The fall of 2021 has been a great transition time at GW Law. We have resumed our in-person operations, and we are back to teaching in person. It has been a wonderful source of positive energy to see our students back in our campus, working very hard to thrive and move on to better days. As we prepare to move beyond the pandemic, our International and Comparative Law Program has focused on implementing many new initiatives and curricular developments aimed to prepare our students to be the best leaders, practitioners, and thinkers that they can be in a post-pandemic world, which we all hope comes very soon. I send you my best wishes for this end of the year and for much peace, wellness, health, and wonderful things for all of you. I thank you for your continued collaboration with our International and Comparative Law Program.

Rosa Celorio
Burnett Family Associate Dean of International and Comparative Legal Studies and Professorial Lecturer in International and Comparative Law and Policy
NEW INITIATIVES
New Collaboration Agreement Signed with Panthéon-Assas University Law School
On July 20, 2021, GW Law signed a new exchange and collaboration agreement with Panthéon-Assas University Law School (Paris 2) in Paris, France. Under this new agreement, the law schools may nominate two of their students to spend a semester abroad. GW Law students will have the opportunity to receive credit at the law school for courses pursued at Panthéon-Assas in Paris, and Panthéon-Assas students also will receive credit for their semester spent at GW Law’s Washington, D.C., campus. Coursework will focus primarily on the area of international arbitration and other legal fields. The program will begin in fall 2022. The agreement was negotiated by Professor Malik Laazouzi, Professor of Law at Paris 2, and Associate Dean Rosa Celorio. For more information, please contact Dean Celorio at [email protected].
New Courses on International Disputes and Human Trafficking Launched
In spring 2022, GW Law will offer two new courses proposed by the International and Comparative Law Program. The course Global Economy and International Disputes will examine international business transactions, such as the transnational sale of goods and services, foreign investment, and the transborder licensing of intellectual property, along with the modes and methods of international dispute resolution that allow international business to thrive. It will be taught by Professorial Lecturer Kiran Nasir Gore, who works on all facets of international dispute resolution as counsel in the Law Offices of Charles H. Camp PC. The course will be part of our International Arbitration and International Business course offerings. 

