Visiting Fellows
History and Theory of International Law Researchers
Tara Helfman
Olin/Searle Fellow
Tara Helfman is the Olin/Searle Fellow at NYU Law School. After graduating from Yale Law School in 2006, Ms. Helfman spent three years working as an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. Ms. Helfman has extensive experience in the fields of public and private international law. Her practice experience includes securities law, white collar defense, international commercial arbitration, land and maritime boundary dispute resolution, diplomatic protection, and international human rights law. Her pro bono work has included death penalty advocacy, habeas petitions, and animal welfare advocacy. Ms. Helfman’s research interests include fiduciary law and Anglo-American legal history, fields in which she has published several articles. Her current research includes the laws of war and the reception of law of nations theory in the United States during the late colonial and early Republic periods.
Representative Publications
Chapters:
"Commerce on Trial: Neutral Rights and Private Warfare in the Seven Years War," in (Koen Stapelbroek, ed., forthcoming)
Articles:
" Land Ownership and the Origins of Fiduciary Duty," 41 Real Property Probate and Trust Journal 651 (2006)
"The Court of Vice-Admiralty at Sierra Leone and the Abolition of the West African Slave Trade," 115 Yale Law Journal 1122 (2006)
"Neutrality, the Law of Nations and the Natural Law Tradition," 30 Yale Journal of International Law 549 (2005)
"The Law of Nations in The Federalist Papers," 23 Journal of Legal History 190 (2002)
Short Articles:
Book Review: Reading Humanitarian Intervention, by Anne Orford, 29 YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 281
Benjamin Straumann
Benjamin Straumann is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History Department at New York University and Alberico Gentili Fellow at New York University School of Law. He is chiefly interested in classical political and legal thought, the history of natural and international law, natural rights and social contract theories, and the early modern reception of classical political thought and Roman law. Benjamin is the author of Hugo Grotius und die Antike (Nomos, 2007) and editor, with Benedict Kingsbury, for Oxford University Press of Alberico Gentili's The Roman Wars (De Armis Romanis, 1599), with an English translation and critical notes by David Lupher. Having recently received a three-year (2008-2011) Fellowship for Advanced Researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation, Benjamin has also started research on a project on dictatorship and emergency powers in European intellectual history under the working title “Dictatorship and Emergency Powers in the Constitution of the Late Roman Republic and in the History of Political Thought.”
Benjamin received his Ph.D. (insigni cum laude) from the University of Zurich (2005) after studies in Zurich and Rome. He has been a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in legal history and a Global Research Fellow at NYU Law School, a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and an Erasmus Scholar at Università degli Studi Roma Tre. Benjamin has also worked for the Swiss Mission to the United Nations in New York.
Books:
Forthcoming, Alberico Gentili’s Wars of the Romans. Ed. and with an introduction by Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann, trans. David Lupher. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Forthcoming, A Just Empire? The Roman Foundations of Alberico Gentili's Legal World Order. Edited and with an Introduction by Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2007, Hugo Grotius und die Antike. Römisches Recht und römische Ethik im frühneuzeitlichen Naturrecht. Studien zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts 14, ed. A. Bogdandy, M. Stolleis. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007. [Reviews: Christian Gizewski, Historische Zeitschrift 287 (2008), pp. 123f.; Randall Lesaffer, Journal of the History of International Law 10 (2008), pp. 343-347; Gerhard Köbler, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte Germanistische Abteilung 127 (2010).]
Articles:
Forthcoming, (with Lauren Benton), “Acquiring Empire by Law. From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern European Practice,” Law and History Review (2009).
2009, “Is Modern Liberty Ancient? Roman Remedies and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ Early Works on Natural Law,” Law and History Review 27, no. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 55-85.
2008, “The Peace of Westphalia as a Secular Constitution,” Constellations 15, no. 2 (2008), pp. 173-188.
2007, “Natural Rights and Roman Law in Hugo Grotius’s Theses LVI, De iure praedae and Defensio capitis quinti maris liberi,” Grotiana New Series 26-28 (2005-2007), pp. 341-365.
2006, “‘Ancient Caesarian Lawyers’ in a State of Nature: Roman Tradition and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ De iure praedae,” Political Theory 34, no. 3 (2006), pp. 328-350.
2006, “The Right to Punish as a Just Cause of War in Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law,” Studies in the History of Ethics 2 (February 2006), pp. 1-20. http://www.historyofethics.org/022006/022006Straumann.shtml
2004, “Appetitus societatis and oikeiosis: Hugo Grotius’ Ciceronian Argument for Natural Law and Just War,” Grotiana New Series 24/25 (2003/2004), pp. 41-66.
Encyclopedia entries and book chapters:
Forthcoming, (with Benedict Kingsbury), “State of Nature versus Commercial Sociability as the Basis of International Law: Reflections on the Roman Foundations and Current Interpretations of the International Political and Legal Thought of Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf,” in: Philosophy of International Law, ed. by Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Forthcoming, “Rome. I. History and Interpretation. D. Discussing Rome in Culture and Scholarship, 2.-5. E. The Idea of Rome; Rome as Argument, 1.-2., 4.-5.,” in: Brill's New Pauly. Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, ed. by Manfred Landfester, in association with Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Classical Tradition, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. [English edition of my 2002 article in Der Neue Pauly.]
2002, “Rom. I. Geschichte und Deutung. D. Die Auseinandersetzung mit Rom in Kultur und Wissenschaft, 2.-5. E. Rom-Idee; Rom als Argument, 1.-2., 4.-5.,” in: Der Neue Pauly. Enzyklopädie der Antike, ed. by Manfred Landfester, in association with Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Rezeptions- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Band XV/2, Pae-Sch, Stuttgart & Weimar: J.B. Metzler 2002, pp. 863-879. [ Review: C. Kallendorf, “Rezeptionsgeschichte Comes of Age: Der Neue Pauly and the Classical Tradition, II,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 11, no. 2 (2004), p. 298.]
Reviews:
Forthcoming, Sabine MacCormack, On the Wings of Time. Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), in International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15, no. 1 (2008).
2008, Wilfried Nippel, Antike oder moderne Freiheit? Die Begründung der Demokratie in Athen und in der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 2008), in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.10.31.
2007, “Ius erat in armis: The Roman and Spanish Empires and Their Discontents,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 13, 4 (2007), pp. 597-607. [Review Essay on Lupher, David. Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2003.]
Past Visiting Fellows and Doctoral Researchers in the Program
