Guest Blogger: Monika Kalra Varma

Honored to welcome Monika Kalra Varma (right) as IntLawGrrls' guest blogger today.
Monika is the Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., where she develops and oversees programming, day-to-day operations, longterm strategies. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts.)
Since joining the center in 2002, she's spearheaded innovative economic and social rights advocacy, including efforts to hold international actors accountable for extraterritorial economic rights violations. Advocacy campaigns she's led have targeted the United Nations and its member states, various branches of the U.S. government, members of the Organization of American States and other regional bodies, international financial institutions, and corporations.
Monika serves on the editorial board of Health and Human Rights: An International Journal, published by the Harvard-based François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and she is a steering committee member of the Lawyers Emergency Response Network for Haiti. She is also a member of the advisory board for the Global India Fund.
She speaks regularly with policymakers and members of civil society about domestic and international human rights issues, and has published commentary in, to name a few, the Boston Globe, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, and Jurist.
Today she contributes to IntLawGrrls. Monika's guest post below discusses her recent visit to Western Sahara as part of an RFK Center delegation -- a visit that produced a just-published report.
Prior to joining the RFK Center, Monika worked at The Hague. As a legal officer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, she was a member of the trial team which secured the ICTY's first indictment and eventual conviction of the crime of terror. Accused, and eventually convicted, was General Stanislav Galić, the Serb military commander in Sarajevo from 1992-1994.
Monika earned her B.A. degree from the University of California, San Diego, and her J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Indeed, I'm proud to say that she is a former student of mine, and the author while a student of a pathbreaking article, "Forced Marriage: Rwanda’s Secret Revealed," 7 University of California Davis Journal of International Law & Policy 197 (2001). We're been honored to name her a featured alumna on the website of our California International Law Center at King Hall, and also to work with her on the Darfur Project (described in posts available here) undertaken jointly between CILC and the RFK Center.
A truly heartfelt welcome!

Go On! Goldstone @ Cal-Davis

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

The California International Law Center at King Hall, for which I serve as founding Director, is honored to host a public address by Richard J. Goldstone (below right), on the topic of "International Criminal Justice: Its Successes and Failures," from 12 noon-1 p.m. this Thursday, February 10, here at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Cohosting will be our students' International Law Society and Journal of International Law & Policy.
As blogreaders well know (prior posts), Goldstone has a remarkable record of service nationally and internationally, for example: Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (1994-2003); Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (1994-1996); Chairperson of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo; and Co-Chair of the International Task Force on Terrorism of the International Bar Association. His many publications include For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator (2000) and the coauthored International Judicial Institutions: The Architecture of International Justice at Home and Abroad (2008).
Details on Thursday's event are here.

Go On! Asian pluralism @ UNC

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

Thanks to our reader who alerted us to an upcoming all-day symposium entitled "Pluralism in Asia: Exploring Dynamics of Reflection, Reinforcement and Resistance," to be held on January 14, 2011, at the Kenan Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Delighted to read that the keynote speaker will be my colleague Madhavi Sunder (right), Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall).

Also confirmed are number of panelists, from universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Korea, as well as the United States. Topics they'll discuss include immigration, family law, civil rights, and religion.

The Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation at the University of North Carolina School of Law will publish conference papers.

Details and registration here.

New Chief Justice for California

California soon may join the list of states whose Chief Justice is a woman.
Just days after we posted that women hold that position in 40% of the United States, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tapped state appellate judge Tani Cantil-Sakauye (right) to succeed Ronald George, who resigned from the Chief Justiceship effective right after the New Year. The nomination goes to a state judicial commission and then to voters, for approval on the November 2 ballot.
Pleased to report that Cantil Sakauye is a 1984 graduate of the University of California, Davis, School of Law, my home institution. As an alum she's contributed her time to the King Hall Outreach Program, an intensive 2-year law school preparation program aimed at undergraduates who will be the 1st in their families to earn a bachelor's degree or who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Cantil Sakauye practiced as a Deputy District Attorney in Sacramento, then worked for the Office of Governnor George Deukmejian. She began her career on the bench in 1990, serving 1st on the state trial courts and, since 2005, as an Associate Justice for the state's Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

Cantil-Sakauye would be the 2d woman to lead the state's highest court; the 1st, as we've posted, was Chief Justice Rose Bird. But as a Filipina-American, Cantil-Sakauye would become the state's 1st Asian American Chief Justice. Among the Associate Justices with whom she'd serve: Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, and Carol A. Corrigan. Accordingly, the arrival of Cantil-Sakauye would make the Supreme Court of California (left), like that of 3 other states in the Union, a woman-majority bench.

