About Us
IILJ Scholars in J.D. & J.D.-LL.M. Programs
IILJ Scholars Program - Details and Application Information
For Graduate Scholars, see separate listing.
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 JD 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 community.
IILJ Scholars take part in IILJ events throughout their time at law school. The third year students, together with IILJ LL.M. and Graduate Scholars, typically participate also in a weekly IILJ seminar on international law research and scholarship, designed to assist them in producing far-reaching research papers for eventual publication.
Scholars are selected either before coming to Law School, or at the end of their second year. Many stay at the Law School for a 4th year, in the IILJ's J.D.-LL.M. program.
NYU 's pioneering J.D.-LL.M. program for prospective academics and international law specialists is believed to be the only one of its kind in international law in the U.S.
Recent cohorts of Scholars have taken up a range of positions following graduation. Many Scholars accept clerkships in US Circuit and District Courts, the US Court of International Trade, in international courts, including the International Court of Justice. Some take up positions in leading firms (including, in the period 2008-2011, Skadden; White & Case; Freshfields; Debevoise & Plimpton; Sidley Austin and Cleary Gottlieb) or in government, particularly the State Department. Other Scholars are undertaking fellowships with a range of NGO and advocacy organizations, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Reproductive Rights and New Orleans Public Defenders. More information about the opportunities for Scholars to work with different organizations both during and following the J.D. is available under Professional Experience.
First Year Scholars Second Year Scholars
Third Year Scholars LL.M. Scholars
IILJ Scholars – First Year
Luke Herrine
Luke studied philosophy and psychology at Oberlin College as a John Oberlin Scholar, where his work in epistemology earned him the Dahl Prize for philosophy writing, Honors recognition, and a published place in Cornell's undergraduate philosophy journal. He also devoted time to several non-academic projects, including a winter term teaching children in the Honduran jungle and a semester working at The Food Trust, a Philadelphia-based food justice nonprofit. Upon graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 2010, Luke briefly serving as field director for a Chicago aldermanic campaign before beginning work as a legal assistant at the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University. In his time there, he helped to manage civil rights cases and to further the researches of Professor Joseph Margulies, with whom he co-wrote an article on national security decision-making in the United States, which was published in the Connecticut Law Review. At NYU he hopes to search out supranational means to limit the power of multinational corporations.
Antonia House
Antonia graduated with first-class honours from the University of Edinburgh in 2008, with a degree in Arabic and Human Geography. Her undergraduate dissertation focused on the relationship between collective memory and the legitimation of forms of governance. Having spent six months studying at Birzeit University in the West Bank during college, Antonia returned to the Middle East (Syria and Palestine) after graduation, to improve her fluency in Arabic, and subsequently went to Berlin, Germany, where she worked with Arab communities in the neighborhood of Neukolln. In 2009, she returned to her native New York to pursue a master's degree at the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU, where she was awarded a MacCracken Fellowship. During the second year of her master's she worked as an intern for Jewish Voice for Peace. Most recently, Antonia was in Haifa, Israel, working with Palestinian feminist and civil rights organizations.
Aaron Kates Rose
After graduating with high distinction from the University of Toronto, with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies, Political Science, and Economics, Aaron relocated to Akko, Israel, where he served as both a fellow of the New Israel Fund and the international advocacy intern for Adalah, a leading Palestinian human rights organization. At Adalah his responsibilities included authoring human rights monitoring reports for the UN Human Rights Committee. As an undergraduate he sought out international experiences, studying abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2009 and participating in an international course module in Bosnia and Serbia, where he explored the region's post-conflict security landscape. In his senior year, he joined two friends to Direct an academic conference on community peacebuilding processes. Aaron is interested in how societies experience and emerge from conflict and how state institutions serve to entrench or attenuate that conflict via the law.
Chad Remus
Chad graduated with distinction from the University of Iowa as an Old Gold Scholar in 2011. While at Iowa, Chad spent a semester studying in Montpellier, France during which time he helped perform research for a professor on French regional elections. He was selected as runner-up for best undergraduate paper in the Political Science Department for his essay on the credibility of commitments made to the International Criminal Court. Chad received an honors designation for both his French and Political Science majors for his thesis on French political parties’ strategies related to name changes. Since graduation, he has spent his time working as an English language assistant at Lycée Dhuoda, a high school in Nîmes, France and following his passion for travelling.
Rebecca Sheff
Rebecca graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 2009 with a major in Political
Science and concentrations in African Studies and Human Rights and Humanitarianism. Having
studied in Senegal for a semester, she completed an honors thesis on how remittance-based
development reconfigures state-society relations. After graduating, Rebecca served for a year as
a legislative program assistant on immigration and civil liberties for the Friends Committee on
National Legislation in Washington, D.C. She then traveled to Zimbabwe to work on issues of
state-sponsored violence and child protection. Most recently, Rebecca has spent more than a year
managing the LGBT Rights & Protection Program for Heartland Alliance in Burundi.
