People
Past IILJ Scholars
The Institute for International Law and Justice each year selects a small group of outstanding J.D. students as IILJ Scholars. The Program provides carefully tailored individualized mentoring and opportunities to this group. Scholars work closely with the Law School's permanent and global faculty members in international law on joint research projects. They participate in the development of ideas and scholarship with other IILJ J.D. and Graduate Scholars from around the world, and with Visiting Fellows and Researchers. They are carefully selected to draw upon, and enrich, an exceptionally fertile and energetic intellectual environment. We list below past IILJ Scholars by the year of their JD graduation, many continued and completed an LL.M. in a subsequent year.
2009
J.D.
Seth Gurgel
Seth grew up in Lake Mills, Wisconsin and attended Lakeside Lutheran High School. He graduated from Marquette University in May of 2002 where he majored in English Literature and Political Science. At Marquette, he was a Wisconsin State Scholar and a member of Marquette's Burke Scholar Program, a public service scholarship program. While in Milwaukee, he coordinated various service and social justice organizations dedicated to seeking solutions to hunger and homelessness issues through service. As coordinator of the student organization JUSTICE, Seth organized numerous panel presentations and teach-ins on diverse topics, most notably the UN Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq and the United States response to terrorism. Upon graduating, he received the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Senior Award, the College's highest award. After graduation, Seth volunteered with the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), an Americorps teaching program administered by Notre Dame. Seth taught ninth and eleventh grade English at Bishop Kenny High School in Jacksonville. In July 2004, he graduated from Notre Dame with a Master's of Education and a much greater understanding of air conditioning's influence on the recent settlement of the South. In the fall of 2004, Seth began teaching English and studying Chinese at Hangzhou Teacher's College, in Hangzhou, China. Seth worked for two years in China, where he began studies on roles and limits of law in China's rapid change, which he has continued at NYU as both IILJ and Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar. He is actively involved in a project on Criminal Justice in China directed by NYU Professor Jerry Cohen.
Matt Haar
Matt is a 2006 graduate of Brown University, where he majored in Economics and Political Science. He also spent a year studying at Pembroke College, Oxford. Matt has worked at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (U.S. Department of Transportation), Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and currently holds an elected position as a Dickenson School Trustee in his home town of Southwick, MA. While at NYU Matt focuses on relationships between international trade, economic development, and international institutions. He spent Summer 2007 working with Professor Kevin Davis on the IILJ's Financing Development Project.
Binish Hasan
Binish came to NYU from the Honors Program of the US Department of Justice Anti-Trust Division in Washington DC. She graduated form Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 2005. A native speaker of Urdu, and proficient in Arabic, she seeks to integrate a focus on women's rights with wider studies of international economic law and international legal institutions. In Summer 2007 she worked in ACEH Indonesia on a UNIFEM Project on anti-discrimination legislation.
Sandra Mayson
After graduating summa cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in Comparative Literature, Sandy Mayson worked for two years at a leading NGO focused on oceans and fisheries issues. In the year before coming to Law School, she taught English in France, and spent several months in Chile preparing radio documentaries on artisanal fishing and other socio-political issues. At NYU she is focusing on integrating work on legal theory with current international policy problems, particularly relating to natural resource use and human rights. She is co-organizer of a major conference at NYU Law School on climate change and human rights. In Summer 2007 she worked in Lima, Peru with an NGO on indigenous people's rights and environmental issues.
Margarita O'Donnell
Margarita graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Columbia University in May 2006, where she majored in Political Science. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and awarded the Charles A. Beard Prize for Best Paper in Political Science for a paper she wrote on disarmament and peacekeeping. During her senior year, Margarita interned with the International Center for Transitional Justice, researching extra judicial disappearances and working on the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission in Morocco. She also interned for the United Nations Association of the USA as a Model United Nations Trainer, the Office of the Public Advocate for the City of New York and Congressman Jose Serrano (NY-16). Margarita grew up in Switzerland, Costa Rica, Brazil, France, the Philippines and Venezuela. She graduated from Colegio Internacional de Caracas in Venezuela. Since graduating, Margarita has been employed as a paralegal with the Federal Defenders of New York. In this position she was involved in every stage of the criminal defense process, including assisting clients in being released on bail, interviewing witnesses, reviewing evidence and obtaining sentencing mitigation. She also second-sat two trials. As an IILJ and Root-Tilden Kern Scholar, Margarita is combining her interests in criminal justice, human rights and international law. In Summer 2007 she interned with CODESEDH, a leading human rights NGO in Argentina working on prosecutions related to the "Dirty War".