Read On! The Vagrants

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing we're reading)

To tell the same story from different viewpoints is not new. The technique won renown in the film Rashômon (1950), and has remained a staple of storytelling ever since.
Yet the way that Yiyun Li (below right) deploys multiple narratives in The Vagrants (2009) is indeed something new.
This novel is the 1st by Li, who was born in Beijing, lived in China till 1996, and who's now an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.
Li's novel revolves around a single event yet reveals a myriad of details about a time, a place, and a people.
The event is the execution of Gu Shan, an enemy of the state who years before had given her all to the Maoist vanguard. The time is 1979, the year Li turned 7; desires for democracy are stirring a decade after the Cultural Revolution. The place is Muddy River, a soulless, purpose-built factory city in a Chinese province far from the capital. The people are those who've come to inhabit this city -- vagrants all regardless of their station.
From among these vagrants, Li chooses her narrators. It is a rich assortment, richly characterized. Tiny Tong's tale of bewilderment is told alongside that of Kai, a broadcaster and mother who's married into the seeming safety of a leading political family, yet chafes at her role. Adolescent Nini's resentment at her very different restraints leads her to the loathsome arms of the amoral Bashi. The old Huas collect rubbish, and discarded daughters.
Li addresses an array of issues in The Vagrants: disability, poverty, criminal justice and capital punishment, education, familial hierarchy and filial duty. But she does so without polemic, through wonderfully written, intimate portraits of her characters. Each narrator's small story remains in mind even as the reader ponders Li's larger narrative of an empty and arbitrary society, in a state at odds with its people.
A literary jewel.

Guest Blogger: Amanda Sherwood

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Amanda Sherwood (left) as a guest blogger.
Amanda recently received her J.D. degree from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, where it was this 'Grrl's privilege to have had her as a student, and where she was an active participant in the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition and the Trial Practice Honors Board. Last summer, Amanda served as an intern at the Center for Justice & Accountability, the San Francisco-based nongovernmental organization of which IntLawGrrls guest/alumna Pamela Merchant is Executive Director. At CJA Amanda contributed to the litigation of Samantar v. Yousuf, then pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. In her guest post below, Amanda discusses the unanimous decision issued by the Court just last week.
After earning her B.A. degree in French from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, Amanda worked as an English teacher in France. She reports that while she enjoyed the camembert and baguettes, she decided to return Stateside in order to pursue a career path that would allow her to seek justice for others. To that end, having completed her law studies, Amanda is preparing to take the California bar exam, and looking forward a career in international human rights and/or victim advocacy.
Heartfelt welcome!

'Nuff said

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

We as a nation should be humbled that the Haitian people, a people who rose above slavery, a people of great resilience and survival, wish to become part of our community. They want only the basics: education, food and shelter. In return they offer their cultural riches – their resilience, their art, their music, their beloved food and their beautiful laughter. The United States government should grant humanitarian parole to the Haitians in need ....

-- My colleague Holly Cooper (above left), Lecturer in the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall), in an op-ed in London's Guardian, entitled "How the US can help Haiti: Thousands of Haitians lost everything in the earthquake. The US should open its borders and start granting humanitarian parole." Holly's essay deftly invokes the Greek myth of Persephone in recounting her experiences earlier this month in Haiti, where she was part of "a human rights delegation intent on finding individuals for whom we could request humanitarian parole into the US."

ICC's Bensouda online

Delighted to announce that a webcast of International Women's Day appearance of Fatou Bensouda (left), Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is now online.

Loyal blogreaders will recall that Bensouda made her 1st California visit a few weeks back, speaking at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (hosted by the California International Law Center at King Hall, for which I serve as Director) and the University of Santa Clara School of Law (hosted by the Center for Global Law & Policy, thanks to IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack and our colleague David Sloss). (photo credit)

While in Northern California, Bensouda also appeared on a news program at the Sacramento-based Capital Public Radio; the full interview is here, and a shorter audio clip here.

It's the CILC-hosted talk, entitled Gender Violence and International Criminal Law, that you can watch here.

Asia on our mind

"The Asian Century?"
So asked participants at yesterday's same-named conference (prior post) organized by our colleague Anupam Chander and sponsored by the Law Review at my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall).
The answers were myriad, and themselves provoked questions. Indeed, participants on the panel that I had the privilege to moderate questioned the title's very premise:

'Where is Asia? When is Asia?'

