. The women were subjected to brutal force-feeding on a routine basis, and Emmeline said she would never forget the sound of the women’s screams from her times in prison. Many of the women, including Emmeline, had long-term health problems associated with both the self-starvation and forced-feeding.
Emmeline was a controversial figure. She became involved in Conservative politics in later life, saying her life experiences had caused her to revise her political stance, although she always remained deeply committed to equality between men and women. In 1918 some women over 30 were given the vote in the UK, but it was not until 1928, the same year that Emmeline died, that all women were given the same right to vote as men in the UK. In Sue's words:

Emmeline was a major driving force in women first getting the vote in the UK.

Today Pankhurst joins other IntLawGrrls foremothers in the list at right just below our "visiting from..." map.
Heartfelt welcome!

Women & ICL series continues

Our readers will recall that this past fall, IntLawGrrls co-sponsored our first symposium along with the American Society of International Law, on the topic of Women and International Criminal Law (full program here).
The papers featured at this symposium will be published in a special 2011 issue of the International Criminal Law Review dedicated to Judge Patricia M. Wald, an IntLawGrrls guest/alumna. Some papers were commissioned; others we received through a global call to papers. We've been spotlighting these papers over the last few months -- Diane Marie Amann's post on her paper is here, Jaya Ramji-Nogales' post on hers is here, and that of Dina Francesca Haynes, Naomi Cahn, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is here. Jaya's paper, also subject of an earlier post, is now available online here. We'll continue to post these as we move into the production phase.
Today we feature another paper, posted below, by Margaret deGuzman (left), another IntLawGrrls alumna and Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia. We're delighted to welcome her back. Meg's paper engages the question of "Why Should International Courts Prosecute Sex Crimes?" The full paper, available here, is part of her ongoing work on gravity as an organizing principle for international criminal law and prosecutorial discretion.

Aging as a Feminist Concern

I’ve spent the past few days at a Feminism and Legal Theory Conference on Aging as a Feminist Concern, organized by Martha Fineman at Emory (pictured below near right). The conference was designed to encourage feminist legal theorists to develop further transformative theories about aging. We called attention to the parallels between negative stereotypes about older adults and women. Moreover, the growing population of older women raises distinct issues of caretaking whether the older woman is serving as caretaker or as the care recipient.
Although many of the participants have focused on US domestic aging issues, we’ve also learned about Housing Equity and Older Owners in the UK, Pensions and Unpaid Work in Canada, and The Invisibility of Older Women’s Experiences of Inequality in Irish Discrimination Law. A few issues have pervaded the entire discussion, including the vulnerability of older women, regardless of where they live, the question of whether older people should be treated differently (as with laws targeting elder abuse) or whether law should be more universally focused, and the comparative lack of attention to, and action about, gender and aging. Many participants reported that students are not particularly interested in courses of particular relevance to this area.
Even with attention, the situation remains difficult. For example, as Freya Kodar (Victoria) and Claire Young (British Columbia) (pictured far right) reported, in Canada, there has been some examination at the national level of women’s financial status as they age, with women constituting a disproportionately high number of those in poverty at age 65 or older. One issue has involved retirement benefits. The primary sources of such income involves attachment to the paid labor market. Canada has three different pillars for financial security for older individuals: Old Age Security; defined benefit plans funded by payroll deductions; and supplements through private plans. In 2009, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women examined the gender impact of pension benefits. It found a gap in retirement income for men and women, due in part to women’s unpaid caregiving work. Nonetheless, the report and its recommendations have languished.
We’re hoping that this conference stimulates more attention and discussion to these issues domestically and internationally.

Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond

Many of us gathered at the American Society of International Law on October 29th to honor the remarkable Judge Patricia Wald by bringing together our perspectives on women and international criminal law. IntLawGrrls Naomi Cahn and Dina Francesca Haynes, and guest Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (pictured below right) presented our paper on Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond, drawing concepts from our forthcoming book, On the Frontlines, to be published by Oxford University Press in September 2011.