Mila Gudkov
Mila earned her bachelor of arts in linguistics with a minor in Arabic at the University of California at Berkeley where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in 2005. She spent the following year in Egypt, studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo as a recipient of the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad fellowship. While living in Cairo, Mila worked as an Arabic translator with several human rights organizations. She also served as an Arabic interpreter/translator for the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU from 2006-2007 and returned to Cairo in summer 2007 to work for the Housing Rights and Land Use Network as a Center for Human Rights and Global Justice Summer Fellow, conducting research on housing rights and refugees in English and Arabic. She currently serves as an articles editor for NYU's Journal of International Law and Politics and will be studying International Trade Law at University of Amsterdam in Fall 2008. Mila spent the summer of 2008 as a summer associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in New York and Amsterdam.
Jennifer Wheeler
Jennifer graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.A. from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University in 2005. At Gallatin she presented a colloquium on the application of Orientalist discourse to current conflicts in the Middle East. Jennifer has lived in Thailand, Nepal, Ecuador and Belarus where she worked on human rights, education and sustainable development projects. In 2003 she interned for the Global Citizen Initiative as a Youth Advocacy Coordinator, and in 2005 she interned for the United Nations Association of the USA. At the UNA-USA Jennifer worked with the American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court researching the role of the ICC and the United Nations in addressing global human rights crises. In Summer 2007 she interned in the IILJ's Program with the United Nations International Law Commission, working with ILC member Paula Escarameia and researching the development of international law in regulating cybercrime. Jennifer’s interests include sustainable development and international criminal accountability.
LL.M.
Christen Broecker
A 2005 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Christen received highest honors in Peace, War and Defense and International Studies. While at UNC, she participated in a summer field research seminar on international organizations and the Balkan wars in Vienna, Austria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. She then studied French language, politics, and art in Paris for a semester before working as a summer intern for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Washington, D.C. Christen's work in the Balkans and with the CSCE inspired her senior honors thesis on theoretical models of externally-directed state-building. At NYU she has focused on state-building, transitional justice, and international security law. With a fellowship from NYU's CHRGJ she spent the summer after her first year of Law School in Monrovia, working at the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and returned to Liberia to deepen this research for her LLM thesis. She also worked in the IILJ's project with the Permanent Mission of Palau to the UN, and in a major law firm.
Alexandra Khrebtukova
Alexandra Khrebtukova graduated summa cum laude from UC Berkeley in 2003, with degrees in Philosophy and Rhetoric. During her time at UC Berkeley, she completed an extensive volume of scholarship work, including a graduate-level thesis on the ontology of power within the construction of social reality. She has also studied in Russia, Italy, and France. Alexandra has worked on issues such as the fragmentation of international law--with Professor Martti Koskenniemi, then Chairman of the Study Group on the Fragmentation of International Law at the U.N. International Law Commission; international fisheries management—with the Permanent Mission of Palau to the United Nations; and complex anti-trust litigation in a major law firm. In spring of 2008, she was among those selected to represent NYU Law at the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Competition, where she researched and argued issues of extraordinary rendition and torture under international law. Alexandra’s other research areas include the intersection between the international trade and international environmental regimes and democratic theory in a globalized world. Her LL.M. thesis is on the role of border tax adjustments in bridging international trade and international climate change law.
