Avner Greif is Professor of Economics and Bowman Family Endowed Professor in Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. His research interests include European economic history: the historical development of economic institutions, their interrelations with political, social and cultural factors and their impact on economic growth. Some of his publications are: Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge University Press (March 2006); Impersonal Exchange without Impartial Law: The Community Responsibility System, Chicago Journal of International Law (2004); How Do Self-enforcing Institutions Endogenously Change? Institutional Reinforcement and Quasi-Parameters (with David Laitin), the American Political Science Review (2003); Analytic Narratives, Oxford University Press, 1998. Avner Greif received his Ph. D. in economics from Northwestern University, and his B.A. in economics and history - from Tel Aviv University.

Gideon Maltz is studying the role of presidential term limits in advancing democracy, strategies for more effectively enforcing term limits, and the question of term limits in the context of parliamentary systems. Gideon has worked as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy & Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. He has also spent time working on comparative constitutionalism as a part-time consultant at the National Endowment for Democracy, on Sudan and Zimbabwe at the International Crisis Group, and on international trade at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.

Gideon graduated with a B.A. in Ethics, Politics & Economics from Yale and is currently a third-year student at Stanford Law School. He is also a graduate fellow at the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation (SCICN).

Zachary Kaufman is currently a Juris Doctorate (JD) candidate at Yale Law School, where he is Managing Editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, Articles Editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, Policy Editor of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and co-founder and co-president of Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs. At the same time, Mr. Kaufman is completing his D.Phil (PhD) degree in International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar from 2002-05.He was a CDDRL Pre-Doctoral Fellow (2005-2006).

Kaufman's dissertation is an analysis of the U.S. government policy objectives in supporting the establishment of four war crimes tribunals: the International Military Tribunal (the Nuremberg Tribunal), the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo Tribunal), the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Kaufman's professional experience has focused on the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of suspected perpetrators of atrocities, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and terrorism. He has served at the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Justice, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Kaufman also was the first American to serve at the International Criminal Court, where he was policy clerk to the first Chief Prosecutor.

Kaufman is the founder, president, and chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Friends of the Kigali Public Library; co-founder and Executive Director of Marshall Scholars for the Kigali Public Library; and an Honorary Member of the Rotary Club of Kigali-Virunga, Rwanda. Together, these three non-profit organizations are fundraising and collecting books for, raising public awareness about, and building Rwanda's first public library, the Kigali Public Library. Kaufman is also a Board Member and Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action, which, in order to engage student leaders in the study and work of human rights, sponsors an integrated set of education programs and internships for university students in Europe and the United States.

In 2004, Kaufman received his M.Phil (Master's) degree in International Relations from the University of Oxford. In 2000, Kaufman received his B.A. (Bachelor's) degree with honors in Political Science from Yale University.

David Backer is a post-doctoral Fellow (Ph.D. Michigan) at CDDRL. His dissertation project was an evaluation of the impact of participation by victims in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He is extending this research by comparing attitudes of victims and the general public, as well as conducting a longitudinal study of victims' attitudes about reparations. In addition, he is undertaking a parallel study of victims' responses to the truth commission processes in Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

In another project, Backer looks at modes of transitional justice around the world and their effects on political development including regime stability, human rights practices, inter-group conflict, political violence and rates of violent crime.