In the article, which will be part of a special volume of the International Criminal Law Review edited by IntLawGrrls Diane Marie Amann, Jaya Ramji-Nogales and Beth Van Schaack, we argue: 1) that sexual offenses that arise during and post conflict are not yet sufficiently addressed, 2) that even so, the focus on sex crimes diverts attention from accurately assessing the actual harms perceived by women and 3) that legal reform and post conflict reconstruction should precede the creation of tribunals.
Our responses to sexual offenses committed during and after conflict are still insufficient in multiple ways. Though the jurisprudence of the ICTY and ICTR has taken us some distance, courts still fail to capture the full range of harms that flow from sexual violence. Furthermore, the successful prosecution of sex based crimes still requires significant external pressure and advocacy, multiple structural barriers still exist with the gathering of evidence and protection of witnesses, and the sentences and number of cases pursued is still disproportionately lower than other wartime offenses. Despite the failures in sufficiently addressing wartime sex based offenses, the focus on sex crimes as the crime associated with women and war diverts attention and resources from properly assessing what women truly perceive as harm and accordingly limit our ability to redress those harms. Finally, the timeline for pursuing prosecutions is not yet in sync with post war “safety.” Tribunals are established before women and victims of war have developed any sense of security. Accordingly, we recommend that legal reform and post conflict reconstruction processes should precede the creation of criminal tribunals.

Top 100 'Grrl

Cheers to IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, honored earlier this month on the Irish Legal 100, an annual list compiled by the New York-based Irish America magazine. (Married as I am to an honoree on another of the magazine's lists -- a Top 100 Irish American -- I took special note of this award.)
As detailed in prior posts, Fionnuala's the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Planning and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis, as well as Professor of Law at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and cofounder and Director of the university's Transitional Justice Institute. A noted scholar in areas of gender, armed conflict, and states of emergency, she contributed a post this summer on the release of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report on the 1972 paratrooper killings of civilians in Derry. And we're delighted that she will join her coauthors, IntLawGrrls Naomi Cahn and Dina Francesca Haynes, to discuss their paper, "Criminal Justice for Gendered Violence and Beyond," at the "Women and International Criminal Law" conference that IntLawGrrls is hosting this Friday in Washington.

Heartfelt congratulations!

WILIG networks

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

The Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG) of the American Society of International Law recently hosted its annual networking breakfast at Tillar House, ASIL's headquarters in Washington, D.C. The event drew over 60 attendees, comprising a diverse group of women students, practitioners and pioneers in the field of international law.
Laura Bocalandro, counsel at the Inter-American Development Bank (left), opened up the event. The panel was introduced by Marcia Wiss, partner at Hogan Lovells and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law (below right). Sarah A. Altschuller, senior practitioner in Foley Hoag’s corporate social responsibility group (below left), talked about the challenges facing attorneys in that practice area. Wendy Patten, Senior Policy Analyst at the Open Society Institute and former Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, noted that her past experiences as a litigator have continually helped her draft legislation and policy papers that examine and incorporate practical legal remedies for the public facing challenging situations. Carol Pier, Associate Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs at the Department of Labor, talked about the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Martina Vandenberg, partner at Jenner & Block LLP, spoke about the various challenges in fighting sex trafficking for which she has been raising awareness for several years. Vandenberg’s advice to young women was to build an "investment fund" – one consisting of a wealth of resources and network – in the early stages of their careers. The "fund," she said, that can assist them during their professional life in later years.

During the Q&A session, topics that arose included:

► Work-life balance for women in law,
► Transitioning from nongovernmental and international organizations to law firms,

► The importance of choosing law firms with a dedicated focus to pro bono work, and

► Rewards of international exposure that continue to enrich an international law attorney’s career in the long run.

The panel unanimously agreed upon the importance of mentors for young women in law firms who can help budding attorneys get quality work in their professional lives. Moderator Wiss encouraged women to continue to raise awareness and advocate for the U.S. ratification of 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by writing to their representatives in Congress. The panel also reminded women to maintain a healthy emotional life particularly when their work involves fighting against social issues that could have an adverse emotional impact on their personal lives.

At the end of the Q&A, the session broke to allow for networking. Several small crowds formed where women introduced themselves, discussed legal and policy issues in international law, and sought and offered advice. The 4 panelists were among the last few women to leave Tillar House, having answered almost every query by the crowd to the very end.

Note: IntLawGrrls Naomi Cahn (near left) and Kristine A. Huskey (far left) are co-chairs of this interest group. They encourage all who are not yet members to join WILIG!

