People
Visiting Doctoral Researchers
VISITING DOCTORAL RESEARCHERS AT THE IILJ IN 2007-08:
Isabelle Ley
Visiting Doctoral Researcher (Germany)
Isabelle Ley is fellow of the graduate program “Multilevel Constitutionalism: European experiences and Global Perspectives” at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. The working title of her PhD thesis (supervised by Prof. Ulrich K. Preuss) is “On Procedural aspects of the legitimacy of international law making”. She investigates whether international law creation reflects the political quality of the law adequately.
Isabelle Ley studied law, philosophy and political science at the universities of Heidelberg and Hamburg and at Sciences Po, Paris, with a focus on legal philosophy, political theory and international law. She was an intern to the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and EUROJUST at The Hague. In Berlin, Isabelle Ley worked as teaching and research assistant for Prof. Preuss at the Hertie School of Governance.
VISITING DOCTORAL RESEARCHERS AT THE IILJ IN 2006-07 WERE:
Niels Petersen
Visiting Doctoral Researcher
Mr. Niels Petersen is Ph.D. candidate at the University of Frankfurt and an associate fellow of the Junior Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. He is currently writing his dissertation on "The Legitimacy of Governments under International Law." Mr. Petersen received his law degree in 2003 from the University of Muenster after having studied at the Universities of Muenster and Geneva, and the Geneva Graduate Institute for International Studies (IUHEI).
VISITING DOCTORAL RESEARCHERS AT THE IILJ IN 2005-06 WERE:
Stephen Humphreys
Visiting Doctoral Researcher (UK)
Mr. Stephen Humphreys is studying for the degree of Ph.D. in Law at the University of Cambridge, England. His research, entitled Legal Intervention: the Parameters of Transnational Law Reform, will attempt to capture the range and scope of donor efforts to promote the rule of law around the world, a field of activity which has come to prominence since 1989.
In 1993, Mr. Humphreys received his B.A. in English, First Class Honours, from Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. He was awarded the Chevening Scholarship to complete his M.A. in International and Comparative Law and graduated in 2003, summa cum laude, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, United Kingdom.
Mr. Humphreys has worked with a number of organizations involved in transnational law reform, particularly in human rights, but also in international environmental law. He has lived in Senegal and Hungary, and speaks French and Hungarian. He travels compulsively, and has been in much of West and East Africa, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He has experience in journalism, publishing and literary translation, and has taught postcolonial literature and postmodern theory at Eotvos Jozsef Kollegium, ELTE University, Hungary.
Tuula Mouhu-Young
Visiting Doctoral Researcher (Finland)
Ms. Tuula Mouhu-Young received her LL.M. in tax law in 1986 from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and her M.B.A. in international business in 1992 from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland, combined with the Graduate School of Business, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
After having had a successful career of 15 years as an attorney (Member of the Finnish Bar Association) and a Civil Court Judge at the City Court of Helsinki, Ms. Mouhu-Young wished to make a move towards International Trade Law. After joining academia she started working on the research of WTO Law. Her research interests include competition law, mergers & acquisitions, and legal theory.
Ms. Mouhu-Young has also initiated the teaching of WTO Law in Finland. She has been a sought-after lecturer of international trade law and the WTO at the universities of Helsinki and Turku International LL.M. Program, Political Sciences Program and International Trade Law Program. She has also been teaching European Law, Contract and Commercial Law and Mergers & Acquisitions. Recently, she has established the Research Training Network with some European universities interested in the WTO research.
Tzvika Nissel
Visiting Doctoral Researcher (Israel)
Mr. Tzvika Nissel graduated with a degree in English Literature from Yeshiva University, United States, in 1997. Mr. Nissel then read English Law in Jesus College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, in 1999. Following his work at Cambridge, he began working as a real estate analyst and then covered emerging market banks from 1999 to 2001. Subsequently, he clerked in the Supreme Court of Israel. Mr. Nissel returned to graduate school in 2002 and earned an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from NYU School of Law in May 2003.
In 2004, Mr. Nissel was a founding partner of Dudley Lotus LLP, a U.S. law firm with an international law practice. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on International Responsibility for the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Benjamin Straumann
Visiting Doctoral Researcher, Global Research Fellow and Alberico Gentili Fellow (Switzerland)
Benjamin Straumann completed his doctoral dissertation (insigni cum laude) on the classical foundations of Hugo Grotius' natural and international law in 2005 at the University of Zurich after studies in Zurich and Rome. He is currently a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in legal history. Previously Benjamin has worked for the Swiss Mission to the United Nations and was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. His research interests include ancient political and legal thought, the history of natural and international law, natural rights and social contract theories as well as the early modern reception of Roman law and ancient political thought.
His publications include Hugo Grotius und die Antike. Römisches Recht und römische Ethik im frühneuzeitlichen Naturrecht (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2007); “‘Ancient Caesarian Lawyers’ in a State of Nature: Roman Tradition and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ De iure praedae,” Political Theory 34, 3 (June 2006), pp. 328-50; “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 (available at http://www.historyofethics.org/022006/022006Straumann.shtml); and an article on Rome and her influence in modern culture and scholarship in Brill's New Pauly. Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, ed. M. Landfester (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, forthcoming).