Catherine Sweetser
Catherine Sweetser graduated magna cum laude from Yale College in 2005 with a double major in Political Science and International Studies. Her senior essays focused on peacekeeping in Burundi and the repercussions of politics in the AU, as well as the formulation of a statistical variable for international interest in a conflict. In summer 2006, after her 1L year, she performed post-conviction work for prisoners claiming to be innocent with the Innocence Project, and also worked with Professor Benedict Kingsbury on accountability for abuses by peacekeepers. In summer 2007, she held a CHRGJ Fellowship at the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa, working particularly on the consequences for constitutional rights of international investment treaties, as well as on refugee rights and sex discrimination cases. In her college summers, Catherine taught English at the Center for Exchange and Solidarity in El Salvador, worked on tenant law and Holocaust reparations cases at Bet Tzedek Legal Services in Los Angeles, and interned at the Center for Reform in London, England. A member of the NYU Law Review, she also joined the Furman Program in Fall 2006. She is interested in pursuing an academic career in global administrative law and human rights.
Bryant Walker Smith
Bryant's interests range from the local to the global. A 2003 graduate of the University of Wisconsin's civil engineering program, he has emphasized environmentally-sensitive community development as a transportation engineer and civic leader in Madison. He has also worked in global project finance as a Linklaters summer associate in London, interned for the Austrian government as a Center on Environmental and Land Use Law Fellow in Vienna, deconstructed windows in Copenhagen, and studied engineering in Munich. At NYU Law, Bryant has served as president of the International Law Society, vice president of the Asia Law Society, and a managing editor of the Journal of International Law and Politics. His current research includes the international response to climate change and the relationship among trade, development, and the environment.
2008
J.D.:
Alexis Blane
After graduating from Duke University in 2002, Alexis went to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, and received a Masters of Philosophy from Oxford in 2004 for work that focused on the interrelation of liberalism and conceptions of empire in British travel writing from the 1930s. As an undergraduate, a summer spent working in Kosovo on refugee management and social therapy programs kindled her interest in the intersections of national and international law. As an IILJ Scholar she has written a paper on theories of punishment in 16th and 17th century Latin international law texts, and a note on sovereign immunity in national courts as an obstacle in investor-state arbitration. She has served as Managing Editor of the Journal of International Law and Politics, and has worked in the IILJ's project with the Permanent Mission of Palau to the UN. She spent the summer at the end of her second year working in law firms in London and New York. During 2008-9 she will be a clerk to Judge Allyson King Duncan, 4th Cir.
Anna Cavnar
A 2001 graduate of Indiana University, Bloomington, Anna Cavnar studied economics and French. Following graduation, she spent two years in the Republic of Moldova as a Peace Corps Volunteer in NGO development. Her main project involved assisting two grassroots organizations, a youth center and a women’s business association, with grant writing, project design and management etc. Concurrently with law school, Anna has pursued a Masters in Public Affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, concentrating in international development. Her research has focused on the international law of food aid, integrating international trade law with economic and social rights. She has been a research assistant for Professor Kingsbury in the IILJ's United Nations Foundation-supported project developing international law materials on UN issues for use in law schools around the world. She also worked during much of her joint degree in the IILJ's project with the Permanent Mission of Palau to the UN, and spent a summer at a leading law firm in Paris. She will hold a clerkship with Chief Judge Kimba Wood, USDC, SDNY in 2009-10.
Mitra Ebadolahi
As an IILJ Fellow, Filomen D'Agostino Scholar, and Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow at NYU Law, Mitra specialized in international and domestic human rights, particularly economic and social rights. In 2007-08, she served as the Senior Notes Editor for the NYU Law Review, writing her own Note on strengthening the judicial enforceability of economic and social rights in South Africa. She spent her 1L summer on a CHRGJ fellowship at the Constitutional Litigation Unit of the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, and her 2L summer at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project in New York City. Mitra participated in the NYU Law International Human Rights Clinic in 2007, working on Freedom of Information Act requests and enforced disappearances in the War on Terror. A 2002 graduate of UCLA, Mitra Ebadolahi received her BA in international development studies and history. She then received a Fulbright Scholarship to attend the London School of Economics, where she completed an MSc degree in Politics of the World Economy in 2004. At the LSE, Mitra graduated first in her class and received the department's award for best dissertation for her paper on the Political Economy of Human Rights. In 2008-09, Mitra returned to Los Angeles to clerk for Judge Margaret Morrow, U.S. District Court, Central District of California.