Go On! Network with WILIG

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

WILIG, the Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of Law, will hold a Networking Breakfast next Thursday morning, July 29, at Tillar House, ASIL's headquarters at 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C. Breakfast will be from 8-8:30 a.m. Then, till 10, WILIG (whose co-chairs this year are IntLawGrrls Naomi Cahn and Kristine A. Huskey) will sponsor a panel presentation by

accomplished professionals in law practice and academia who will discuss their career paths and offer professional advice and insights for women interested in pursuing careers in international law.

Small-group discussions networking opportunities to follow.

Free to ASIL members; small fee for others (become an ASIL member here). Registration and details here.

Guest Blogger: Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (left) as today's guest blogger.
Fionnuala holds the Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Planning and Research at the University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis. She's also Professor of Law at the University of Ulster and cofounder and Director of the university's Transitional Justice Institute, with offices in Belfast and Derry, respectively the largest and 2d-largest cities in Northern Ireland.
In her guest post below, she discusses the release last week of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry report on the 1972 paratrooper killings of civilians in Derry, placing the event in the context of transitional justice discourse.
Fionnuala's previously been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School, Visiting Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Associate Professor of Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a Law & Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University. She received her LL.B. and Ph.D. from the Law Faculty at Queen's University in Belfast, and also holds an LL.M. degree from Columbia.
As is evident from her list of publications (SSRN here), Fionnuala's an internationally published expert and scholar in the areas of human rights, gender, and other issues related to transitional justice, on feminist legal theory, and on states of emergency. Law in Times of Crisis (2006), which she co-authored with Minnesota Law Professor Oren Gross, received a 2007 Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law, the organization for which she just began a 3-year term as a member of the ASIL Executive Council. She's at work now on a book on gender, masculinities, and transitional justice, co-authored with IntLawGrrls Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn.
Fionnuala's many awards include a Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, and the Lawlor fellowship.
The Irish government twice has nominated her to the European Court of Human Rights. Fionnuala served as a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission by appointment of the Minister of Justice, from 2000 to 2005. She remains an elected member of the Executive Committee for the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice, and is also a member of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
She's just been invited to serve on the U.N. Roster of Experts for the Crisis Communications Unit, having already taken part: in a 2008 Expert Seminar organized by the Working Group "Protecting human rights while countering terrorism" of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force; in 2003 as U.N. Special Expert on promoting gender equality in times of conflict and peace-making; and from 1996 to 1997 as a representative of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia.
Fionnuala dedicates her post to the woman who was IntLawGrrls' 1st transnational foremother, whose anglicized name is Grace O'Malley (a favorite not only of yours truly, but also of IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Gráinne de Búrca). (credit for photo of statue of O'Malley on grounds of Westport House, County Mayo, Ireland) Referring to Grace by her Irish name, Fionnuala writes that

Gráinne Ní Mháille (c. 1530 – c. 1603), also known as Granuaile, was an important figure in Irish folklore and a historical figure in 16th century Irish History. While primarily viewed as a romantic and complex female pirate figure she represents for me a figure of feminist agency in a highly patriarchial society with much vigor and uniqueness in her tapestry of her life's story and choices.

Heartfelt welcome!

"Now, The World is Without Me" Report on Sexual Violence in the DRC

Last month, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative issued a chilling report on sexual violence in the eastern Congo: Now, The World is Without Me: An Investigation of Sexual Violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, available here. I am particularly interested in these issues because I lived in Kinshasa, Congo, from 2002-2004, and I saw some of the devastation from the Congolese conflicts.
This is not the first report on sexual violence in the DRC, and, during her visit to the DRC last month, the UN Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallström, reiterated the pervasiveness and severity of the violence, calling Congo the "rape capital of the world." The HHI report is outstanding in its thoroughness and in its conclusions. The researchers reviewed more than 4,000 records at Panzi Hospital from women who had experienced sexual violence between 2004-2008. Panzi hospital is well-known through the region and the world for its work. Dr Denis Mukwege, the co-founder of the hospital, received the UN 2008 Human Rights Award for his work in treating the women and girls who come to the hospital for treatment.