Andrew Walker
Andrew Walker graduated magna cum laude from Grove City College with high honors in Political Science and minors in Chinese and English. As a varsity member of the Grove City College Speech and Debate Team, Andrew contributed to the team's three consecutive years of top-ten ranking by the NPDA and, in his senior year, helped the team transition to British Parliamentary-style debate. While at Grove City College, he worked for three years in the Foreign Language Department as a teaching and research assistant to Dr. Lijuan Meng. He also served as junior and then senior executive editor for The Quad, the college literary magazine. A Dean’s and Trustee’s scholar, Andrew was awarded the David E. McKillop Scholarship for excellence in the study of history and law his junior year. His senior thesis was on the rhetorical uses of Chinese history by pro-democracy protestors.
IILJ Scholars – Second Year
Will Henrich
Will graduated magna cum laude from Connecticut College in 2008 with a major in Philosophy and a minor in Linguistics. He earned Honors for his thesis on Wittgenstein and earned Distinction and the Prof. Lester Reiss Prize for his work in philosophy. The School for International Training's Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Program let him study in India and Bhutan for one semester. After college, Will taught English and art at an elementary and middle school in southern Thailand. In 2010, he returned to the United States to teach art at a center for adults with mental disabilities and to tutor private students in academics and test-preparation. At NYU, he is active with the Law Students for Human Rights and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project. During the 2012 summer, he worked with Burmese migrants at the Human Rights and Development Foundation in Bangkok, Thailand.
Julianne Marley
Julianne graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Boston College in 2006, where she majored in International Studies, minored in French, and was a member of the Arts & Sciences Honors Program. She also spent a year studying at the Institut Catholique de Paris, focusing on international politics and French literature and cinema. Prior to NYU, Julianne worked for several years as the managing paralegal of a boutique estate planning and settlement law firm in New York. She also served as a marketing and development volunteer for a New York-based international fair trade nonprofit organization and as the writing coordinator for a college readiness program in the Bronx.
IILJ Scholars – Third Year
Hannah Bloch-Wehba
A New York City native, Hannah graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas, where she majored in history and Plan II Honors, in 2009. While at UT, she taught writing at the Undergraduate Writing Center, ran a tutoring program matching honors students with local high schoolers, and edited the university's literary journal, Analecta. She received special honors for her thesis on presidential war powers. After graduating, she received a DAAD scholarship for graduate study in Germany, where she interned at Internationale Politik, a foreign affairs publication, and studied international relations. As an IILJ and Law and Security Scholar, she plans to focus on international humanitarian law, constitutional law, and the law of the war on terrorism.
Matt Craig
Matt Craig attended the University of North Carolina as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. He studied Political Science and Spanish, earning highest honors for his thesis on the normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations. While at UNC, Matt served as executive director of a non-profit organization that provides scholarships and other educational opportunities to students in Tanzania. After completing his undergraduate studies, Matt received a Specialization in Armed Conflict and Peace at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.
As an IILJ and Root-Tilden-Kern Scholar at NYU, Matt has pursued his interests in national security law and human rights litigation. He has interned with the ACLU National Security Project, EarthRights International, and Alien Tort Statute specialist Paul Hoffman in Los Angeles. He has served on the board of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project and currently participates in the Immigrant Rights Clinic. Matt hopes to continue to be involved in impact litigation after law school.
Upon graduation, Matt Craig was awarded the Open Society Presidential Fellowship and will spend 2013-2014 working at the Open Society Institute. In 2014-2015, Matt will clerk for The Honorable Allyne R. Ross at the U.S. Distrcit Court, E.D.N.Y.
Elspeth Faiman Hans
Elspeth graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College where she majored in International Relations and Russian and minored in Economics. During college, she also studied in France, Russia, and Washington, D.C. After graduating, Elspeth served for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small rural village in Mali. Upon returning to the US, she worked for three and a half years at Management Sciences for Health in Boston, where she managed public health projects in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As an IILJ scholar at NYU, Elspeth’s research has focused on the development of Global Administrative Law in international environmental and public health organizations. Elspeth spent the summer after her first year at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in Philadelphia, and the summer after her second year in the Appellate Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resource Division in Washington, D.C. Elspeth is an executive editor for NYU’s Journal of International Law and Politics, where her student note will be published during the 2012-2013 academic year. She is also an active member of NYU’s Environmental Law Society.