Andrew Friedman
Andrew graduated from the University of Georgia in 2005 with high honors and a B.B.A. in International Business. He was an intern for the Center for International Trade and Security, where he investigated natural resource dispute resolution guidelines and their application to the Spratly Islands conflict. Prior to coming to Law School, he traveled extensively in Spain, Israel, Austrasia, and particularly in Eastern Asia, and began to learn Japanese. As an IILJ Scholar, he has continued to focus his interest in East and South-East Asia, participating for a semester in an NYU exchange program in Japan, before returning to the region for further study after completing his JD. He worked with Professor Kevin Davis in the IILJ's Financing Development project, and on the practical design of microfinance and solar energy financing projects for the Government of Palau.
Leslie Gold
Leslie Gold graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor’s degree in International Studies in 2005 from American University with a minor in French and was inducted as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She studied both in Brussels, Belgium and in Beijing, China. While in Brussels, she worked for American Electronics Association Europe, an interest group for firms in the high tech industry. While in Beijing, she interned for Lehman, Lee, & Xu, a Chinese law firm. In Washington, she interned for Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado, for the Embassy of France, and for Half the Planet Foundation, a disability-related non-profit organization. She also served as a junior law clerk for Judge Inez Smith Reid of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Over the summers, she held jobs at both the United States Department of Labor and the United States Department of Agriculture. Her research interests include supranational aspects of the European Union. While an IILJ Scholar, she served on the NYU Law Review, and worked at a major law firm in London.
Jennifer Hainsfurther
Jennifer Hainsfurther graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 2005 with a double major in Political Science and Women’s Studies. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, she won the Ole R. Holsti Award for American Foreign Policy and International Relations for her political science honors thesis. While at Duke, Jennifer studied in London and Paris, and published a paper, “The Global AIDS Crisis: How to Ensure Access to Essential Medicines in the Developing World,” in the Pi Sigma Alpha Journal of Politics. She also interned for Senator John Edwards in Raleigh, N.C. and Washington, D.C. and worked on Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign. As an IILJ Scholar, Jennifer has written papers analyzing the anti-democratic potential of international precommitments and examining the CEDAW Convention as a guarantee of women migrant workers’ human rights. Jennifer held a CHRGJ fellowship at a women's rights NGO in Malaysia during her 1L summer, and split her 2L summer between a law firm an d the US State Department Legal Adviser’s Office. An articles editor of the NYU Law Review, she also worked with Professor Benedict Kingsbury on the IILJ's UN Curriculum project. She will be clerking with Judge Harry Edwards, DC Cir., during 2009-10.
Tammy Shoranick
A 2005 honors graduate of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, Tammy Shoranick studied international relations, law and economics. Her honors thesis paper was based on the dichotomy between state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention within the United Nations conflict resolution system. During her time at Carleton University, Tammy worked as a research assistant at Health Canada where she provided policy advice to advance the health status of First Nations and Inuit people. In addition, she acted as a volunteer for the Canadian Council for International Law. As an IILJ Scholar, Tammy worked with a human rights NGO in Uganda, and contributed to a paper on Sudanese Special Courts related to the atrocities in Darfur, as well as serving as Developments Editor of JILP.
LL.M.:
Chris Bradley
Chris Bradley graduated, summa cum laude, in 2001 from Princeton University with a degree in Classics. His senior thesis dealt with the role of public rhetoric in the political structure of the late Roman Empire. Chris came to NYU from the English faculty at Oxford University, where he received an M.Phil. with distinction and was accepted into the doctoral program. His doctoral research is focused on the interaction of medieval theology, church organization, and various practices of religious resistance and dissent in medieval England. He has built on this expertise in law school by working extensively on matters of law and religion; one of his papers deals with relations between British international law doctrine and the beliefs and practices of missionaries in Victorian Britain. He is currently serving as editor-in-chief of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics; while at NYU he has also been involved with the drafting of an amicus brief by the World Organization for Human Rights USA, and he was co-chair of NYU's Unemployment Action Center. During 2008-9 he will be a clerk for Judge Patrick Higginbotham, 5th Cir.