The second new course, Human Trafficking Law: Overview of Domestic, International, and Comparative Law Relating to Human Trafficking, will be taught by Professorial Lecturers Kate Hill and Soumya Silver. The course will approach the subject from both a criminal law and international human rights perspective. Professor Hill is a federal prosecutor who oversees sex and labor trafficking prosecutions through her work at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. Many of her cases involve cross-border criminal enterprises and require the cooperation of foreign victims and law enforcement partners. Professor Silver, JD ’11, is an attorney, diplomat, and policy advisor at the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor Combat Trafficking in Persons. In this role, she serves as the department’s subject matter expert on trafficking-related legal issues, trains U.S. and foreign government officials on counter-trafficking, and has represented the United States as a diplomat in 14 countries thus far.   
NEW ACHIEVEMENT, AWARDS, AND PUBLICATIONS
Antonia Mangiola and Ariel Overton Clerk at the European Court of Justice
The International and Comparative Law is proud of graduates Antonina Mangiola, JD ’21, and Ariel Overton, JD ’20, who have been selected as stagiaires for the Court of Justice of the European Union (2021-22) through the Dean Acheson Legal Stage Program. The program is designed to foster mutual understanding between the United States and the European Union in the area of law. The graduates selected obtain a unique opportunity to gain exposure to the work of the European Court of Justice and to the European Union. Both Ms. Mangiola and Ms. Overton graduated from GW Law with a concentration in International and Comparative Law. 
Antonina Mangiola, JD ’21
Ariel Overton, JD ’20
Sabrina Rodríguez Publishes Article on Violence Against Women
Sabrina Rodríguez, 3L and a moderator for the International Law Society’s International Law and Policy Brief (ILPB), has been published in the ILPB. The article, "Violence Against Women: A Pandemic on its Own," focuses on the gravity of violence against women; how it has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic; and what different countries are doing to address this serious problem. It also explores the universal and regional legal instruments available in Latin America, Europe, and Africa to combat this problem. The author calls on women and girls around the world to: speak up and mobilize, ask for their rights to be respected, participate in the political arena, and have their voices be heard. Ms. Rodríguez is a joint degree student, also pursuing a master’s in international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs. 
Jaimee Salgado to be published in the Connecticut Journal of International Law
Jaimee Salgado, 3L, will be published in the fall issue (volume 37) of the Connecticut Journal of International Law. Her article on piracy and ransomware discusses how ransomware is an increasing international threat, with healthcare facilities being some of the most vulnerable targets, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article offers a thorough discussion of piracy and ransomware, identifying the existing defense of an updated jus cogens norm against threats of this nature. It also analyzes a layered approach of codifying this norm in a new international treaty in the framework of the Paris Agreement. A treaty of this framework allows for a high-level global goal while recognizing various sovereigns have different capacities in regard to addressing cybercrime, working hand-in-hand with experts in the field, employing transparency measures to keep accountability, and gaining an almost universal acceptance, among other aspects. The author argues in her article that the world has the tools to combat this threat, but it needs to use them. 
Jason Zubata's note to be published on the Harvard Latinx Law Review
Jason Zubata, 3L, has written a note, “Is There a Safe Haven for Asylees Elsewhere? Assessing the International Legal Implications of Recent U.S. Removal Practice,” that will be published in  the Harvard Latinx Law Review (volume 25). The principle of non-refoulment has served as a guiding authority of both international and domestic immigration practices since the early years after World War II by requiring that no person be removed to a country where they are likely to be persecuted or tortured on the basis of certain legally protected grounds. The United States has recognized the right of non-refoulment by signing various international agreements and by codifying the principle in domestic immigration statutes. Despite the decades-long practice of the United States to prevent the refoulement of asylees, the Trump administration took critical steps to quell the right of nonreturn for Central and Southern American migrants arriving at the U.S. border. This note argues that U.S. courts should evaluate the legality of the Third Country Asylum Rule and subsequent Asylum Cooperative Agreements in light of international legal sources, including the rich history of interpretation by international jurists and scholars, to ensure the continued preservation of an asylum’s right of non-refoulement.
Ryan Migeed presents article during the ASIL's 2021 Midyear Meeting
An abstract based on the note “How Lessons from Anti-Piracy Norms Can help the International Community Defeat Cyber Pirates” that Ryan Migeed, 3L, wrote for the International Law Review was selected by the American Society of International Law to be presented during the Research Forum at its 2021 Midyear Meeting on November 12, 2021. The presentation explored how the international community may fashion mechanisms to confront botnets modeled after similar mechanisms to confront pirates. Botnets (i.e., collections of computers infected with malware that surreptitiously controls them) steal millions of consumers’ banking information for personal profit. To do so, they typically infect computers in multiple states, victimizing citizens of different states and using the internet infrastructure of various states. Botnets terrorize citizens of every state equally. They are modern-day pirates, using our highways of commerce to rob civilians. In the process, they are destabilizing global commerce. Mr. Migeed received feedback on his article from Professor Kristen Eichensehr, Martha Lubin Karsh and Bruce A. Karsh Bicentennial Professor of Law and Director of the National Security Law Center at the University of Virginia Law School.
FACULTY AND DEANS SCHOLARSHIPS
GW Law faculty and deans continue to shape and influence the development of international law through their scholarship.
Paul Schiff Berman

Arturo Carrillo

Rosa Celorio

Donald C. Clarke

Laura Dickinson

Sean Murphy
Temporal Issues Relating to BIT Dispute Resolution, 36(2) ICSID Review: Foreign Investment L. J. (forthcoming 2021)

