Participants
Paola Bergallo
Professor of Law, Universidad de Palermo
Paola Bergallo currently teaches law at the Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires. Her research is focused on feminist critiques of law and socio-legal theory. She also researches constitutional and human rights issues. She has worked as a fellow and consultant working on these issues at the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), the Center for Reproductive Rights, the UN Fund for Population and the Pan-American Health Organization on gender and law, women’s human rights and sexual and reproductive rights. Professor Bergallo has contributed to several books including Litigating Heath Rights: Can Courts Bring More Justice to Health (Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School, 2011), Justicia, Genero y Reproducción (Libraría Ediciones, 2010), and Aborto: una cuestión de derechos humanos (Editores del Puerto, 2010). Professor Bergallo has taught at the Universidad de San Andres in Buenos Aires, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Universidad de Puerto Rico, and Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Mexico. She is also founding member of Red Alas, Red de Académicas Latinoamericanas. She received her B.A. and law degree, with honors, from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, an LL.M from Columbia University, as well as a J.S.M. and a J.S.D. from Stanford University.
Manu Bhagavan
Professor of History, Hunter College and the Graduate Center at City University of New York
Manu Bhagavan is professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and is the chair of the Human Rights Program at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at CUNY. His research interests include 20th-century India, intellectual history, human rights, constitutional history, and postcolonial studies. He has published numerous books, chapters, and articles on colonial and postcolonial India, nationalism, and human rights, including Heterotopias: Nationalism and the Possibility of History in South Asia (edited) (Oxford University Press, 2010), Speaking Truth to Power: Religion, Caste and the Subaltern Question in India (edited, with Anne Feldhaus) (Oxford University Press, 2008), and Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern Question in India (edited, with Anne Feldhaus) (Oxford University Press, 2008). Most recently, he published an updated and expanded edition of his 2012 work The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Prior to teaching at CUNY, Professor Bhagavan taught at universities throughout the United States, including Yale University, Carleton College, and St. Olaf College, as well as Manchester College. Bhavagan has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi and at Kings College in London, President of the Society for Advancing the History of South Asia, and a recipient of the Mellon Mid-Career Faculty Fellowship at the CUNY Graduate Center. He earned his B.A. from Carleton College and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin.
Daniel Brinks
Associate Professor of Government; Co-Director, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas
Daniel Brinks is an associate professor of government and co-director of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the role of the law and courts in supporting or extending human rights and many of the basic rights associated with democracy, with a primary regional interest in Latin America. He is currently at work on a project that examines constitutional change in Latin America since about 1975, focusing especially on judicial institutions and constitutional review. He has published articles in journals such as Comparative Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, and the Texas International Law Journal. His books Courting Social Justice: The Judicial Enforcement of Social and Economic Rights in the Developing World (co-edited with Varun Gauri) and The Judicial Response to Police Violence in Latin America: Inequality and the Rule of Law were both published by Cambridge University Press. Brinks received a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from the University of Michigan.
Ariel Dulitzky
Clinical Professor; Director, Human Rights Clinic, University of Texas School of Law
Ariel Dulitzky is a clinical professor, director of the Human Rights Clinic, and director of the Latin America Initiative at the University of Texas School of Law. He is a leading expert in the inter-American human rights system, and in 2010 he was appointed to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Prior to joining the University of Texas, he was Assistant Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), where he also served as advisor to the IACHR’s first Special Rapporteur on Afro-Descendants that he helped establish in 2005, and as technical advisor to the OAS Working Group discussing the adoption of a new Inter-American Convention against Racial Discrimination. He has been a consultant for the Office of the United Nations Human Rights High Commissioner and the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights. Dulitzky has directed the litigation of more than one hundred cases in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He has published extensively on human rights, the inter-American human rights system, racial discrimination and the rule of law in Latin America, including “The Inter-American Human Rights System Fifty Years Later: Time For Changes,” Special Edition, Revue québécoise de droit international (2011). Dulitzky received a J.D. from the University of Buenos Aires School of Law and an L.L.M. from Harvard Law School.