Teemu Ruskola queried. To this Keith Aoki added, in effect,

'What is Asia?'

The last "American Century" and the "British Century" that preceded it were different from this notion of an "Asian Century," Keith said. Those others concerned a nation-state; this concerns a continent.

I wonder.

It is persons in the West who put forward this notional Asian Century. Who treat "Asia" as a single entity rather than a mass of entities, as an it rather than a them. Who, at times, see its rising economic power, its rising population, its politics, as potential threats.

Is it possible that those earlier centuries, named as they were with state-centric particularity, were constructs of their subject namesakes? Possible that the objects of those other centuries aggregated threats much like some of us now do "Asia"?

From the perspective of those object persons, might the 1800s and 1900s have been, simply, back-to-back Western Centuries?

Even when pondering with particularity, did the object persons of the 20th view it not as the American, but perhaps as the Russo-American, Century?

Was the British Century a construct of Britain? Might objects of that 19th Century -- persons, say, colonized in Portugal-controlled Africa -- have seen it instead as the European Century? Or perhaps as the Colonial Century, as a time defined less by geographic map and more by method of governance?

Perhaps this 21st Century aggregation says less about "Asia" than it does about our mindset -- about how some in the West seem already resigned to an object status.

That resignation may prove premature.

The final panelist, Tom Ginsburg, reminded that other such prognostications have fallen flat; for instance, past predictions that Japan, Egypt, even Sri Lanka or Burma, would win dominance. Tom's own prediction: Asia will not aggregate into a supranational entity. Some of the many countries in that part of the world indeed may attain power. But they will wield it, Tom ventured, in ways that reinforce the old, the 17th Century, model of independent, noninterference-prizing nation-states.

In store in the 2000s may be not so much an Asian Century as -- to borrow Tom's coinage -- an Eastphalian Era.

(Cross-posted at California-Davis Faculty blog)

Go On! "The Asian Century?"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) Next Friday, February 26, the University of California, Davis Law Review will host "The Asian Century?," a conference exploring how the rise of Asia might bolster or hamper efforts to expand human capabilities. Experts will consider economic and human rights issues through the lens of their diverse areas of expertise, including multinational corporations, intellectual property, human rights, gay rights, the status of rural persons, national security law, and constitutional law. Cosponsoring the event is the California International Law Center, where I serve as Fellow.
Session topics include "Human Rights Under Stress," "The Concept of Asia in International Law," "Lost in Translation?." The symposium features a keynote address by Chicago Law Professor Martha Nussbaum (left); among those presenting papers will be 2 of IntLawGrrls' guests/alumnae, Afra Afsharipour and Lisa R. Pruitt.
The event is all day and free; details here.

Law & migration & mothers & children

What a treat to have moderated the opening session of Uprooted: The International Migration of Children, the symposium that 2 student journals here at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) -- our Journal of Juvenile Law and Policy and our Journal of International Law and Policy -- cosponsored on Friday. (prior post)
Titled "The International Context that Pushes Migration," the session provided a rich overview of the causes, conditions, and effects on families of transnational migration trends.
1st up was our colleague Chivy Sok (right), whose career in human rights advocacy includes current service as a member of the Steering Committee of the Ginetta Sagan Fund of Amnesty International USA, as well as prior human rights center leadership at Columbia University and the University of Iowa. Chivy told of her own childhood picking onions for hours in U.S. fields alongside others in her Cambodian refugee family. Chivy then placed her experience in context. More than 200 million children labor worldwide, she said. Three-quarters work in agriculture. Agricultural hazards -- injuries from equipment, harms from pesticides -- constitute a leading cause of death among children. Many of these children have no access to education, to health care, even to basic hygiene. Sok pointed to the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment, legislation that U.S. Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) introduced in Congress last fall, as a potential means to address these problems.
Following Chivy was Jayne E. Fleming (left), Pro Bono Counsel at Reed Smith in San Francisco and the subject of a recent profile in the National Law Journal. (photo credit) Jayne recounted the forces of migration through stories about clients who live and work at a garbage dump in Guatemala. Economic forces of course play a role, she said, adding:

Extreme poverty is absolutely a human rights violation.

