The Human Rights Clinic is international at all levels: 80% of the student projects involve international issues and institutions. Even the other 20%, which falls into the category of ‘human rights at home' involves only issues where international human rights norms, strategies or institutions are put to use. The Clinic is deeply tied into the Human Rights Institute and the draws on an international exchanges between foreign and U.S. law students.
Funded Research Projects The clinic has been funded to co-direct a multi-country study on poverty and human rights for the International Council for Human Rights Policy. A number of students are participating in the study, either as a part of the clinic or independently. The study will take place over 18 months and involve research in Bolivia, Chile, Ghana, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Moldova.
Student Involvement in Clinic Projects On average, more than half of enrolled clinic students are in ongoing contact with organizations and individuals outside the United States. Frequently, this leads to missions to other countries during the school term or over break.
For example, during 2003-2004, 5 students traveled to five different countries during the school terms or during breaks: Two students traveled to South Africa to help organize and participate in an expert meeting on transitional justice in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one student traveled to Kenya for a meeting on setting up a truth commission in the country, one student participated in field research in Sao Tome on oil and human rights, and one student traveled to Bangladesh and India for research on labor rights conditions. Professor Peter Rosenblum traveled with 4 of the students for most of the mission. A number of students have linked their clinical work and experience to summer internships and fellowships. One of the students who worked in the Congo spent her summer on an HRIP fellowship to the Congo. The student who traveled to Kenya graduated and received a fellowship to work in Kenya and the United States this academic year. In the future, students will be traveling to Sao Tome, Kenya, and possibly to Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and/or Bangladesh in connection with clinical projects.
Seminar on WTO Law The defining feature of the Seminar on WTO Law, taught by Professors Petros C. Mavroidis and George A. Bermann ‘75 LL.M., is the series of weekly guest speakers - leading economists, political scientists, and lawyers— who come to present their research.
Prior to the session, the speaker submits a paper prepared specifically for the class. Students read the paper and write two-page reactions, which are given to the presenter in advance. On the day the guest speaker comes, two discussants from related fields attend as well, participating in the roundtable discussion.
Together, these guests bring the most up-to-date research to bear on questions such as: How should developing countries that have unequal bargaining power be treated within the WTO? Should developing countries that do not have trained representatives be assigned pro bono council at the WTO? When it comes to concerns like genetically modified organisms, how much can states do to protect human safety when there is insufficient information concerning risk? Students are not doing research but rather coming to grips with the most cutting edge issues in the field today.
Guest speakers have included Alan Sykes, a leading WTO international trade lawyer from the University of Chicago; Jayashree Watal, an economist and chief counselor with the intellectual property division of the WTO; Patrick Messerlin, an economist with the Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris; and Merit Janow, '88, a judge on the WTO appellate body in Geneva. Every two years, the seminar takes a different legal focus. In past years, that focus has been the WTO's dispute-resolution procedures, issues of health and safety, and trade and developing countries. Future WTO seminars will tackle the themes of intellectual property, immigration, corporate investment, or cross-border provision of professional services.
The two professors have co-authored the first casebook on the WTO. In addition, Cambridge University Press is launching a new book series, "The Columbia Series on WTO Law and Policy," based upon the Seminar. The volumes, which will appear every two years, will present in final form the papers presented during the Seminar.
The Law of Global Governance and Regulation The United States refuses to sign onto the treaty for the International Criminal Court in The Hague out of fear that its independent prosecutor could direct actions against Americans. The World Trade Organization (WTO) hears a dispute on U.S.tariffs likely to have dramatic effects on whether clothes are designed and made in China or the United States. The New York state legislature holds up legislation that would permit the United Nations to increase its security and build more office space, the latest in a series of hostile actions reacting to that organization's alleged "democratic deficits" and inability to respond to U.S. interests. These are some of the ongoing issues addressed in The Law of Global Governance and Regulation, taught by Professor José Alvarez.
The class departs from most international law courses because it focuses less on black letter rules than on institutions, especially UN system organizations, international financial institutions such as the World Bank, and the WTO. The course blurs the traditional boundaries demarcating public international law from international economic law, as students are as likely to be exposed to the rules governing U.N. peacekeepers as to those governing international trade. It also blurs the line between formal law and social norms by examining mechanisms for "mobilizing shame" against those that fail to comply with all kinds of international rules, both "soft" and "hard."
"The Global Governance forces students to think critically about how both national and international law gets made," says Prof. Alvarez. "The course asks students to consider analogies to the ways law gets made at the national level: to consider, for example, whether the many international courts that we have created act like national courts to produce an international common law despite the absence of a doctrine of stare decisis or international judges ought to apply rules of constitutional interpretation or canons of interpretation that we associate with judges on the U.S. Supreme Court."
Law and Capitalism: A Comparative Approach This seminar, taught by Professors Curtis J. Milhaupt and Katharina Pistor, explores the institutional foundations of corporate governance around the world as a means of understanding the relationship between law and economic development. We start from the premise that all successful, market-oriented political economies must adequately respond to a common set of problems involving the accumulation and deployment of capital, and the organization and regulation of firms to engage in economically productive activity. By focusing on a series of recent, important corporate governance failures around the world, we seek to better understand both the commonality of the economic problems facing all market-oriented systems, and the diversity of institutional responses to these problems. The cases are drawn from a variety of countries in different stages of economic development, including the United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, Korea, Poland, Russia and China.
Photo: Dustin Ross
Students will become familiar not only with the basic differences in the institutional structures for economic activity in the subject countries, but also with the political and social contexts in which the legal systems—and legal professions--have emerged and continue to evolve. The seminar will also introduce students to different approaches to comparative legal and institutional analysis. They devote substantial time outside class preparing a case study related to corporate governance and the legal supports for economic activity in a particular country or region.
