Harvard International Law Journal

The oldest and most-cited student-edited journal of international law, the Harvard International Law Journal covers a wide variety of topics in public and private international law.

The Harvard International Law Journal 2010 Symposium

Filed Under: Annual Symposia, Symposia

April 2, 2010
Harvard Law School

Presented in Conjunction with:

  • Harvard Environmental Law Review
  • Harvard Human Rights Advocates
  • Harvard Human Rights Journal
  • Harvard International Law Society
  • Harvard Journal of Law and Gender
  • Harvard Mediation Program
  • Harvard Negotiators
  • Harvard Office of Career Services
  • Harvard Office of Public Interest Advising

Schedule

  • 12:00-1:30: Lunch and Keynote – Pound 334/335
  • 1:45-3:00: Litigating Before International and Regional Tribunals – Hauser 104
  • 3:15-4:30: Anticipating and Confronting Corporate Non-Compliance – Hauser 104
  • 4:45-6:00: Legal Efforts at Social Reform in Foreign Fora – Hauser 104
  • 6:15: Cocktail Reception – Pound 334/335

Keynote Address:  Harold Koh (Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State)

Panel 1: Litigating Before International and Regional Tribunals

  • Moderator: Professor Alex Whiting (Professor, Harvard Law School)
  • Taghrid Hikmet (Judge, ICTR)
  • Jeffrey Sarles (Partner, Mayer Brown)
  • Andrew Loewenstein (Partner, Foley Hoag)

Panel 2: Anticipating and Confronting Corporate Non-Compliance

  • Moderator: Professor William Alford (Professor, Harvard Law School)
  • Ko-Yung Tung (Senior Counsellor, Morrison & Foerster)
  • Pablo Fajardo Mendoza (Lead Counsel, Aguinda v. Chevron Texaco)
  • Louis T. Wells (Harvard Business School)

Panel 3: Legal Efforts at Social Reform in Foreign Fora

  • Moderator: Cora True-Frost (Lecturer, Harvard Law School)
  • D.K. Srivastava (Professor, Jindal Global Law School)
  • Avani Mehta Sood (Attorney, Formerly with the Center for Reproductive Rights)
  • Amy Cohen (Professor, Moritz College of Law)
  • Natalie Forcier (Director, Youth LEAD Project)

The Harvard International Law Journal Symposium is made possible through:
The Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy Fund  and Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

Click here for directions to all buildings on the Harvard Law School campus

BIOS

Keynote Address by Harold Koh

Harold Hongju Koh is the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law. On June 25, 2009, the U.S. Senate confirmed Professor Koh as Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State. He began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and served from 2004 until 2009 as its fifteenth Dean. From 1998 to 2001, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and previously had served on the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Public International Law. Before joining Yale, he practiced law at Covington and Burling from 1982-83 and at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice from 1983-85.

Professor Koh is a leading expert on public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. He has argued before the United States Supreme Court and he has testified before the U.S. Congress more than twenty times. He has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates and three law school medals and has received more than thirty awards for his human rights work. He is recipient of the 2005 Louis B. Sohn Award from the American Bar Association International Law Section and the 2003 Wolfgang Friedmann Award from Columbia Law School for his lifetime achievements in International Law. He is author or co-author of eight books. He was also the editor of The Justice Harry A. Blackmun Oral History Project (1994-95). He has published more than 150 articles on international human rights, international business transactions, national security and foreign affairs law, international trade, international organizations, international law and political science, and procedure.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, a former Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a member of the Council of the American Law Institute. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Century Foundation. He has sat on the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and sits on the Boards of Directors of the Brookings Institution, Human Rights First, the American Arbitration Association, and the National Democratic Institute. He has been named one of America’s “45 Leading Public Sector Lawyers Under The Age of 45” by American Lawyer magazine and one of the “100 Most Influential Asian-Americans of the 1990s” by A magazine.

