September 4, 2008: Appointment
of new International Law Fellow
The Center for International Law has appointed Stuart R. Barden
as International Law Fellow. During their semester-long appointments (with
honoraria), Fellows provide timely international law memoranda to
practitioners, government bodies, civic groups, and international
organizations. In his fellowship, Mr. Barden will research and draft a law
review article on the role and control of sovereign wealth funds in
international law. A year-end report of a former International Law
Fellow, Bryan Johnson, is available online.
A third-year student at New York Law School, Mr. Barden is a member of the New York Law School Foreign Direct Investment International Moot Competition Team. He also provided research assistance in several articles on topics ranging from international investment law to international human rights. Mr. Barden graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a Minor in Spanish.
February 29, 2008: New York Law School hosts young legal
scholars conference
The Center for International Law and the New York Law School Law Review
today hosted the annual Junior International Law Scholars Conference at
New York Law School. The full-day conference (held last year at Yale Law
School) provides a rigorous forum for pre-tenure international law
professors to discuss their scholarship.
Scholars from over 20 law and professional
schools -- including the University of Pennsylvania,
the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, and Princeton
University -- attended this year's conference and
discussed a dozen papers, including contributions by Professors
Molly Beutz and Tai-Heng Cheng of New York Law School. A lunchtime
roundtable also discussed how law professors can play leadership
roles in international law through scholarship, fact-finding missions,
human rights advocacy, and by providing advice to governments, among
other activities.
August 23, 2007: Center newsletter wins prestigious award
The
International Review was awarded the 2007 Gold Award for
“Best Edited Organization Newsletter” by the publisher of
The Newsletter on Newsletters (NL/NL), which TIME
magazine described as "the bible of the [newsletter] industry."
NL/NL is the only independent publication serving the needs of the
newsletter, electronic, and specialized information industries worldwide.
A distinguished panel of judges based its decision on several criteria,
including whether the newsletter met the goals and needs of its
readers.

The International Review began publication in the spring of 1999.
Michael Rhee is the Managing Editor. The first issue was six pages in
length. The latest issue (Spring 2007)
was 48 pages long. Here are a few things that make our publication
noteworthy:
The next issue of The International
Review will be distributed in the fall of 2007. Back issues
are available on the Center for International Law’s homepage.
May 4, 2007: Funding for International Law
Fellowship
An anonymous donor has funded the International Law
Fellowship, which was founded in 2006 and allows its Fellow
to provide timely international law memoranda to practitioners, government
bodies, civic groups, and international organizations under the supervision
of the Center for International Law. The Fellow will receive an
honorarium of $300.
Jamie McAleavey, who has completed his second year at New York Law
School, has been appointed the International Law Fellow for the
2007-2008 academic year. Mr. McAleavey graduated cum laude from Washington
College with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and minor in
Philosophy. He is also the recipient of the Felix Jacob Bilgrey
’51 scholarship. Under the supervision of Associate Director
Tai-Heng Cheng, Mr. McAleavey will help to develop a theory of odious
torts that avoids attributing to an innocent successor government
responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by its predecessor
genocidal regime. This new theory will present an alternative to the
International Court of Justice’s 2006 decision holding Serbia not
responsible for Milosevic’s genocidal acts due to insufficient
evidence to meet the burden of proof.
May 2, 2007: Year-end reports from the first
International Law Fellow and Network 20/20 Fellows
Bryan S. Johnson, who is the Center's first International Law Fellow,
gives us a year-end report
on his activities. The Center's Network 20/20 Fellows, Matthew B.
Abrams and Shahab D.
Ghalambor, also report on their extraordinary fellowship
experiences. Highlights include:
The International Law
Fellowship is a semester-long appointment (with the
possibility of reappointment at the end of each semester) for a New York
Law School student. The Fellow provides timely international law memoranda
to practitioners, government bodies, civic groups, and international
organizations.
Network 20/20
Fellowships provide an opportunity for New York Law School
students to work directly with Network
20/20, a global security think tank. For more
information on all of these fellowships, please contact Professor Tai-Heng
Cheng.