Ralph Steinhardt
International Law and the Administrative State (Cambridge University Press forthcoming 2022)
FACULTY AND DEANS ACTIVITIES
Alberto Benitez
Professor of Clinical Law and Director, Immigration Law Clinic
Professor Alberto Benítez was included in the 2021 edition of The Best Lawyers in America. The Immigration Law Clinic continues to actively represent clients from around the world on immigration law matters, including removal proceedings and petitions for affirmative asylum before federal administrative tribunals. 
Francesca Bignami
Leroy Sorenson Merrifield Research Professor of Law
Professor Bignami served as Chair of the Program Committee for the American Society of Comparative Law’s Annual Meeting held on October 21-23, 2021. The conference featured leading comparative law scholars from around the world, speaking on topics ranging from the impact of COVID-19 on different jurisdictions to the comparative study of international law. In June 2021, she lectured on comparative administrative law and was interviewed on the importance of comparative public law for the AUWCL Summer Institute on Comparative Public Law. Based on her encyclopedia entry for the Max Planck Encyclopedia on Comparative Constitutional Law, on the functional equivalence between constitutional law and administrative and Islamic law, she gave talks at Indiana University, Bloomington Maurer School of Law (spring 2021) and SMU Dedman School of Law (fall 2021).
Rosa Celorio
Burnett Family Associate Dean for International and Comparative Legal Studies and Professorial Lecturer in International and Comparative Law and Policy
Associate Dean Celorio continued serving as the Chair of the Next Generation Initiative and Membership Committee of the American Society of International Law. She is also acting as Senior Advisor to the CEDAW Committee in the drafting of its new General Recommendation on Indigenous Women and Girls and continues to serve as the International Human Rights Dispute Resolution Authority between the government of Belize and the Maya Indigenous Peoples. Dean Celorio also served as a Commissioner in a community hearing on the impact of ISIL crimes on women and LGBTI groups in Iraq, organized by CUNY Law School and MADRE on Wednesday, November 10, 2021. She also participated as an invited expert and speaker in the following events: a global meeting on Access to Justice and Gender-Based Violence organized by the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) and the Global Women’s Institute in Washington, D.C. on July 22, 2021; in the violence against women webinar series organized by the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and Utrecht University; and an event on sexual violence, reparations, and the armed conflict in Colombia organized by the Center for Justice and International Law and the United Nations Rapporteur on Truth, Justice, and Reparations on May 25, 2021. She also offered the endowed public lecture "Several Steps Forward, One Backward: Climate Change, Latin America, and Human Rights Resilience" at the 2021 Virtual Silverman Latin American Institute organized by the Holocaust Museum Houston in Texas on July 15, 2021. Her book Women and International Human Rights in Modern Times: A Contemporary Casebook will be published by Edward Elgar in January 2022.
Donald C. Clarke
David Weaver Research Professor of Law
Professor Clarke was a panelist in the symposium (and CLE event) "We Must Not Remain Silent: China’s Uyghur Genocide and What You Can Do About It," organized by the Cardozo Society, Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, and the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington on June 3, 2021. He was also a featured speaker and presented on "Order and Law in China" in the speaker series Rethinking Cultural Constructions of Law in East Asia sponsored by the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Cornell Law School, and Yale Law School on June 25, 2021. He was a speaker and presented on "Legal Aspects of Xinjiang Detentions: Points of Argument regarding Chinese Domestic Law," at the Xinjiang Crisis: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, Justice, Conference at Newcastle University, UK, on September 3, 2021. He was also a visiting lecturer and presented on "Order and Law in China," in the Göttingen Summer School on Chinese Law, Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationals Privatrecht, Hamburg on September 20, 2021. In addition, he was a speaker on "Judging China: Chinese Law in U.S. Courts" at the panel "When Domestic Courts Evaluate Foreign Legal Systems: The Case of China" during the International Law Weekend organized by the American branch of the International Law Association on October 29, 2021.   
Sean D. Murphy
Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law
Professor Sean Murphy was elected as a member (Associate) of L'Institut de Droit International in August 2021. In October, he served as counsel for Armenia in oral proceedings before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for the cases on application of the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (Armenia v. Azerbaijan & Azerbaijan v. Armenia). In December 2020, he lectured for the Summer Academy on the Continental Shelf, held in Arusha, Tanzania, under the auspices of the African Institute of International Law and the University of the Faroe Islands. He will have two articles published: Provisional Application of Treaties and Other Topics: The Seventy-Second Session of the International Law Commission, 115 Amer. J.  Intl. L. (2021) and Temporal Issues Relating to BIT Dispute Resolution, 36(2) ICSID REVIEW: FOREIGN INVESTMENT L. J. (forthcoming 2021). Finally, he participated in two events in October as a speaker: "The ILC and the Making of International Law: Trends and Directions for the Future" (an online panel sponsored by Permanent Missions of Singapore and Qatar to the United Nations headquarters) and the "International Law and Sea-Level Rise" (an online seminar created by the Seoul International Law Academy). 
FEATURED EVENTS
Report Launch: Failure to Protect: How Discriminatory Sexual Violence Laws and Practices are Hurting Women, Girls, and Adolescents in the Americas