Other forces of migration emerged during the session, among them: implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement; political violence and armed conflict; family disintegration; sexual exploitation or incest.
Yet another force was at the center of remarks by the session's 3d speaker, Dr. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (right). Some women migrate not out of sheer desperation, she said, but out of desire to improve their family's economic and social mobility. Professor of American Studies and Sociology at Brown University, Rhacel told what she'd learned her ethnographic research on globalized domestic workers. She focused on how laws break up families, compelling mothers to leave their children behind when go abroad to work. Once there, mothers find themselves infantilized by law -- assigned the legal status not of an employee, but rather of a member of the employer's family. They must depend on employers to treat them well, and they discover, when employers do not, that national labor laws do not protect them. This vulnerable status prevails in countries that pride themselves on human rights records -- Rhacel named Denmark and Sweden in particular -- as well as in those that do not. One reason? A "maternalist ideology" by which "various states are in denial that mothers are leaving the home," and so fail to take measures to protect the migrant domestic workers who care for the home in their stead.

Kudos to these excellent speakers, to journal editors Eve Epstein and Monica Feltz and their staffs, and responsible for putting together this stimulating panel.

(Cross-posted at California-Davis Law Faculty Blog)

Go On! Migrant Children

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

This Friday, February 5, the Journal of Juvenile Law and Policy and the Journal of International Law and Policy at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) will cohost "Uprooted: The International Migration of Children," a conference exploring the effects of immigration on youth and transnationalism among families. The symposium aims to examine both national and international convoluted legal webs affecting the transnational family. Cosponsoring the event is the California International Law Center at King Hall, for which yours truly serves as director.

Session topics include "The International Context that Pushes Migration," "Global Paths to the United States: The Migration Process," "Status in the United States."

The all-day event is free; details here.

Support this amazing 1L

Midway through Intro Week here at California-Davis, an amazing 1L is on a quest to earn a $10,000 scholarship to help defray law school "fees" that, thanks to California's budget crisis, have gone through the roof these last years.
My-Linh Le (left), Class of 2012, explains in the clip below, via wonderful animation, video, and voiceover, why she chose to cut short a career in dance in order to enter law school:

[L]aw completed her. She also decided that artists, filmmakers, musicians, choreographers, writers, and the like could probably use some legal advice every now and then, too.

The video's so good that My-Linh's now a finalist in Access Group's $10,000 "My Inspiration" scholarship contest.
Please vote for My-Linh here, on every computer you have, every day through Friday, August 21. With a few computer clicks you can do a lot to help this IntLawGrrl-in-the-making one day to help others.

(heartfelt thanks to California-Davis 3L Emil Dixon for technical assistance)

Heartfelt thanks to Jocelyn Wolf

With today's "On August 14" post, Jocelyn Wolf (right) completes her stint as IntLawGrrls' inaugural internship. She's been an invaluable help this summer, contributing interesting posts on issues and persons of international/transnational/global significance.

Jocelyn's readying for her 2d year as a law student, a year that will include additional invaluable work, in the superb Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall).

Heartfelt thanks and best of luck, Jocelyn!

Guest Blogger: Lisa R. Pruitt

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Lisa R. Pruitt (right) as today's guest blogger.
Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall), Lisa's special interests include law and rural livelihoods, feminist jurisprudence, the legal profession, and torts. Her scholarship focuses on cultural differences; in particular, on the range of ways in which rural places are distinct from what has become the implicit urban norm in legal scholarship. Exposed through this research is how the economic, spatial, and social features of rural locales shape residents' lives, including their encounters the law. Most recently, as described more fully in her guest post below, Lisa has explored how rural spatiality inflects dimensions of gender, race, and ethnicity; that is, the ways in which rural lives and rural places are enmeshed with law and other forces at both national and global levels.
These are issues that Lisa examines frequently on her Legal Ruralism blog (subtitle: "A Little (Legal) Realism about the Rural"), among the "connections" links in our righthand column.
Lisa earned a Ph.D. in Laws from the University of London, where she was a British Marshall Scholar and wrote a dissertation entitled "A Feminist Reconsideration of the Legal Regulation of Speech." She earned her J.D. and B.A. degrees, both with honors, from the University of Arkanas, Little Rock, where she served as the law review's Editor-in-Chief. She was a law clerk to Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, and a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands. Lisa's pre-academia career included service as a consultant to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as a legal assistant at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, and as associate at Covington & Burling LLP, based in its London office.
Lisa is Chair-Elect of the Section on Women in Legal Education of the Association of American Law Schools. Among her honors is to have been selected for the 2002 Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty Forum, where she presented her article No Black Names on the Letterhead? Efficient Discrimination in the South African Legal Profession.