Zachary Elkins
Associate Professor of Government and Fellow of H. Malcolm Macdonald Chair in Constitutional and Comparative Law, University of Texas
Zachary Elkins is an associate professor of government and a Fellow of the H. Malcolm Macdonald Chair in Constitutional and Comparative Law at the University of Texas in Austin. His research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in Latin America. He is currently completing a book manuscript, Designed by Diffusion: Constitutional Reform in Developing Democracies, which examines the design and diffusion of democratic institutions, and recently completed The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge University Press, 2009), which explores the factors that lead to the survival of national constitutions. With Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Professor Elkins co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the website constitutionmaking.org, which provides resources and analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies. Professor Elkins earned his B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Karen Engle
Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law; Co-director & Founder, Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, The University of Texas School of Law
Karen Engle is the Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law and the founder and co-director of the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, international human rights law, and Latin American law. Her recent publications include “Self-Critique, (Anti) Politics and Criminalization: Reflections on the History and Trajectory of the Human Rights Movement,” in New Approaches to International Law: The European and the American Experiences (José María Beneyto and David Kennedy, eds.; Asser Press, 2012),The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy (Duke University Press, 2010), “On Fragile Architecture: The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Context of Human Rights” (European Journal of International Law, 2011), and “The Force of Shame” (in Rethinking Rape Law, with Annelies Lottmann) (Routledge, 2010). Professor Engle received a Bellagio Residency Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2009 and an assignment as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Bogotá in 2010. Engle received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an undergraduate degree from Baylor University.
Cindy Ewing
Ph.D. Student in History, Yale University
Cindy is a second year Ph.D. student in International History at Yale University. Her dissertation project will explore the histories of international human rights and Asian postcolonial constitutionalism in the twentieth century, focusing on the problem of personhood and its implications for the right to self-determination. Cindy completed her B.A. with honors at Harvard University and her M.A. at the University of Chicago. On several occasions, Cindy has testified before the United Nations Human Rights Council in support of human rights defenders.
Seth Garfield
Associate Professor & Director, Institute for Historical Studies, Department of History, University of Texas
Seth Garfield is a professor of Latin American history and director of the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas. His work focuses primarily on Brazilian history but also touches on broader questions of race and ethnicity in Latin America, indigenous policy, and comparative frontiers. Professor Garfield’s current research examines rubber tapping in the Brazilian Amazon during World War II and the roots of contemporary popular mobilization in the rainforest. He has received awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Archive Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, the American Historical Association, and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board; he is a member of the Executive Committee at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, the Advisory Committee on the Brazil Center at UT Austin, the Brazilian Studies Association, the Conference on Latin American History, and the Latin American Studies Association; and has held positions at Columbia University, Bowdoin College, and Yale University. His publications include Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil: State Policy, Frontier Expansion, and the Xavante Indians, 1937-1988 (Duke University Press, 2001), In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region (Duke University Press, 2013), and writings on military, environmental, and political conditions and in Brazil. His current research is entitled War in the Amazon: Brazil, the United States and the Struggle over the Rainforest from World War II to Global Warming. He earned his B.A., M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University.
Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar & Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago School of Law
Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar, and a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago School of Law. His work focuses on comparative and international law from an interdisciplinary perspective, and he currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an effort to gather and analyze all the constitutions of independent nations. Ginsburg’s publications include the books Judicial Review in New Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2003), which won the C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association; The Endurance of National Constitutions (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton) (Cambridge University Press, 2009), which also won a best book prize from APSA; Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (editor, with Tamir Moustafa) (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Comparative Constitutional Design (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Before teaching, he served as a legal adviser at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he continues to work with numerous international development agencies and foreign governments on legal and constitutional reform. He earned his B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
Gary Jacobsohn
Professor of Government and H. Malcolm Macdonald Chair in Constitutional and Comparative Law, University of Texas
Gary Jacobsohn is the Malcolm Macdonald Professor in Constitutional and Comparative Law in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. Professor Jacobsohn’s interest lies in constitutional theory and comparative constitutionalism. His recent published work includes Pragmatism, Statesmanship and the Supreme Court (Cornell University Press, 1977); The Supreme Court and the Decline of Constitutional Aspiration (Rowman and Littlefield, 1986); Apple of Gold: Constitutionalism in Israel and the United States (Princeton University Press, 1993); The Wheel of Law: India’s Secularism in Comparative Constitutional Context (Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press-India, 2003); American Constitutional Law: Essays, Cases, and Comparative Notes (with Donald Kommers and John Finn) (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009); and The Disharmonic Constitution: A Comparative Inquiry Into Constitutional Identity (Harvard University Press, 2010). Professor Jacobsohn has earned fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies at Williams College, the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was president of the New England Political Science Association and served as co-editor of the Rowman and Littlefield series on Studies in American Constitutionalism. He holds a B.A. from City College of New York and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Courtney Jung
Professor & Director, M.A. Program, Political Science, University of Toronto
Courtney Jung is a professor of political theory, comparative politics, and development studies and director of the Master’s program in political science at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on identity and identity formation at the intersection of comparative politics and contemporary political theory, and explores normative debates about liberalism, multiculturalism, and democratic participation through research into political identity formation, mainly in South Africa and Mexico. Professor Jung’s current research tracks the constitutional entrenchment of economic and social rights. She has received awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Fulbright New Century Scholars Program, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study; and has held visiting positions at Yale University, Central European University, and University of Cape Town. Her publications include The Moral Force of Indigenous Politics: Critical liberalism and the Zapatistas (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Then I Was Black: South African political identities in transition (Yale University Press, 2000), and writings about the truth and reconciliation commission in Canada. She earned her B.A. from Tufts University, her M.A. from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. from Yale University.
Julieta Lemaitre Ripoll
Associate Professor of Law, Universidad de los Andes
Julieta Lemaitre Ripoll is an associate professor of law at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. She is currently working on the intersection of law, social movements and violence in Colombia, specifically on how drug-related violence affects grassroots organizing. Her research focuses on law and social movements, law and violence and sexual and reproductive rights. Her next book, La Quintiada (Universidad de Los Andes, 2013), explores the letters and documents of the leaders of the indigenous rebellion from 1912-1925 in Cauca, Colombia. Her other publications include El Derecho Como Conjuro (Legal Fetishism) (Siglo del Hombres Editores y Universidad de los Andes, 2009), Derechos Enterrados (Buried Rights) (Centro de Investigaciones Sociojurídicas, 2010) and La Paz en Cuestión (The Peace at Hand) (La Editorial Universidad de Los Andes, 2011). She has participated in research projects with the Peace Research Institute at Oslo (PRIO) and “Constitution 2011,” a judicial reflection on the 20 years of Colombia’s current constitution. She received her M.A. from New York University, an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and a law degree from Universidad de los Andes.
Sanford Levinson
W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair and Professor of Government, University of Texas
Sanford Levinson is the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law and professor of government at the University of Texas. His work and research specializes in constitutional law. Professor Levinson’s books include Constitutional Faith (Princeton University Press, 1988), which won the Scribes Award; Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Duke University Press, 1998); Wrestling With Diversity (Duke University Press, 2003); Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) (Oxford University Press, 2006); Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (Oxford University Press, 2012); and, most recently, Loyalty (New York University Press, 2013) (ed., with Joel Parker & Paul Woodruff). Additionally, he is the author of over 350 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals. He was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1985-86 and a Member of the Ethics in the Professions Program at Harvard in 1991-92. Additionally, being a member of the American Law Institute, Professor Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. In 2010, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association. Professor Levinson received a bachelor’s degree from Duke University, a law degree from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Patricia Maclachlan
Associate Professor of Government and Asian Studies; Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Texas
Patricia Maclachlan is associate professor of government and Asian studies and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Professor of Japanese Studies. Maclachlan teaches courses on Japanese politics and foreign policy, East Asian political economies, and the international relations of the Asia Pacific. She is the author of The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871-2010 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011); Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Advocacy (Columbia University Press, 2002); and a co-editor of and contributing author to The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Cornell University Press, 2006). She has also written several articles and book chapters on consumer-related issues in Japan and the West, Japanese civil society, and on Japanese postal reform. Maclachlan received her Ph.D in political science and Japan studies in 1996 from Columbia University, and spent one year as a research associate in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University.