April 19, 2007: Associate Director
Tai-Heng Cheng quoted in Inter Press News Agency article
Tai-Heng Cheng was quoted in an Inter Press News Agency article
concerning the recent U.S.-Australia agreement to ship Cubans and Haitians
at Guantanamo Bay to Australia in exchange for Australia shipping Burmese
and Sri Lankans held at Nauru. Established in 1964, and with offices at
the UN in New York, IPS describes itself as one of “civil society's
leading news agencies."
Here is an excerpt: "This latest arrangement shows the
tremendous pressure that the international system has now come under to
balance the pressing needs of refugees with the genuine sovereign
interests of states, Cheng added. 'The global community needs to seriously
reconsider how we might coordinate our efforts to protect refugees without
unduly burdening states.'"
Click
here to read the complete article in PDF format.
February 15, 2007: Policy Recommendations on
Iran
The Iran Project, in collaboration with Network 20/20, has released its long-awaited report. (See the September 11, 2006, news item for more background information.) Long-term policy recommendations to the U.S. government, Congress, and civil society are set out on pages 20-23.
In the summer of 2006, Matthew Abrams and Shahab Ghalambor, Network 20/20 Fellows at the Center for International Law, carried out research on Iran. In November 2006, Prof. Tai-Heng Cheng, Associate Director of the Center for International Law, Mr. Ghalambor, and several Network 20/20 members collectively conducted over fifty interviews over two fact finding missions to Iran. They met with, inter alia, Masoumeh Ebtekar, who was the first female vice president in Iran (from 1997-2005) and also spokesperson for the hostage takers in 1979.
At the separate requests of the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and several ambassadors from countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, Prof. Cheng presented to them his policy proposals on Iran and the Middle East.
In conjunction with the release of the
report, the Center for International Law will convene a panel
called "Iran: What Next?" on March 21, 2007 from 4:00
pm - 6:00 pm in the Wellington Center. Participants will include Professor
Cheng, Neda Shahidyazdani who is a human rights lawyer at
the Iran Human Rights
Documentation Center, and George
Billard who is a member of Network 20/20 and also president
of Do Diligence, and Miracle Media. More information on the Iran panel
will be available soon.
January 12, 2007: Dream Speech
project
The Center for International Law has partnered with Network 20/20 on a project
sponsored by the New
America Foundation in Washington, D.C., called
the Dream
Speech. Five students associated with the Center have
drafted foreign policy speeches that they would like to see the new
President deliver at his or her inauguration in January 2009. New America
plans to announce the project to the media before the 2007 State of the
Union Address to signal the concerns of Americans. More releases are
planned in the run up to the election to contribute, and perhaps, even
to shape the public debate about what Americans want from a
President.
Notably, one of the student associates on this project, Patrick
Romero, served as a staff sergeant in Iraq from 2004-2005, and was
decorated for his service.
The speeches submitted by New York Law School students are
now online.
Please note that the views expressed in these speeeches are those of
the authors only and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Center for International Law or New York Law
School.
September 22, 2006: Center for
International Law in New York Law Journal (Read the PDF
article)
The New York Law Journal
Next Stop: Iran (excerpts)
The Iran Project is a collaboration between New York Law's Center
for International Law and Network 20/20, a New York-based nonprofit
organization of 200 young workers in 30 professions in the United States .
. . The project's goal is to establish collegial ties between the private
sectors of the two countries. The program seeks to give young lawyers and
other early-career professionals an understanding of foreign cultures and
issues as well as train them in the art of international diplomacy . .
.
"So much of the Iran question as it is framed today involves
the nuclear question," said Tai-Heng Cheng, another member
of the delegation who is Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School
and Associate Director of that school's Center for International Law.
"What we would like to do with this project is to reframe the
question. We would like to change the story from one of conflict to a
story of cooperation."
More information concering the Iran Project is available in the Projects
section of the Center for International Law's homepage.
September 11, 2006:
Center for International Law in The National Law
Journal