The first part of 2022 has been a very challenging time for international law. We are in a world at war, which is a test to the effectiveness of international law, its institutions, and mechanisms. We are also addressing the legacy and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and reflecting on the role of international law to build a post-pandemic reality and context. Our students, faculty, staff, and alumni continue having a critical role in finding innovative solutions grounded on international law, its principles, and values to the present challenges. Seeing them in action gives me hope for a better future. I congratulate in particular our graduates, sending them the best energy and my wish that they are always guided in their work by the pursuit of peace, equality, inclusion, human rights, and social justice. I thank you all for your continued collaboration and send you my best wishes for wellness and health. 

Burnett Family Associate Dean of International and Comparative Legal Studies and Distinguished Professorial Lecturer in International and Comparative Law and Policy

Welcome Professor Leah Calabro

The International and Comparative Law Program welcomes Leah Calabro, who joined GW Law in July of 2022 to serve as Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Fellow. Leah is a graduate with honors of GW Law, with a Concentration in International and Comparative Law. During her time at GW Law, Leah was a Thurgood Marshall Scholar; an Executive Articles Editor for The George Washington International Law Review; a member of our Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Team and a recipient of the Judge Albert H. Grenadier Award; and a student attorney for the Global Network Initiative as part of the International Human Rights Clinic. She also worked as a Research Assistant for Professors Sean Murphy and Ed Swaine. Leah has been serving as a Law Clerk in the Special Matters Unit of CACI International, Inc. The International and Comparative Law Program is delighted to have Leah Calabro join our team! 

Ralph Steinhardt, Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at GW Law, has dedicated his life and career to pursuing social justice and the advancement of human rights. He teaches international human rights law and international law for GW Law, has published extensive scholarship on these issues, and is the Founder and Director of the GW Law School-Oxford University Summer Program. He has also participated actively in the litigation of numerous cases before U.S. federal courts for serious human rights violations taking place in different countries under the Alien Tort Claims Act. Much of this work has been done through the non-governmental organization he founded – the Center for Justice and Accountability.

Professor Steinhardt discussed two cases he recently litigated against the governments of Liberia and Colombia under the Alien Tort Claims act in the GW Law Podcast series “Testimony”.  He also discusses the present and future of Alien Tort Statute Litigation in his article Losing the “Right” Way Preserves the Narrow Scope of the Alien Tort Statute, published in On the Docket, The George Washington Law Review (July 31st, 2021).

Professor Steinhardt has communicated about his work "I went to law school, because I had seen heroic lawyers like Thurgood Marshall use U.S. law to do justice – even to revolutionize society – and I thought that the international law of human rights could be developed and used in much the same way. It was then that I realized that the clients had to be heroic first. I am beyond privileged to have been able to devote my career to the litigation of international law claims in domestic courts."

Laura A. Dickinson, Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor and Professor of Law, was awarded the 2021 Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship by The Strauss Center for International Security and Law for her article "National Security Policymaking in the Shadow of International Law," published in the Utah Law Review. The prize is awarded annually by a committee of leading scholars to the best article on national security law published during the year. In this article, Professor Dickinson reflects on the potential impact of international law on national security policymaking. She discusses how the norms and values embedded in international human rights law can sometimes be adopted, if not as a matter of formal law at the international level, then as a matter of official policy and practice. The article also examines the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, using two different Obama administration counterterrorism policies and Trump administration successor policies as case studies. Professor Laura Dickinson has also been very actively discussing the legal implications of the Russia-Ukraine War in various media outlets, including recently in an article for CQ Roll Call (June 10, 2022).

Ryan Migeed, JD ’22, was awarded the Albert S. Pergam International Law Writing Competition Award by the New York State Bar Association. The award is intended to promote legal scholarship among law students in the field of international law. Ryan received the award for his paper Ending the Game of Environmental Politics in the Arctic: How the Arctic States Can Achieve Dispute Resolution Using Existing Legal Frameworks, published in the Ocean and Coastal Law Journal (2022). Ryan also presented his note “How Lessons from Anti-Piracy Norms Can help the International Community Defeat Cyber Pirates” for the George Washington International Law Review, in the American Society of International Law Research Forum in its 2021 Midyear Meeting on November 12, 2021.

Nudrat Piracha, SJD ’22, was recognized as Best ADR Lawyer during the inaugural Women in Law Awards 2020-2021. The award was granted by the Women in Law Initiative in Pakistan, which works to advance opportunities for women lawyers in Pakistan, the Ministry of Law and Justice Pakistan, Group Development, Pakistan, and was supported by the Australian High Commission and the British High Commission. Nudrat recently published her SJD dissertation in the book - Toward Uniformly Accepted Principles for Interpreting MFN Clauses: Striking a Balance -published by Wolters Kluwer (2021). For more information on Nudrat Piracha's work see here.