The report carefully analyzed the demographics of the patients, including age, marital status, and literacy; almost 60% were illiterate, and another 27% had completed primary school. More than half of the attacks occurred in the women’s homes, and another 30% took place in forests and fields. Almost 60% of the assaults were gang rape, and another 12% of the assaults involved being held as a sexual slave for more than a day. Turning to perpetrators, the researchers found that, “[t]he mean number of assailants per sexual assault was 2.5 with a median of 2 and a range of 1 to greater than 20 assailants.” Most of the assailants were combatants, but 6% were identified as civilians; indeed, the proportion of civilian assaults increased from 1% in 2004 to 38% in 2008. Indeed, the report notes:

Collectively, these findings indicate a kind of “normalization” of sexual violence among the community as a result of widespread rape during the conflict . . . In focus groups, Congolese men acknowledged that rape had become a norm for young males who had grown up during the conflict in Eastern DRC. (p. 39)

At the same time, the report noted a decline in the number of women seeking treatment.
The report analyzes the effect of this sexual violence on women and their communities, assessing its social, economic, health, and personal impact. And, it includes narratives from the women about their experiences of sexual violence, making the demographic data even more graphic by showing the concrete effects of the violence. The report concludes with a series of recommendations, ranging from assuring care for the women and girls to holding the military and civilian perpetrators accountable and ending the longstanding culture of impunity.

IntLawGrrl reviewed

IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn's brand-new Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture (2010), co-authored with Missouri-Kansas City Law Professor June Carbone, received extended treatment in yesterday's New York Times column by Ross Douthat.
Imitating movie ads, here're some of the adjectives Douthat used to describe the book:
► "provocative"
► "nuanced"
Kudos!

Guest Bloggers: Michele Bratcher Goodwin & Patricia Y. Jones

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Michele Bratcher Goodwin (right) and Dr. Patricia Y. Jones (left) as guest bloggers. Beginning today, they contribute an interdisciplinary conversation (here are Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) on intercountry adoptions.
► Michele, the Everett Fraser Professor in Law at the University of Minnesota, holds joint appointments at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her courses include Biotechnology Law, Genetic Property and the Law, Health Law Policy, Health Law Regulations, Law and Education, Legal Ethics, Mental Health Law, and Torts. She is a leading voice in the debates on socioeconomics and race in medicine, having founded the country's 1st center for studying race and bioethics.
Michele's served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley, and was honored with a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Griffith University in Australia. Prior to law teaching Michele -- who earned her J.D. degree at Boston College Law school and holds B.A. and LL.M. degrees from the University of Wisconsin -- was a Gilder-Lehrman postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.
Notable among Michele's many publications is her scholarship on organ transplant policy. Urging a broader reconciliation of the legal treatments of women with differing social statuses, she's helped redefine evaluation of reproductive technology policy. In addition to the forthcoming book Biotechnology and Bioethics, she's the author of Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Human Body Parts (2006), published in Portuguese translation in 2008. The new collection she edited, Baby Markets: Money and the Politics of Creating Families (2010) (right), contains essays by Michele and others, among them IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn, guest/alumna Michelle Olbermann, and my California-Davis colleague Lisa C. Ikemoto. Michele also co-edited Imagining, Writing, (Re)Reading the Black Body (2009).
Among her many professional achievements, Michele is the former Secretary General of the International Academy of Law & Mental Health and Past Chair of the Section on Law, Medicine, and Health Care of the American Association of Law Schools. She's received the Black Pearl Award and the Chicago History Museum’s Pioneering Women Award, and been commissioned a Kentucky Colonel.
► Patricia, a licensed clinical psychologist based in Chicago, has over twenty five years of experience as a clinician and administrator of mental health programs. She's a member of the Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.
Her vocational experience encompasses an array of clinical settings: public and private, profit and not-for-profit, and academic institutions. Consistent is her focus on access to and development of appropriate mental health care for children and their families. She has specific interests in applied psychological practice with culturally diverse populations, in interpersonal violence with concomitant post-traumatic stress disorders, and in child abuse. Patricia provides consultation and/or clinical supervision to administrative and program staff who serve a diverse population within a wide variety of social service organizations; especially, to Child Protective Services across the United States.

Patricia earned her B.S. degree in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University, and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Heartfelt welcome!