Heartfelt welcome!

Introducing Jocelyn Wolf

Eagle-eyed IntLawGrrls readers will have noticed a new byline gracing many of our "On This Day" posts this month. It belongs to Jocelyn Wolf (right), whom we're proud to welcome as the inaugural IntLawGrrls Legal Intern.
A member of the Class of 2011 at my own home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall), Jocelyn has an avid interest in international law, policy, and practice. Whetting her appetite was a semester abroad at the National University of Ireland-Galway in fall 2007. There she studied European Communities law with Dr. Laurent Pech, Jean Monnet Lecturer in EU Law and a contributing editors of International Law Prof Blog. (Jocelyn reports that she was fortunate to have used the used the EU Law textbook for which IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Gráinne de Búrca is a co-author.) Soon after, in spring 2008, Jocelyn earned her B.A. in International Relations and Linguistics from the University of California at Davis. This past semester, she was my student in Constitutional Law.

Jocelyn has chosen to dedicate her work on the blog to Benazir Bhutto (below left), the subject of many earlier IntLawGrrls posts. The U.N. General Assembly bestowed upon Bhutto a U.N. Prize in the Field of Human Rights in December 2008, a year after death ended her campaign to lead her native Pakistan once again. As stated in a 2008 account of that award:

An ardent advocate for democracy and for the human rights of the most vulnerable sections of society, particularly women, children and minority rights, Ms. Bhutto was twice elected prime minister of Pakistan. After returning to Pakistan late last year following years in exile, Ms. Bhutto was assassinated in an attack in Rawalpindi.

Today Bhutto -- whose assassination is currently the subject of a 6-month U.N. inquiry -- joins other IntLawGrrls transnational foremothers in the list just below the "visiting from ..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Congrats to IntLawGrrl Kathleen Doty

Am honored to announce the appointment of IntLawGrrl Kathleen Doty (left) as the inaugural Fellow of the California International Law Center at King Hall (CILC), University of California, Davis, School of Law.
Author of yesterday's post on the California Supreme Court's ruling on Proposition 8, as well as other posts concentrating on human rights and global health policy, Kathleen will begin her fellowship this fall after finishing her clerkship with a judge on the Hawai`i Intermediate Court of Appeals.
As the CILC Fellow she will give invaluable scholarly and administrative help to the Center, launched this past February with yours truly as founding Director (prior posts). CILC aims to foster the work of California-Davis faculty, students, and alumni in international, comparative, and transnational law, through speakers’ series and conferences, curricular and career development. Key components are our partnerships, among them our Darfur Project undertaken with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Kathleen is eminently qualified for the position, having excelled in international legal studies while in law school. In 2008, the same year she earned her J.D. from California-Davis, she:
► served as both coach and advocate for the Jessup International Moot Court Team, which advanced to international rounds in Washington, D.C.; and
► was honored as 1st runner-up in the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association Michael Greenberg Student Writing Competition for an article just published as From Fretté to E.B.: The European Court of Human Rights on Gay and Lesbian Adoption, 18 Law & Sexuality 121 (2009), at "Global Arc of Justice: Sexual Orientation Law Around the World," a conference convened by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and the International Lesbian and Gay Law Association.
She was graduated cum laude from Smith College with a major in Latin American Studies and a minor in Film Studies. Fluent in Spanish and proficient in French, she worked with community organizations in the Hispanic and French Caribbean, and studied abroad at La Universidad de la Habana in Cuba. She is a founding member of the Hawai’i Lesbian and Gay Legal Association.
Heartfelt congratulations!

Go On! "International Dispute Resolution"

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) Current challenges to global resolution of disagreements will be explored in an all-day conference this Friday at my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Entitled Overhauling International Dispute Resolution: Challenges & Potential Solutions to International Dispute Resolution in the 21st Century, the symposium will examine the following panel topics:
► The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Revisited: Evaluating the Effectiveness of the 2006 Amendments to ICSID Arbitration Rules;
► Alternative Dispute Resolution and Corporate America: The Evolution of the Use of ADR Among Fortune 1000 Companies; and
► Lessons from International and Domestic Conflict Resolution: The New Face of Arbitration.
Chief sponsor of the conference is the law school's Journal of International Law & Policy, an Affiliate of our new California International Law Center at King Hall. Advising JILP editors are my colleagues, Afra Afsharipour and Andrea K. Bjorklund, herself an IntLawGrrls guest/alumna.
Conference details and brochure available 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)