The team of John Catalfamo, Adam Manning, Maura McManus, Ryan Migeed and Samuel Song represented GW Law at the 2022 Jessup International Moot Court Competition and achieved unprecedented success at the world’s largest moot court competition. Competing against 90 other U.S. law schools at the U.S. National Rounds in February, the team advanced to the quarterfinals, won 10th best briefs, and was the only team in the U.S. to place all four oralists in the top 50: Adam 41st; Ryan 28th; Sam 26th; and Maura 8th. Their success qualified the team for the International Rounds to compete against the best teams from over 100 countries and jurisdictions. After three weeks of mooting teams from around the world, the GW team advanced to the Round of 32, ranked 10th overall in the world, and was awarded 11th best briefs. This surpasses GW’s best result in the competition’s 62-year history (ranking 12th in 1989). The team is coached by renowned international law expert, Professorial Lecturer in Law, and GW Law alum Trent Buatte. Mr. Buatte also serves as attorney-adviser for the U.S. State Department.

Thea Charlotte Andersen, Andrea Lorch & Jordan Michel were selected as Best Application in the Clara Barton International Humanitarian Law Competition, which was held at the American Red Cross-National Headquarters in Washington, D.C on March 4-6, 2022. The team was coached by Professorial Lecturer in Law Michael Coffee, an alum and trial attorney in the Office of Foreign Litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice. More details on this competition can be found here.

GW Law students, Kamil Ali, Anna Mancino, Gabriel Stein (team leader), and Venoos Vahid competed in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in preliminary rounds this past spring. The team collectively authored two briefs (claimant and respondent), each at 35 pages in length. This set the foundation for their work in preparation of oral advocacy. The team faced off in front of judges from Tehran, Iran to Mexico City, Mexico. Most notably, during their final round in the Vis, the team was judged by Janet Walker, a Canadian arbitrator who is described as the most cited private law authority by the Canadian Supreme Court. Outside of the competition rounds, the team connected with students from Penn State, Maastricht University, the University of Tehran, HEC Paris, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and others. The team was coached by Kiran Gore, Professorial Lecturer in Law at GW Law and Principal of Law Offices of Kiran N Gore PLLC, a boutique law firm through which she provides arbitrator, counsel, and consulting services focused on international disputes and public international law. Read more about this competition here.

The GW Law Immigration Law Clinic - led by Director and Professor Alberto Benitez and Supervising Attorney and Professorial Lecturer in Law Paulina Vera - had recent victories. Among these, the Clinic achieved the grant of the asylum application on behalf of client T-G and her son F-P from Venezuela. T-G is a survivor of domestic violence who lost her 14-year-old daughter to Zika. The student attorneys who supported T-G and her son were Karoline Núñez, Samuel Thomas, Alexandra Chen, and Jeremy Patton. T-G said about this win "I really do not find enough words to let you know how grateful I am to all of you for your wise and timely guidance at all times and for the dedication and commitment that you assumed from the first moment towards our asylum case." The clinic also achieved the grant of the asylum application filed for R-A-, a gay man and LGBTQ+ activist, who experienced bullying and threats in Nigeria. R-A- was supported by student attorneys Olivia Russo, LinLin Teng, Kennady Peek, Lea Aoun, and Megan Elman. The asylum application filed on behalf of K-H, a lesbian woman from Indonesia who feared physical harm due to her sexual orientation, was also granted, with the support of student-attorneys Jordan Nelson, Julia Yang, and Alex Chen. The Immigration Law Clinic also succeeded in the grant of the asylum application filed on behalf of client T-Y-, who suffered persecution as a Muslim Uyghur activist in China, with support from student-attorneys Gisela Camba, Esder Chong, Jordan Nelson, Tessa Pulaski, and Julia Yang.

A GW Law team of students worked on research and inputs for the World Bank publication - Review of Legal Experiences and Global Practices relating to COVID-19 (2021). The International and Comparative Law program assembled a team of JD and LLM students to support the World Bank in the drafting and research of this publication, including Laura Cahier, LLM ’21; Georgia Eleni Exarchou, LLM ’21; Mariam Gnakra, LLM ’21; Jordan Jones, LLM ’21; Heng Li, LLM ’21; Luis Enrique Mendoza, LLM ’22; Sabrina Rodriguez, JD and Masters of International Affairs student; and Konrad Turnbull, LLM ’22. The students were supervised by Associate Dean Rosa Celorio. The GFLJD undertook this initiative with the goal of contributing to global efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, rule of law, and human rights law principles. The publication places a particular emphasis on rule of law-based approaches grounded on Sustainable Development Goal 16 as key to advance development, inclusion, equality, and access to justice in all societies. The International and Comparative Law Program thanks in particular Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew for participating in this publication with a foreword and Professor Karen Brown for her feedback and guidance on different chapters of this publication. Read the publication here.