Adria Gulizia
Adria graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008. While there, she majored in French language and literature, a course of study to which she had been dedicated since spending a term in Grenoble, France as a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy. Adria used her background in French language and culture to anchor her interest in the circulation of peoples, goods and ideas around the Mediterranean, an interest that prompted her to begin studying Arabic and increase her mastery of Italian. After graduating from Washington University, Adria remained in St. Louis, where, for two years, she taught mathematics at Gateway Middle School as a Teach For America corps member. She spent the summer prior to entering law school practicing her Italian by traveling in northern Italy with her Milanese husband. During the summer of 2011, Adria interned for the American Friends Service Committee's Immigrant Rights Program in Newark, NJ. She gave assistance to immigrants and refugees by taking statements, doing legal research and writing, translating documents from French to English and interpreting between French and English. She spent her 2L summer as a summer associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. As an IILJ scholar, Adria hopes to explore international economic law and international financial law.
Elena Lobo
A native of Washington, DC, Elena graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a degree in International Relations concentrating on race and culture within the African Diaspora. At Brown, Elena was President of the Cape Verdean Students Association and a member of New Works World Traditions, a dance company committed to raising awareness for political and cultural issues through West African and modern dance performance. Upon graduating in 2008, Elena traveled to Mali with the company to study Mande dance and collaborate with local activists to advance malaria prevention. She has worked at the International Monetary Fund in the Monetary and Capital Markets Division and at Foley Hoag LLP as a paralegal in their International Litigation and Arbitration Practice. During the summer of 2011, Elena interned in the Civil Division of the US Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York and participated in the 2011 Copenhagen Competition on Access to Food. During the summer of 2012, Elena was a summer associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and spent a month working in the firm's Sao Paulo office. Elena is currently a member of NYU's Moot Court Board.
Alex Sinha
Alex has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto, where he specialized in normative ethics and bioethics. Before earning his Ph.D., Alex graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude with Honors in Philosophy from the New York University College of Arts and Sciences, where he majored in Philosophy and Religious Studies. While in law school, Alex has focused on legal philosophy, human rights and humanitarian law. Alex's paper, "Modernizing the Virtue of Humility" recently appeared in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and his paper, "Child Soldiers as Super-Privileged Combatants" is forthcoming in the International Journal of Human Rights. Alex spent his 1L summer working for the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and serving as a research assistant for Professor Smita Narula; and he spent his 2L summer at the Brooklyn Neighborhood Office of the Legal Aid Society. As a 3L member of the International Human Rights Clinic, Alex has worked on matters relating to indigenous rights issues and terrorism. Upon graduation, Alex will join Human Rights Watch and the ACLU as the Aryeh Neier Fellow.
Carson Thomas
Born and raised in Carson City, Nevada, Carson studied English and Spanish at Carleton College, where he graduated summa cum laude in 2006. While at Carleton, he lived in Madrid and then received a Larsen Fellowship to pursue his grandfather’s narrative in Chile. He earned a M.A. in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, focusing his research on the adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare in pre-Civil War Spain. Carson then taught culture and conversation classes for a year at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He also led groups of American teenagers in Spain and conducted teacher-training workshops in Mexico and Nepal for the Rassias Foundation of Dartmouth College. Although Carson has traveled extensively, his outlook remains informed by the mountains and deserts of his home. He worked to protect and develop natural resources as a professional ski patroller, state park employee and conservation steward. Carson spent his first law school summer interning in Geneva at the United Nations' International Law Commission. He researched and edited proposals for the codification and progressive development of public international law, and his projects included the Protection of the Environment In Relation to Armed Conflict and International Cyber Law. As an IILJ Scholar and legal professional, he hopes to mediate conflicts at the intersection of international environmental and human rights law.
IILJ Scholars – LL.M.
Kaveri Vaid
Originally from Rochester, NY, Kaveri Vaid graduated from Williams College in 2004 with honors in English Literature. After graduation, she taught math and science in New Orleans for Teach for America. Kaveri then moved to New York City and spent four years at Carnegie Corporation of New York, working on immigration and education reform grantmaking programs. She also completed a MA in Political Science/International Relations at Columbia University in 2007. During the 2009-2010 academic year, she worked as a research assistant for the Center on Law and Security, and during the summer of 2010 Kaveri worked for the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. In 2010, she was, with the NYU team, a semifinalist in the Jean-Pictet Competition in International Humanitarian Law. She is a Senior Articles Editor for the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics for the 2011-2012 term. Kaveri's research interests focus on international criminal law, the laws of war, and international and national security, and particularly how those areas of law intersect with international relations, and she is eager to pursue work in these areas as an IILJ Scholar.
