ICC Speaker Series - Ambassador David J. Scheffer

***** Please Note Change of Location*****

Abstract: During its first decade, the International Criminal Court has experienced a range of apprehensions and surrenders of indicted suspects, and it has been frustrated by the continued reality of indicted fugitives who remain at large. This talk will examine the record to date and factors that have influenced different strategies employed by the ICC and various governments in cooperation with the Court. In addition to cooperation strategies, Professor Scheffer will discuss the utility of an international instrument that would facilitate more effective means by which to achieve custody of indicted fugitives.

Ambassador David Scheffer is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Lawat Northwestern and serves as the Director of the Center for International Human Rights. He teaches International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law. Scheffer supervises the International Externship Program.  He received the Dean’s Teaching Award 2007-2008 and founded and co-edited (2007-2011) the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor. Scheffer is the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Expert on United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials.  He was selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the "Top Global Thinkers of 2011."

Mr. Cherif Bassiouni is Emeritus Professor Law at DePaul University, where he has taught since 1964, and President Emeritus of the International Human Rights Law Institute, which he helped found in 1990. He was one of the founders in 1972 of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences, Siracusa, Italy, and served as its President since 1988. He is the Honorary President of the International Association of Penal Law after having served three terms as President from 1989-2004. He was a Guest Scholar at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. in 1972, Visiting Professor of Law, New York University Law School in 1971, Fulbright-Hays Professor of International Criminal Law, The University of Freiburg, Germany in 1970, non-resident Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Cairo from 1996 to 2006, and is a frequent lecturer at universities in the U.S. and abroad.

James D. Fearon is Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  His research focuses mainly on political violence – interstate, civil, and ethnic conflict, for example – though he has also worked on aspects of democratic theory and the impact of democracy on foreign policy. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, including “Self-Enforcing Democracy” (Quarterly Journal of Economics), “Can Development Aid Contribute to Social Cohesion after Civil War?” (American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings), “Iraq’s Civil War” (Foreign Affairs), “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States” (co-authored with David Laitin, in International Security), “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War” (co-authored with David Laitin, in American Political Science Review), and “Rationalist Explanations for War” (International Organization). Fearon was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, and has been a Program Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research since 2004. He served as Chair of the Department of Political Science at Stanford from 2008-2010.

Abstract:
Initially, the global debate over Internet regulation questioned whether any regulation is necessary. These discussions have since moved beyond this question to consider a wide array of new regulatory challenges, such as which online activities require regulation; what regulation is most effective; and, what is the desired outcome of these regulations.

Latin American countries have in recent years begun addressing these questions through legislation aimed at improving existing regulations. In his recent edited work, “Towards an Internet Free of Censorship: Proposals for Latin America,” Professor Eduardo Bertoni discusses the responsibility of intermediaries, the management of private data, content filtering, and the applicability of jurisdiction, within the context of Latin America. During his presentation, "Internet Regulation in Latin America: Are we Moving in the Right Direction?” Prof. Bertoni will expand upon these themes by exploring the legal questions they raise and will present specific cases from Latin America to illustrate recent examples of regulatory challenges. The presentation will encourage a discussion of how these questions and alternatives can be answered in Latin America, with a comparative perspective in mind. These answers are of crucial importance due to the effect they could have on the politics of freedom of expression.

 Prof. Eduardo Bertoni is director of the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information at Palermo University School of Law, in Buenos Aires. He teaches Human Rights and Criminal law at Palermo University and University of Buenos Aires. He served as executive director of the D.C.-based Due Process of Law Foundation from 2006 to 2009 and as special rapporteur for freedom of expression of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights at the Organization of American States from 2002 to 2005. Prof. Bertoni has also been a legal advisor to nongovernmental human rights organizations in Argentina and an advisor to Argentina’s Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. He has published opinion pieces on democracy and human rights in leading newspapers in the Americas and has written several publications on the right to freedom of expression, judicial reforms, and international criminal law. During his fellowship, Prof. Bertoni plans to explore the prospects for and obstacles to freedom of expression on the Internet in Latin America, including recommendations to ensure that increased access to the Internet promotes, rather than undermines, free speech.

Speaker Bio:

Greg Distelhorst is a Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science and a predoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His dissertation addresses public accountability under authoritarian rule, focusing on official responsiveness and citizen activism in contemporary China. This work shows how citizens can marshal negative media coverage to discipline unelected officials, or "publicity-driven accountability." These findings result from two years of fieldwork in mainland China, including a survey experiment on tax and regulatory officials. A forthcoming second study measures the effects of citizen ethnic identity on government responsiveness in a national field experiment. His dissertation research has been funded by the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Boren Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation. A second area of research is labor governance under globalization, where he has examined private initiatives to improve working conditions in the global garment, toy, and electronics supply chains.

For more on Greg's research, please visit:

http://web.mit.edu/polisci/people/gradstudents/greg-distelhorst.html

Richard Dicker is the director of Human Rights Watch's international justice program since it was founded in 2001. He has worked at Human Rights Watch since 1991. He started working on international justice issues in 1994 when Human Rights Watch attempted to bring a case before the International Court of Justice charging the government of Iraq with genocide against the Kurds. Dicker later led the Human Rights Watch multi-year campaign to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC). He continues to be closely involved on issues that are important at the ICC. He has also spent the past few years leading advocacy efforts urging the creation of effective accountability mechanisms. He monitored the Slobodan Milosevic trial in The Hague and made many trips to Iraq before and at the start of Saddam Hussein's trial. A former civil rights attorney in New York, Dicker graduated from New York University Law School and received his LLM from Columbia University.

Richard Steinberg is Professor of Law at UCLA and the Director of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project. In addition to his UCLA appointment, Professor Steinberg is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Department of Political Science.

Professor Steinberg has written over forty articles on international law. His most recent books are Assessing the Legacy of the ICTY (forthcoming 2010, Martinus Nijhoff), International Institutions (co-edited, 2009, SAGE), International Law and International Relations (co-edited, 2007, Cambridge University Press), and The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Economics, Law, and Politics of the GATT/WTO (co-authored, 2006, Princeton University Press).

Helen Stacy is Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and Director of the Program on Human Rights at CDDRL

As a scholar of international and comparative law, legal philosophy, and human rights, Helen Stacy has produced works analyzing the efficacy of regional courts in promoting human rights, differences in the legal systems of neighboring countries, and the impact of postmodernism on legal thinking. Her recent scholarship has focused on how international and regional human rights courts can improve human rights standards while also honoring social, cultural, and religious values.

Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law together with the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and Google.org, convened a two-day workshop to advance strategic thinking on how to leverage new technologies to strengthen U.N. human rights monitoring around the world.