Associate Dean Rosa Celorio publishes Women and International Human Rights in Modern Times

Associate Dean Rosa Celorio published in 2022 the book Women and International Human Rights in Modern Times: A Contemporary Casebook (Edward Elgar Publishing). The casebook provides an overview of the main global and regional legal standards related to the human rights of women, and explores their development and practical application in light of contemporary times, challenges, and advances. The book navigates the nuances of the ongoing problems of discrimination and gender-based violence, and analyzes them in the context of modern challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic; the MeToo movement and its aftermath; the growth of non-state actors; intersectional discrimination; sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics; sexual and reproductive rights; the environment and climate change; the digital world; and the linkages between culture, religion, and the rights of women, among other issues. In each chapter of this book, students are encouraged to reflect and answer questions alluding to the intricacies, challenges, and advances in the protection and exercise of women’s rights in modern times. The book was presented and discussed at GW Law School on April 5th 2022, including a panel composed by GW Law Professors Ralph Steinhardt; Karen Brown; Ed Swaine; and Mary Ellsberg, Director of the Women’s Global Institute at The George Washington University.

Melissa Kucinski and Michael Coffee, Professorial Lecturers in Law at GW Law, co-authored the book Family Law Across Borders: Cases and Comments, published by West Academic Publishing in 2021. This casebook provides thorough analysis of family law issues from a comparative and private international law perspectives. The book promotes the examination of complex cross-border family situations by comparing legal systems, with a particular focus on the United States. The book also addresses legally complicated situations in which cross-border families find themselves, including the validity of foreign marriages, simultaneous divorce proceedings in multiple countries, the changing law in creating families using adoption and assisted reproductive technology, and how to remedy an international parental child abduction. Professor Melissa Kucinski focuses her practice in the area of international family law and has chaired several committees and task forces within the American Bar Association that relate to international family law and international family mediation. Professor Michael Coffee has served as an attorney in multiple federal agencies, including as a trial attorney in the Office of Foreign Litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice, and as an attorney-adviser for over 21 years in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State. They are both members of the U.S. Department of State’s Advisory Committee on Private International Law.

Sabrina Rodriguez, 3L and moderator for the International Law Society’s International Law and Policy Brief (ILPB), has been published in the ILPB. Her article Violence against Women: Landmark Cases and Legal Standards in the Inter-American System provides a detailed overview of the case law of the inter-American system of human rights in the area of violence against women and the impact of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará) in these legal developments. She also discusses important legal standards related to reinforced due diligence and their application to girls, indigenous women, journalists, LGBTI persons, and armed conflict contexts. Ms. Rodríguez is a joint degree student, also pursuing a master’s in international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs.

Soumya Silver, Professorial Lecturer in Law at GW Law, has published the article Twenty Years After the Passage of the Palermo Protocol: Identifying Common Flaws in Defining Trafficking through the First Global Study of Domestic Anti-Trafficking Laws in the Yale Law and Policy Review. The article addresses the criminalization of all forms of trafficking at the national level, reviewing existing legislation in over 188 countries, highlighting notable gaps, and identifying notable inconsistencies. The article provides vital information necessary to guide policy and legislative reform efforts by international organizations, NGOs, and government stakeholders to achieve global consensus on the definition of trafficking in persons. According to the author, this definitional consensus will truly complete the groundwork of the modern counter-trafficking in persons movement—it will be the end of the beginning, and the collective fight can continue most effectively, toward the beginning of the end. Professor Silver is a Legal Affairs Officer of the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor & Combat Trafficking in Persons. She co-teaches the course Human Trafficking Law during the Spring with Professor Kate Hill.

Charles Camp and Kiran Gore, Professorial Lecturers in Law at GW Law and International Arbitration experts, published a series of articles on the Russia-Ukraine Conflict and its legal implications. In the first article, they call on United Nations Member States to comply with their responsibility to protect Ukraine and its civilians from ongoing war crimes. In the second article, they evaluate the viability of civil claims in the courts of four select jurisdictions, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and Romania, to assess their suitability as venues to provide monetary damages for civil claims by Ukrainians against Russia, President Putin, and Russian military leaders. In a third article, they urged U.S. officials to designate Russia as a State-sponsor of terrorism - in recent weeks whether such designation is appropriate has been picked up by all leading media outlets. In April, Professor Gore was a featured speaker at the 37th Annual Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium at Tufts University in Boston where she spoke on related topics (a recording is available here).