Tara Mikkilineni
Tara graduated from UC Berkeley in 2002. Before law school she worked at the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection and received her Masters in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics, where she wrote her thesis on transitional policies associated with ejido reform in Mexico. Tara spent her 1L summer at the UN International Law Commission in Geneva as an assistant to Commissioner William Mansfield and split her 2L summer between a San Francisco firm and the State Department's Office of the Legal Advisor. She is an articles editor on the New York University Law Review and is currently participating in the International Environmental Law Clinic researching the trade impact on developing countries of genetically modified organisms. Tara is interested in the relationship between rule of law reform and transitional justice, and in the status of quasi-state actors under international law. She will be serving as clerk for Judge Emilio Garza, 5th Cir, during 2008-9.
Zoe Salzman
A summa graduate from Concordia University in Canada, Zoe worked with refugee protection and criminal justice NGOs in Montreal. While at NYU, she spent summers working on immigrants rights issues and on civil liberties issues in anti-terrorism contexts. She has been extensively involved with the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice in work on treatment of detainees. She served as Senior Notes Editor of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics. Her scholarly writing includes papers on private military companies, and on problems concerning the international law of self-defense against attacks by armed bands in the International Court of Justice's DRC v. Uganda decision. During 2008-9 she will hold a clerkship with Judge Sterling Johnson.
2007
J.D.
Ayana Free
A 2000 graduate of Spelman College, Ayana Free graduated with honors in English. Her junior year, she studied abroad at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal where she explored Négritude poetry and its influence on Senegalese cultural and political institutions. After graduating, she continued researching francophone literature in the Graduate Program of Literature at Duke University. During the summers, she worked as a graduate assistant at the Gorée Institute in Senegal, a global public service institution designed to support economic independence and democracy in Africa. As a Junior Scholar for the IILJ, she plans to research the impact of international trade policies in developing countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America. During 2008-9 she will be clerk to Judge Reginald Lidsay, USDC, Massachusetts.
William Van Esveld
Bill Van Esveld completed a PhD in English at Cornell University before coming to NYU. At Law School, he lead the academic and advocacy activities of the dynamic Law Students for Human Rights group. He was an intern with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok, focused on gender and sexual violence issues in refugee protection, and as part of the Law School's Human Rights Clinic worked with Human Rights Watch in preparing a report on human rights and extractive industries. After completing hid JD he obtained a highly competitive fellowship at a leading New York human rights NGO.
LL.M
Elizabeth Sepper
A 2002 graduate of Boston University, Elizabeth Sepper studied history, French and Italian. She studied also in both Grenoble, France and Padova, Italy. While in Italy, she researched and wrote her senior thesis on the prosecution of rape in eighteenth-century Venetian courts. During her JD and LL.M. years as an IILJ Scholar, she worked extensively on human rights and women's rights issues, including internships at a women's rights NGO in Malaysia, and work on anti-terrorism issues at a major New York human rights NGO. Her note was published in the NYU Law Review. Her LL.M. thesis, supervised by Professor Stephen Holmes of the NYU Law School Center on Law and Security, dealt with cross-border cooperation between intelligence agencies. In 2007-8 she served as a federal court of appeals clerk for Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, 3rd Cir.