A Korean-American native of Boston, he holds a B.A. degree from Harvard College and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was Developments Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and served as a law clerk for Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court and Judge Malcolm Richard Wilkey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Panel 1: Litigating before International and Regional Tribunals

Professor Alex Whiting (Moderator) is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School where he teaches a War Crimes Prosecution clinic, a Government lawyering course, and Evidence. From 2002-2007, he was a Trial Attorney and then a Senior Trial Attorney with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was lead prosecution counsel in Prosecutor v. Fatmir Limaj, Isak Musliu, and Haradin Bala; Prosecutor v. Milan Martić; and Prosecutor v. Dragomir Milošević. Before going to the ICTY, he was a prosecutor with the Department of Justice for ten years, first with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., and then with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston where he focused on organized crime and corruption cases. Whiting attended Yale College and Yale Law School, and clerked in the Eastern District of New York for Judge Eugene H. Nickerson. Whiting currently writes and consults on war crimes prosecution issues.

The Honorable Taghrid Hikmet is a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a position she has held since 2003. Judge Hikmet was the first female judge in Jordan, serving initially as Assistant of the Prosecutor General (1996-1998), then as a Judge on the Court of Appeal (1998-2002), and now as a Judge on the High Criminal Court. Prior to serving as a judge, she was a lawyer before Jordanian civil and criminal courts (1982-1996), the head of an educational institute in Amman (1978-1982), and a teacher in Jordanian schools (1965-1978). In recognition of her work on the Family Protection Project, Judge Hikmet was awarded a United Nations Human Rights prize in 2003. She was also a 2007 recipient of the American Society of International Law’s “Prominent Women in International Law Award.” Judge Hikmet received both a B.A. in Law and an M.A. in General International Law from Damascus University. Her research interests include women’s rights, human rights, and family law.

Jeffrey Sarles is a partner at Mayer Brown LLP in Chicago, where he divides his dispute resolution practice between appellate litigation and international arbitration. He has represented companies in commercial arbitrations before most of the leading arbitral institutions, and he represents both private parties and governments in investor-state arbitrations. He recently obtained the largest award ever issued by a NAFTA arbitration panel. Sarles is currently representing a European airline in a commercial arbitration before the International Chamber of Commerce and a West African country in an investor-state arbitration. Sarles attended Wesleyan University, University of Chicago and the Northwestern University School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Northwestern University Law Review.

Andrew Loewenstein is an attorney with the International Litigation and Arbitration practice group of Foley Hoag LLP, where he focuses on disputes involving public international law including with respect to international boundary disputes, environmental law, armed conflict, the law on the use of force, and international human rights and humanitarian law. He has advised governments, corporations, and NGOs. He serves as Co-Chair of the Boston Bar Association’s Public International Law and Human Rights Committee. In his domestic litigation practice, he represents corporate and individual clients in commercial and intellectual property litigation and arbitration. He served as Law Clerk for Judge William J. Holloway, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was the Managing Editor of the American Criminal Law Review and the Editor in Chief for the Brown Journal of World Affairs. He attended Brown University, London School of Economics, and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Panel 2: Anticipating and Confronting Corporate Non-Compliance

Professor William P. Alford (Moderator) is currently the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law and Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is also the Director of East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law, and is regarded as an expert in the field of Chinese law. He is an honorary professor of Renmin University, Zhejiang University and the China National School of Administration, and an Honorary Fellow of the American Studies Institute of the Department of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He directed the China Center for American Law Study, the first academic program in U.S. law in the PRC, was a founder in 1982 of the U.S. Committee on Legal Education Exchange with China, is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships for his work on China, and is on a host of advisory and editorial boards.

Pablo Fajardo Mendoza put himself through law school and became the lead lawyer against Chevron Corporation representing thousands of natives in the Lago Agrio oil field, formerly developed by Texaco. He won a CNN “Hero’s award” in 2007, and along with associate Luis Yanza, a Goldman Environmental Prize in 2008. His work has publicized the long-term effects on the environment and people of the dumping of crude oil, and helped lead the government of Ecuador to pass stronger environmental protection laws.

Ko-Yung Tung is a Senior Counsellor at Morrison & Foerster where practice focuses on international law and cross-border transactions. Mr. Tung has experience in both the international public sector as well as with private clients. Mr. Tung has represented private multinational companies in connection with their global strategies and their negotiations with public and private counterparts. Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Mr. Tung acted as Vice President and General Counsel of World Bank and was Secretary General for the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

Professor Louis T. Wells is the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management at the Harvard Business School. He has served as consultant to governments of a number of developing countries, as well as to international organizations and private firms. His principal consulting activities have been concerned with foreign investment policy and with negotiations between foreign investors and host governments. His research interests include multinational enterprises; international business-government relations; foreign investment in developing countries; and foreign investment by firms from developing countries. He was the Coordinator for Indonesia Projects, Harvard Institute for International Development, Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1994-5. His associations include: Fellow -Academy of International Business, member – Foreign Advisory Board – Lahore Business School, and member – Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Wells received a BS in Physics from Georgia Tech and his MBA and DBA from the Harvard Business School.