Prominent Woman in International Law Award

At the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting last month, WILIG, the Women in International Law Interest Group, conferred the Prominent Woman in International Law Award on Dinah Shelton, the Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law at George Washington University Law School, the first woman nominated by the United States to become a member of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (prior post) -- and one of WILIG's founders. Her full speech, "Where I sit and where I stand," is available on the WILIG listserv at ASIL, but here is an interesting observation about the history of women in international law that she included:

I particularly miss my dear friend Virginia Leary, with whom I initially chaired WILIG. We were part of a small group, along with Kit Bigelow, Edith Brown Weiss, Cynthia Lichtenstein, and Amy Young, who started this wonderful association [WILIG] some 30 years ago. At that point women were being admitted to law school in growing numbers and this brought more into the Society [ASIL], which was not so quick to recognize this new reality. The 75th anniversary meeting was the catalyst: not a single (or married for that matter) woman international lawyer from the U.S. appeared on the program. We decided that was the last time such a result would occur.

And here's a tantalizing paragraph that explains the title of her talk:

Now, to turn to sitting and standing…. One of the members of the current US administration has repeatedly said when asked about his new position and policy on certain international matters that “where you stand depends upon where you sit.” I’ve given that a lot of thought, because I am now sitting in a new position as member and vice-president of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. We are just finishing our first two week session since my election. What have I learned about where I stand from where I sit, and what does that phrase actually mean?

Read more here.

Long way to go in legal academy

Old enough to remember when legal citations eschewed the author's 1st name in favor of 1st initial only?
That style served to obscure the lopsidedness of the legal academy: virtually all the names lurking behind A., B., and C. were men. The mask's largely been lifted, so that each of us today cites in full consciousness of whom we are citing, man or woman. I suspect the change has had good effects, not least among them recognition that women as well as men contribute their voices to this generation of legal scholarship.
Thus even as I celebrated the news that my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) is among the Top 25 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact according to a just-published 2005-2009 survey, I could not but raise a curious eyebrow at the decision of number-cruncher extraordinaire Brian Leiter (prior IntLawGrrls posts here and here) to list the 10 most-cited members of each law faculty by the equation of initial + surname.
A look underneath the veil of that device revealed much:
► In none of the top 25 schools were more than 4 women among the top 10 most-cited scholars, and only 3 of the 25 earned even that scarcely heart-warming 40% rate.
► Double that number -- fully 6 law schools -- do not have a single woman among their top 10 most-cited.
The rest ranged from 1 to 3 women out of 10.
Proud to say that among the women receiving top recognition are 2 IntLawGrrls, Naomi Cahn and yours truly, as well as a number of others whom we've featured in posts: not only my California-Davis colleague Madhavi Sunder, but also Kimberlé Crenshaw, Martha Albertson Fineman, Vicki Jackson, Pamela Karlan, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Martha Minow (left), Rachel Moran, Catharine MacKinnon (bottom left), Martha Nussbaum, Margaret Jane Radin, and Dinah Shelton.
Proud too to see on the list a close law school classmate, Kirsten H. Engel, as well as the only woman professor I had in law school, Carol M. Rose.
Can't help, though, but be concerned about the dearth of women on this list (reflective, no doubt, of the proportion in the academy as a whole, an issue that my deans, Kevin Johnson and Vik Amar, tackle in this new column on need for faculty diversity).
And can't help harbor concern about the fact that not 1 woman is on Brian's list of Ten Most Cited Faculty 2005-2009; indeed, the list drops a full 660 citations to get to the 1st woman (Kathleen Sullivan) below the 10th man (Bruce Ackerman).
In short, still a very long way to go.

Here's the roundup, with 1st as well as last name provided in full:

Most women among top 10 (4 each):
► Arizona (ranked #21): Jean Braucher, Kirsten H. Engel, Toni Massaro, Carol M. Rose (#10 most-cited woman)
► California-Irvine (#9): Catherine Fisk, Elizabeth Loftus, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Rachel Moran
► Michigan (#11): Rebecca Eisenberg, Jessica Litman, Catharine MacKinnon (#4 most-cited woman), Margaret Jane Radin (#7 most-cited woman)

Next most -- 3 women among top 10:
► Georgetown (#20): Julie Cohen, Vicki Jackson, Robin West
► Stanford (#4): Pamela Karlan, Deborah Rhode (#3 most-cited woman), Kathleen Sullivan (#1 most-cited woman)
► UCLA (#15): Kimberlé Crenshaw, Katherine Stone, Lynn Stout
► Vanderbilt (#10): Margaret Blair, Nancy King, Suzanna Sherry