On September 16, 2021, the International and Comparative Law Program and Equality Now joined efforts to organize a launch of Equality Now's new report, which reviews gaps, voids, and loopholes in the laws addressing sexual violence in 43 jurisdictions in the Americas. The event took place via Zoom. The speakers discussed the legal definition of rape; the existence and application of estrupo and other similar provisions which discriminate against adolescent girls; other legal dispositions that impede the access to justice, like limited prescriptive terms and laws that allow rape in marriage; the importance of an intersectional approach to address discrimination against women; and the value of the Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (better known as the Convention of Belém do Pará). Many high-level speakers and influential figures in this area participated, including Commissioner and Rapporteur Margaret Macaulay from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Alejandra Mora Mora, Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Women; Sylvia Mesa Peluffo, former President of the Committee of Experts of MESECVI of the OAS; and Ramona Biholar, Lecturer on Gender and Human Rights at the University of West Indies Law School. The report was presented by Barbara Jimenez Santiago, Americas Regional Coordinator for Equality Now, and the event was moderated by Associate Dean Rosa Celorio.   
Event: "Rewarding in International Law"
On September 30, 2021, the International and Comparative Law Program, with the co-sponsorship of the International Law Society, held the Zoom event "Rewarding in International Law." Dr. Anne van Aaken, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Law at the University of Hamburg, Chair of the EUI Research Council, and General Editor of JIDS, presented her recently published article on this topic. The discussion was moderated by Professor Edward T. Swaine, Charles Kennedy Poe Research Professor at GW Law. Dr. van Aaken discussed why states comply with international law and provided many examples of how the rewarding mechanism could be applied to different circumstances. She also highlighted how more research is required in this area. The discussion was followed by a question-and-answer session, in which Dr. van Aaken discussed whether partial compliance should be rewarded as well, how rewarding would work in the case of compliance with soft law, the effects of rewards on third parties, and many other questions raised by the audience. Dr. Anne van Aaken's article is available here. 
Contemporary Perspectives on Gender in International Law: A Critical Seminar
The International and Comparative Law Program and the Faculty of Law of the University of El Rosario, Colombia, organized a two-day academic seminar on October 13 and 14, focused on international law tendencies in the areas of gender and sexuality. It featured distinguished experts in the fields of women, gender equality, and human rights across the Americas, who presented their papers and research in this area. The seminar explored critical issues and themes that currently engage scholars in the areas of sexual and reproductive rights, the rights of LGBTI persons and groups, intersectional discrimination, and gender-based violence in conflict contexts, among others.  Some of the experts featured were Alma Luz Beltran y Puga, Professor of Law, University of Rosario Law School; Laura Garcia, Vice-Dean at the University of Rosario Law School; Associate Dean Rosa Celorio; Mary Ellsberg, Director of the Global Women’s Institute at the George Washington University; Chelsea Ullman, Research Scientist at the Global Women’s Institute at the George Washington University; Lisa Davis, Law Professor at CUNY Law School and Special Adviser for Gender-Based Crimes at the International Criminal Court; Oscar Parra, Magistrate of the Special Jurisdiction for the Peace in Colombia; and Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, Professor of Law, University of Miami Law School and former White House Advisor on Violence against Women. GW Law student Laura Cahier, LLM Class of ’22, and alumna Rebecca Ego, LLM ’21, both presented papers at the seminar. The seminar was organized by Professor Alma Luz Beltran y Puga from the University of Rosario Law School and Associate Dean Celorio.
Book Launch: Toward Uniformly Accepted Principles for Interpreting MFN Clauses: Striking a Balance, by SJD Alum Nudrat Piracha
On October 28, 2021, the International and Comparative Law Program organized a book launch for Toward Uniformly Accepted Principles for Interpreting MFN Clauses: Striking a Balance by SJD alum Nudrat Piracha. The book provides an overview of the ambiguities surrounding the interpretation and application of MFN clauses, a substantive analysis on the debate about misapplication of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) and other interpretive theories by tribunals, and an examination of jurisdictional and critical issues involving MFN clauses. During the event, the speakers discussed the real objective of these clauses; the ineffective and inconsistent tests courts and tribunals have adopted; the reasons and problems resulting from these approaches; the disparities between states and investors; and whether unified legal principles, standards and/or regimes regarding MFN clauses can be applied. Welcome remarks were offered by Associate Dean Celorio, and the discussion of substantive issues was moderated by alumna Martina Polasek, Deputy Secretary General, International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The speakers were Nudrat Piracha, Partner, Samdani & Qureshi; Sean Murphy, Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law; Kiran Gore, Law Offices of Charles H. Camp and Professorial Lecturer in Law; Judge Charles Brower; and Stanimir Alexandrov, Professorial Lecturer in Law. The event was co-sponsored by the American Society of International Law (ASIL), the International Law Society, and the International Arbitration Student Association.
Investor-State Arbitration from the Arbitrators' Perspective
On Tuesday, November 2, 2021, Professor Juan Fernández-Armesto, a Partner at Armesto & Asociados in Madrid, and Professor Rafael Cox Alomar, of the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law, joined us for a discussion focused on the role of arbitrators in the field of investment-arbitration. Professor Fernández-Armesto shared his lengthy experience as a well-known arbitrator in this area, and the complexities and intricacies of practice in this field of international law. He also offered important advice to students focusing on this area of the law. Associate Dean Celorio offered welcome remarks, and Professor Cox Alomar moderated the substantive discussion.