Emily Berman
Emily Berman received her A.B. from Duke University in 1994 where she majored in Political Science. While at Duke, she spent a semester studying in Paris, and a summer working on Capital Hill for Senator Jeff Bingaman, who represents her home state of New Mexico. Following seven years working for the sports television network ESPN, she decided make a career change and came to NYU Law School to pursue her interests in international law. Since coming to NYU, Emily has done research for the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First). She is a Furman Scholar, a scholarship given to J.D. students interested in and showing an aptitude for careers in academia, and she is Editor-in-Chief of the New York University Law Review. Her Law Review Note, published in April 2005, is entitled “In Pursuit of Accountability: The Red Cross, War Correspondents, and Evidentiary Privilege in International Criminal Tribunals.” Her research interests involve the various forces that induce nations to enter into, comply with, or disregard international legal obligations. In 2005-06, Emily served as a law clerk to the Honorable John M. Walker Jr. of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She then returned to NYU to undertake the LL.M., with a thesis on media regulation by the United Nations and other international agencies in post-conflict situations. In 2007-09 she held a fellowship on law and democracy issues at NYU's Brennan Center.
Jared Schott
A 2003 graduate of Stanford University, Jared Schott majored in Political Science and Economics and received honors in International Security Studies. At NYU, Jared worked on human rights issues and legal reform with several organizations in Kosovo, and was intensively involved in the IILJ's work with the Permanent Mission of Palau to the UN. His LLM thesis, analyzing the UN Security Council's Chapter VII powers as a form of emergency powers, was published in the fall 2007 volume of the Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights.
LL.M. 2006
Gaylynn Burroughs
Gaylynn Burroughs graduated with honors from Yale University in 1999, majoring in history. She spent two years working as Assistant to the President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, a major women’s rights NGO in Washington, DC, after serving as a high school World History and Global Studies teacher. Gaylynn has since pursued her interests in women’s rights through internships at the International Federation of Women Lawyers in Accra, Ghana and at Global Rights, working on the Initiative against Trafficking in Persons. A Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar at NYU Law, Gaylynn has served on the Steering Committee of Law Students for Human Rights. Her current research interests include government responses to human trafficking and protection for trafficked persons; local implementation of international human rights law; and the creation of transnational advocacy networks. She completed her LL.M. in 2006 with a thesis on trafficking in women and children, and then undertook a judicial clerkship.
David Livshiz
David Livshiz (JD '05, LL.M. '06) graduated from the University of Michigan in 2002, majoring in history and economics. He then spent several years working with various community organizations on issues stemming from the Arab-Israeli conflict, with particular emphasis on the regional role and impact of international law. While at NYU, David interned at the Office of Chief Counsel for International Commerce at the United States Department of Commerce, where his responsibilities centered on issues of WTO and NAFTA compliance. He was president of the International Law Society and served as a research assistant investigating global administrative law for Professors Kingsbury and Stewart. His LL.M. thesis dealt with global administrative law issues of private regulation of international accountancy standards, and regulation of architects and other professional services under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). David’s research interests include the formation of global administrative law and its impact on democratic governance in the area of trade regulation and competition policy, international security issues, and the formation and development of international counter-terrorism law and policy.
Peter Prows
Peter Prows graduated from Oberlin College with honors in Politics and International Relations in 2002. He completed his first year of law school at Tulane University before transferring to NYU Law to pursue his dual interests in international affairs and domestic governance. He spent the summer of 2003 working for Professor M. David Gelfand of Tulane Law on constitutional law and debt financing issues as they relate to municipal government, and for the public benefits and employment law divisions of New Orleans Legal Assistance. After coming to NYU, Peter worked term time for the Legal Action Center of New York on health, privacy, and anti-discrimination law cases. He then spent the summer of 2004 at the UN International Law Commission in Geneva as assistant to the Finnish commissioner Martti Koskenniemi and will be working for Professor Thomas Franck of NYU Law starting in the fall. His own research interests include the use of force, international legal regime formation and failure, the reach of domestic civil and criminal jurisdiction, and the utility of general comparative principles in settling international disputes. He completed the LLM in Summer 2006, with a thesis on law of the sea issues, then took up a clerkship at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Peter Norman
Peter Norman graduated from Yale College in 2000 with a B.A. in philosophy. During his undergraduate studies, he also attended the Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico, where he studied Advanced Spanish and Mexican Literature. Peter worked for two years as the Program Developer for Housing Opportunities Unlimited (HOU), a Boston-based organization that develops and coordinates social services for low-income communities in the process of redevelopment. At HOU, he helped raise over $2 million from federal, state, and private sources to support job training, after-school enrichment, adult education, and public safety initiatives. He also wrote HOU’s manual on providing capacity-building support for community-based non-profit organizations. Since coming to NYU School of Law, he has served as an officer for the Program on Negotiation and Dispute Resolution and chairman of the International Negotiation Discussion Group. As a member of Professor Gerald Lopez’s Community and Economic Development Clinic, he has continued to serve immigrant and low-income communities. In the summer of 2003, Peter worked at DITSHWANELO: The Botswana Centre for Human Rights in Gaborone, Botswana. His current academic interests include contemporary philosophical interpretations of the moral underpinnings of modernity and the role of participatory planning in international development.