Next next-most -- 2 women among top 10:
► California-Davis (#23): Diane Marie Amann, Madhavi Sunder
► Chicago (#3): Lisa Bernstein, Martha Nussbaum (#5 most-cited woman)
► Emory (#23): Martha Albertson Fineman, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
► George Washington (#18): Naomi Cahn, Dinah Shelton
► Northwestern (#8): Lee Epstein, Dorothy E. Roberts

Only 1 woman among top 10:
► California-Berkeley (#7): Pamela Samuelson
► Columbia (#6): Jane Ginsburg
► Cornell (#11): Valerie Hans
► Harvard (#2): Martha Minow (#2 most-cited woman)
► Illinois (#21): Cynthia Williams
► Penn (#14): Jill Fisch
► Yale (#1): Reva Siegel (#5 most-cited woman)

Not even 1 woman among top 10:
► Duke (#11)
► Florida State (#23)
► Minnesota (#19)
► NYU (#5)
► Texas (#17)
► Virginia (#16)

Perhaps 'nuff said, but thoughts welcome.

Guest Blogger: Cecilia Marcela Bailliet

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure today to welcome Dr. Cecilia Marcela Bailliet (left) as today's guest blogger.
Cecilia is a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo in Norway, where she's Professor, Deputy Director of the Department of Public and International Law, and Director of the Masters Program in Public International Law. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she earned her doctorate at Oslo, based on her thesis entitled "Between Conflict and Consensus: Conciliating Land Disputes in Guatemala, A Study in Preventing and Resolving Internal Displacement." Cecilia also holds a combined J.D./M.A. degree, with honors, from the School of Law and the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Her fields of research and teaching include International Public Law -- her guest post below considers that subject in relation to the global phenomenon of kidnapping -- Human Rights, Women's Rights, Refugee Law, Counter-Terrorism, and Democracy and Constitutionalism, and Refugee Law. Among her many publications is Security: A Multidisciplinary Normative Approach (Brill 2009), an essay collection that Cecilia edited, authors of which include IntLawGrrls' own Naomi Cahn.
Cecilia dedicates her guest post to a woman about whom we've posted before, the French feminist and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (below right). Cecilia writes of Beauvoir:

Her novels and autobiographies provide profound reflection on the life experiences of women, highlighting the importance of intellectually intimate connections between individuals (irrespective of gender), and the urgency of engagement in times of political and societal upheaval. The books that I hold most dear: All Men are Mortal, The Mandarins, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, and The Second Sex.
In the last book mentioned, Beauvoir characterizes the dilemmas facing women as such: "Thus woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other."

Heartfelt welcome!

IntLawGrrl interviewed

Congrats to IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn, subject of an anthropologyworks blog interview regarding On the Front Lines: Gender, War and the Post Conflict Process, the book she's writing along with IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin.
Check out the interview here.

Gender, masculinities & post-conflict transition

As IntLawGrrl Amy Senier posted last fall, the United Nations is seeking to consolidate all U.N. agencies and divisions that address women's issues into a single entity. One of the issues that this new agency will certainly deal with is the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on which IntLawGrrls have posted, in particular:
► Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace, and Security, and, more recently,
► Resolutions 1820 (2008) and 1888 (2009) on sexual violence and armed conflict.
As IntLawGrrl Dina Francesca Haynes, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, and I explore in Gender, Masculinities and Transition in Conflicted Societies, a paper on SSRN that is part of our larger project on gender and post-conflict societies, while conflict can provide a gender dividend for women, in most contexts the result of conflict for most women is a negative sum. Specifically:
► Economies stall during and after conflict, or they operate in black and grey markets where women are the least often employed or employable because of their legally enforced second-class status.
► Across most post-conflict transitions, women are the first to be fired and the last to be hired, with the large exception of the false (and temporary) economy built up around the presence of the international community, in which women are paid to fill the “camp follower” positions as housekeepers, cooks, administrators and, of course, for sex.
► Women and children also constitute the overwhelming number of refugees, and of people displaced from their home communities. The very fact of war can contribute to undermining the limited social stability and security of women in many societies, which is the precursor to any exertion of economic or social autonomy. (credit for 2009 photo (c) UNICEF of Central African Republic women waiting to register with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees at the Daha, Chad, refugee camp)
Issues related to the emergence of certain kinds of “hyper” masculinity in situations of conflict and in subsequent peacebuilding are critical to exploring the impact of conflict on women. The article argues that a failure to account for and be cognizant of these specific masculinities has a significant effect for women in particular, as well as the success of the conflict transition process. Finally, we show the critically significant impact of a gender lens by considering the effect of violent masculinities on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs.