Panel 3: Legal Efforts for Social Reform in Foreign Fora

Cora True-Frost (Moderator) is a Lecturer in Law and Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School. In her legal practice, she worked at the Judicial Systems Monitoring Programme in East Timor where she wrote and published the first report on women’s access to the formal justice sector and established a Women’s Justice Unit, which continues to serve women in East Timor today. She also served as Legal Consultant to the Fofana Defence Team before the Special Court for Sierra Leone and led the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security in Security Council advocacy at UN headquarters. Cora was a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP immediately following her graduation from law school. Cora earned an LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 2006 and a J.D./M.P.A. magna cum laude as one of two Law Fellows at the Syracuse University College of Law and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in 2001. She is a member of the Order of Coif, was a Gammon Fellow at Harvard Law School and a Graduate Fellow at the Safra Foundation for Ethics and the Professions at Harvard University. Prior to law school, Cora taught middle school English and Social Studies for two years each in Baltimore and Harlem with the Teach For America program and traveled through over 50 countries. Cora’s current research focuses on the fragmentation of international law and draws from the areas of international relations, administrative law and public international law. Her publications include, “The Security Council and Norm Adoption”, 40 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 115 (2007) and “Signaling Credibility? The Development of Individual Standing in International Law” (forthcoming __ Berkeley J.I.L. ___ (2010)).

Professor DK Srivastava is Pro Vice Chancellor at O.P. Jindal Global University and Vice Dean of the Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat, Haryana, India. Previously, Professor Srivastava was Head of Law Department in the University of PNG and City University of Hong Kong as well as Associate Head of Law and Associate Dean, Faculty of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He is an expert in sexual harassment law in India, Hong Kong and Australia, publishing and advocating extensively in this area. Professor Srivastava obtained an L.L.B and L.L.M from Banaras Hindu University, and a Ph.D. from Monash University, Australia.

Professor Amy Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law (Ohio State University), where she teaches property, international dispute resolution, law and development, and mediation. Her work focuses particularly on dispute resolution theory and practice, particularly in international and transnational development contexts. Assistant Professor Cohen engaged in and facilitated community development initiatives in Nepal, Thailand, and Ghana and has taught law at the Kathmandu School of Law and the University of Turin. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she was a Hewlett Fellow in the Program on Negotiation.

Avani Mehta Sood has worked extensively to promote women’s reproductive rights using domestic legal institutions and conceptions of international law. As a Yale Law Bernstein Fellow working with the Center for Reproductive Rights in 2006, Ms. Sood participated in legal training workshops to familiarize judges and lawyers in India with international law relating to women’s human rights. In India, Ms. Sood also conducted extensive primary research to author the report Litigating Reproductive Rights: Using Public Interest Litigation and International Law to Promote Gender Justice in India, a tool for research, litigation, and advocacy. The following year, Ms. Sood documented violence and rights abuses faced by women seeking reproductive health care services in Kenya. Ms. Sood is a graduate of Yale Law School and is presently a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at Princeton University. Her empirical research investigates the interplay between social psychology and the law, with a focus on questions relating to justice, punishment, torture, morality, and ethics.

Natalie Forcier is currently the Program Manager for the Population Council in Southern Sudan. Prior to working for Population Council she started the Youth LEAD Project – an NGO in Cairo, Egypt addressing issues of youth violence and crime in the Southern Sudanese community. In 2008 she completed ground-breaking research entitled, “Divided at the Margins: A Study of Identity, Violence, and Gang Formation among Young Sudanese Men in Cairo.” She holds a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and an M.A. in International Human Rights Law and Graduate Diploma in Forced Migration & Refugee Studies from the American University in Cairo. She has several publications discussing working with at-risk young men, youth violence in refugee communities, hip-hop identity among African youth and the impact of migration on transitions to adulthood.