2005
J.D.
Meera Lea de Mel
In her time between studying mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin and coming to NYU, Meera Lea de Mel taught 7th and 9th grade mathematics to underprivileged children. She spent time working at the U.S. Department of Education with the Deputy Secretary's office, and in a previous life was seriously interested in a career applying mathematical research to help manage global health problems. At NYU, Meera worked on economic development prospects for places like Sri Lanka, where she spent Summer of 2003 working at a major domestic NGO on social justice and economic growth issues. She also has a keen interest in international security issues. She was a member of NYU's Law Review. She also participated on both the award-winning NYU team to the Sidley-Austin IIEL WTO Moot and on the first ever NYU team to participate in the Willem C. Vis International Arbitration Moot. She later held a permanent position in the U.S. State Department Legal Division in Washington D.C. Meera then went on to work as an Attorney Adviser at the U.S. State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, first arguing cases before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague, and then traveling to Baghdad, where she served as Legal Adviser to Ambassadors Khalilzad and Crocker. After returning from Baghdad, Meera was brought as Senior Policy Adviser to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations to work for Ambassador Khalilzad in his capacity as the U.S. Permanent Representative. She left government to come direct Global Initiatives for Hauser, and is currently developing the law school's first initiative in Abu Dhabi, a conference on climate finance in May 2009.
Mark Kleyna
Before attending NYU Law, Mark Kleyna received a B.A. (1994) and M.Phil. (2002) in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1994. During the course of his studies, he spent several years in South Asia as a language fellow of the American Institute of Indian Studies and a Fulbright-Hayes researcher, studying state development rhetoric and nationalism in post-Independence India. While at NYU, Mark interned at the U.N. High Commission for Refugees in Thailand, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Reproductive Rights, and pursued his interest in the relationship between the emergence of regional and international legal and regulatory bodies and changing notions of national sovereignty. He is pursuing a legal career in private practice.
LL.M.
Nicholas Arons
A graduate of Yale College in 1998, Nicholas Arons studied Latin American Studies and International Studies. He served as the coordinator of the Iraq program at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, leading two international delegations to Iraq in 1999. He then received a Fulbright scholarship to research water politics in Brazil. His book about this experience, Waiting for Rain: The Politics and Poetry of Drought in Northeast Brazil, was published in 2003 by the University of Arizona Press. His 2005 LL.M. thesis dealt with supply of water to poor communities, particularly in Brazil. A Hays Fellow at NYU School of Law, he was president of the NYU American Constitution Society and co-founder of the Indigenous Law Society. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese, and has conducted legal research in Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, Holland, and Mexico. In the summer of 2002 he worked in Geneva at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and in the summer of 2003 he was a legal intern at a non-profit law practice in San Francisco. During this LLM year he was an intern adviser to the Republic of Palau's Mission to the United Nations. During the 2005 summer he worked in Palau, representing the Vice President's office. In 2005-06 he served as a clerk for Judge Rosemary Pooler, who sits on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, then entered specialized legal practice.
Aarthi Belani
Aarthi Belani (JD '04, LL.M. '05) is, since 2005, an associate at the New York office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Hamilton. She is also a Board Member of the nonprofit organization Keep a Child Alive, which provides antiretroviral treatment to children with HIV/AIDS in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa.