Customary Justice and Gender

I spent the afternoon at a conference on ‘Customary Justice and Legal Pluralism in War-Torn Societies’ that was co-sponsored by George Washington University, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the World Bank. The conference is designed to focus on how customary justice systems are important components to rethinking what the Rule of Law means in post-conflict societies. The participants were drawn from the worlds of anthropology, international development, civil society in post-conflict countries – and a few lawyers.

I moderated a session on Northern Uganda. Although the session was not explicitly dedicated to gender, one of the dominant themes of the 4 presenters centered on women’s rights to land. Much of the litigation over land involves women, who are widows, internally displaced persons, or nonmarital women. We heard from the founder of LEMU, the Land and Equity Movement in Uganda, about how to protect women’s rights to land, given the existence of both customary law and “state” laws. The presenters emphasized the tensions between the different legal systems in Uganda, but noted that customary law was not necessarily hostile to women’s land ownership rights. Indeed, they recommended writing down customary law (to the fullest extent feasible) in order to help safeguard rights when there is litigation that must apply customary law.

Ten Reasons to Become a Public Interest Lawyer

My co-author and dear friend Phil Schrag was inaugurated last week as the first Delaney Family Professor in Public Interest Law at Georgetown Law School. It was a wonderful event, full of pomp and circumstance, and an appropriate tribute to an extraordinary legal career. The Delaney Family Chair is truly remarkable in that it is one of just a handful of chairs that recognize achievement in the field of public interest law. In Phil's case, these achievements include starting as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, moving to the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, becoming a professor at Columbia Law School in the vanguard of the clinical legal education movement, joining the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and finally settling at Georgetown Law School, where he created and ran the Public Interest Law Scholars program, directs the Center for Applied Legal Studies clinic and its post-graduate fellowship program, and played an instrumental role in ensuring the passage of the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007. Perhaps more importantly, in the words of IntLawGrrl Naomi Cahn, Phil has "been an inspiration and role model to many women on the blog as well as to numerous other public interest lawyers."
It should come as no surprise, then, that Phil parlayed his inaugural lecture into an opportunity to promote public interest work. His excellent speech can (and should!) be read in full here; while I won't reveal the details, it was incredibly inspiring, and an important read for all of us, especially law students who may question the wisdom of taking the public interest path in the current economic climate. Phil lays out in his speech ten reasons to become a public interest lawyer, which should be sufficient to convince any like-minded law student to select this route. Here's hoping Phil's speech inspires at least a few to put their heart and soul into the field as completely as he has done and to positively impact on as many lives as he has.

Go On! Women, peacebuilding & the rule of law

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) On behalf of WILIG, the Women in International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, we are delighted to announce the following program: "Women, Peacebuilding, and Advancing the Rule of Law," to be held 6:30-8:30 p.m. on September 30, 2009, at Tillar House, ASIL's headquarters, at 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.
Cosponsors along with WILIG are ASIL's Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group, Vital Voices, the American Bar Association's International Law Section, Africa Committee and the Women's Interest Network, the Institute for Inclusive Security, and Women in International Security.
Women are an important part of the peacebuilding equation. Too often they are excluded or marginalized in the peace process. Limiting or excluding women from the peacebuilding process in a meaningful way not only leaves a critical resource untapped, but hinders a society's recovery. Women can be agents of change, advocates for justice and peace, and leaders in reestablishing rule of law. (credit for 2008 photo by I. Vuni of women at Uganda peace talks in Juba, Sudan)
Program Chair and Moderator is Melanne A. Civic, Senior Rule of Law Advisor at the U.S. Secretary of State's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, who is on detail to the Center for Complex Operations, National Defense University.
The panelists, who will discuss the critical role of women in peacebuilding as well as comment on the July 2009 Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008), "Women and Peace and Security," are:
►Melanne Verveer, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues, who is also the cofounder and former CEO of Vital Voices;
►Swanee Hunt, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Austria between 1993 and 1997 and now is Chair of the Institute for Inclusive Security (formerly Women Waging Peace); and
►Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and Director of the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster in the North of Ireland.
Details and registration here.