Laura A. Dickinson

Professor Dickinson published the following book chapters: The Future of Military and Security Privatization: Protecting the Values Underlying the Law of Armed Conflict in The Future Law of Armed Conflict (Mike Schmitt & Matt Waxman eds., Oxford University Press 2022) and The Jus in Bello Under Strain: Diluted but not Disintegrating, in Change in the International Legal Order (David Sloss ed., forthcoming, Oxford University Press 2022). She also published the blog post: Still at War: The Forever War Legal Paradigm in Afghanistan, Just Security, April 14, 2022, and co-authored the blog post: Congressional Action on Civilian Harm Resulting from U.S. Military Operations: Part II, Just Security, April 28, 2022,(with Brianna Rosen and Rachel VanLandingham). She spoke at a conference at the University of Virginia, co-sponsored by the National Institute of Military Justice, entitled Justice in War, Accountability for Battlefield Misconduct, on a panel on foreign relations law, on April 8, 2022 and at the panel entitled National Security and Data Privacy at a conference at Emory University Law School on Saturday, March 26, 2022. She has also been quoted extensively in the media, including in the New York Times and on NPR, on issues related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and war crimes accountability.

The International and Comparative Law program co-sponsored a Winter Seminar on Gender and Human Rights organized by the University of Rosario Law School in Bogota, Colombia. The seminar took place between November 29th and December 3rd, 2021 and included courses on gender, human rights, and intersectionality issues; feminist legal theory; women and the environment; gender violence in armed conflicts; domestic violence and access to justice for women; and gender and migration issues. Some of the professors were Alma Luz Beltran y Puga, Professor of Law, University of Rosario Law School; Associate Dean Rosa Celorio; Paulina Vera, Professorial Lecturer in Law and Supervising Attorney, GW Immigration Law Clinic; Mary Ellsberg, Director of the Global Women’s Institute of the George Washington University; Chelsea Ullman, Research Scientist at the Global Women’s Institute at the George Washington University; and Lina Cespedes, Professor of Law and former Vice-Dean, University of Rosario Law School.

On Wednesday, February 9th, 2022, Professor Niovi Vavoula - Lecturer in Migration and Security, Queen Mary University of London School of Law, and Associate Editor of the New Journal of European Criminal Law - offered a lecture on Artificial Intelligence, its usage on EU Borders, and human rights issues. She discussed her article titled Consultation of EU Immigration Databases for Law Enforcement Purposes: A Privacy and Data Protection Assessment, published by the European Journal of Migration and Law. She discussed in her lecture the use of artificial intelligence tools and systems in the European Union and how this affects the protection of the human rights of migrants, asylum seekers and other categories of foreigners or third-country nationals. This lecture was moderated by Professor Francesca Bignami, Leroy Sorenson Merrifield Research Professor of Law, and the discussion ended with a question-and-answer session.

On Tuesday, March 15th, 2022, the International and Comparative Law Program with the co-sponsorship of the Immigration Law Association held a webinar titled The Biden Administration’s Immigration Policies: A Review. GW Law Professor Alberto Benitez and Anam Rahman, Partner at the Calderón Seguin PLC and GW Law Alum 2012, were the main speakers in a discussion moderated by Associate Dean Rosa Celorio. The participants described recent developments in US Immigration Law, major challenges in the present, how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the practice of immigration law, how the Russia-Ukraine conflict might impact immigration law and its practice in the United States; the connection between racial discrimination and immigration law issues; and needed areas of reform and urgent action.

Three professors from the University of Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina visited GW Law between Monday, March 21st-Friday, March 25th, 2022. The professors who visited were Carlos Bonetti, Marisa Garsco, and Angel Piazza. During their visit, they met with faculty and students and offered lectures in different courses at the law school. Several GW Law professors also visited the University of Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina between Monday, June 20th-Friday, June 25th, including Professors Robert Cottrol; Edward Swaine; Paulina Vera; and Chris Yukins. During their visit they offered lectures on a variety of topics linked to US, international, and comparative law. For more information click here.

On Tuesday, April 12, 2022, Christina Beharry, Partner at Foley Hoag LLP, and Professor Kiran Gore, as moderator of the event, joined the International and Comparative Law Program for a discussion on Damages in International Arbitration. Ms. Beharry discussed her work and experiences in the area of damages and international arbitration, and offered important advice to students who plan to pursue future work in this area. The discussion was followed by a question-and-answer session.  

On Friday, June 3rd, the International and Comparative Law program hosted a meeting of the State Department Advisory Committee on Private International Law. The meeting was attended by State Department officials and experts working on different areas of private international law.

The International and Comparative Law (ICL) Program currently offers the following degrees and concentrations:

For more information on these degrees, concentrations, and other activities and work of the ICL program, you can contact Associate Dean Rosa Celorio at Rcelorio@law.gwu.edu.

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