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
- The South African Constitutional Court's Decision in TAC: A
"Reasonable" Choice?, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice Working Paper No. 7 (New York: NYU School of Law, 2004)
- A Case Study in Human Rights Accountability: Haiti and the
Inter-American Development Bank, Lessons Learned from Rights Based Approaches to Health [Conference, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, Apr. 14-16, 2005] (forthcoming).
Contributed to:
- Association of the Bar of the City of New York & Center for
Human Rights and Global Justice, Torture by Proxy: International and Domestic Law Applicable to ³Extraordinary Renditions² (New York: ABCNY & NYU School of Law, 2004)
-Association of the Bar of the City of New York Committee on
International Human Rights and Committee on Military Affairs and Justice, Human Rights Standards Applicable to the United States¹ Interrogation of Detainees (New York: ABCNY, 2004), reprinted in Karen J. Greenberg (Ed.), The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib 557-629 (2005).
-The Right to Health, World Health Organization (2002)
Jared Wessel
A graduate of The College of William and Mary in 2000, Jared Wessel, was elected Phi Beta Kappa and majored in economics. Jared served as an intern through the IIL&J summer program at the UN International Law Commission with Professor Bruno Simma (now Judge of the ICJ), and was a member of NYU Law’s highly successful team at the World Trade Organization Moot Court competition in Geneva. Jared wrote his L.L.M. thesis on judicial policy making in the context of humanitarian law with a focus on the International Criminal Court on relational contract models of treaties. His ILC paper was published in NYU's Review of Law and Social Change, and his LL.M. thesis in Columbia's Journal of International Law. In 2005-06, Jared served as law clerk for the Honorable Judge Jane Roth of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, thereafter joined a major law firm.
J.D. 2004
Gayle Horn
Gayle Horn is a 2000 graduate of Yale University. She received her Master’s of Science in Social Policy from the London School of Economics, concentrating on asylum and immigration in the United Kingdom and throughout the European Union. In the summer of 2002, Gayle continued to pursue her interest in international affairs through an internship with the Department of Defense. There, she worked in the General Counsel’s Office, in the Intelligence Office, on matters related to international security. In the spring of 2003, Gayle analyzed international fisheries and marine mammal organizations for Professor Katrina Wyman at NYU Law School, as part of the Research Project on Legitimacy, Democracy and Justice in International Governance. Her LL.M. thesis and papers as an IILJ Scholar focused on the intersection between constitutional law and foreign policy, and on security issues such as the legality of Riot Control Agents under the Chemical Weapons Treaty. In 2005-06, she held a Federal judicial clerkship in Chicago, then entered legal practice.
Christopher Cade Mosley
Cade Mosley has strong academic interests in philosophy and government, and majored in these fields at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in 1999. He also attended the University of Haifa, Israel, for a semester in 1997 studying Middle Eastern Studies. He worked on a kibbutz vineyard for a season, interned for Dick Armey in Washington D.C. for a summer, worked at a political consulting firm in Austin, taught English in Seoul, Korea, for four months and on a tiny Japanese island for a year before coming to NYU Law School. At NYU Law he has concentrated on international law, particularly the task of creating international regimes to manage the negative effects of globalization while preserving its benefits. He worked as a research assistant for Professor Richard Stewart on ways to manage such a balance in the global trade of genetically Modified Organisms and in the summer of 2003 he worked at the UN´s International Law Commission in Geneva as an assistant to the Finnish commissioner Martti Koskenniemi.
Peter Gutherie
A 1998 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Peter Gutherie majored in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He then spent two years doing community development work in the US before spending a semester teaching English in Changzhou, China. His legal work has included internships with the International Justice Mission and the Office of the Legal Adviser at the US Department of State. Current research interests include trafficking in persons, the use of unilateral economic sanctions, and the relationship between international and domestic courts. Gutherie now has a permanent position in the US State Department Legal Section in Washington D.C.