Tayyab Mahmud
Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Global Justice, Seattle University School of Law
Tayyab Mahmud is a professor of law and director of the Center for Global Justice at the Seattle University School of Law. He also currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Board of Governors of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), where he works with other progressive law teachers on justice, diversity and academic excellence. Mahmud’s research primarily focuses on critical legal theory, colonial and post-colonial systems, and international law. His published works deal with comparative constitutional law, human rights, and extra-constitutional usurpation and exercise of power in post-colonial states, and include Colonial Cartographies, Postcolonial Borders, and Enduring Failures of International Law: The Unending War along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier (20 Brooklyn J. Int’l L. 1, 2010); “Surplus Humanity” and Margins of Law: Slums, Slumdogs, and Accumulation by Dispossession (14 CHAPMAN L. REV. 1, 2010); and Postcoloniality and Mythologies of Civil(ized) Society (26 U.C.L.A. Chicano-Latino L. Rev. 41, 2006). Mahmud began his career a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and later became a Law & Public Affairs Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He holds a B.A. from University of the Punjab, an M.Sc. in International Relations from University of Islamabad, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii, and a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
James Melton
Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics, University College London
James Melton is a lecturer in British and Comparative Politics and a researcher in the Constitution Unit at University College London (UCL). His work focuses on cross-national constitution making and the effect of constitutional text on economic, social, and political development. He also co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, investigating the sources and consequences of constitutional choices. Melton’s publications include “On the Interpretability of Law: Lessons from the Decoding of National Constitutions” (with Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg) (British Journal of Political Science, 2012), “Comments on Law and Versteeg, The Declining Influence of the U.S. Constitution” (with Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg) (NYU Law Review, 2012), and The Endurance of National Constitutions (with Zachary Elkins and Tom Ginsburg) (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He is a recipient of the Indigo Trust Grant, the Best Book Award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association, and the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant. Prior to teaching at UCL, Melton was an assistant professor at the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. He holds a B.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Samuel Moyn
James Bryce Professor of European Legal History, Columbia University
Samuel Moyn is the James Bryce Professor of European Legal History in the Department of History at Columbia University. He has written extensively on the history of human rights and on modern European intellectual history, with special interests in France and Germany, political and legal thought, historical and critical theory, and Jewish studies. Moyn has been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship; the Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars (American Council of Learned Societies); the Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize (German Studies Association); the Mark van Doren Teaching Award (Columbia College); the Columbia University Distinguished Faculty Award; the Morris D. Forkosch Prize (Journal of the History of Ideas); and the Koret Foundation Jewish Studies Publication Prize. He is the author of copious articles and several books, including Human Rights and the Uses of History (Verso, 2014), The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2010), Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas Between Revelation and Ethics (Cornell University Press, 2006), and A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France (Brandeis University Press, 2005). Moyn also currently serves as a member of the Graduate Admissions Committee for Columbia University. He earned his B.A. from Washington University, M.A. and Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, and J.D. from Harvard University.
Paula Newberg
Clinical Professor & Wilson Chair Fellow in Pakistan Studies, University of Texas
Paula Newberg is Clinical Professor and Wilson Chair Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a noted scholar in South Asian studies, and her work focus on human rights, governance, democracy, and foreign policy. Professor Newberg has wide-ranging experience with multi-lateral and non-governmental organizations and has served as a special advisor to the United Nations in various regions. She has published extensively on issues including law and constitutionalism in Pakistan, insurgency and human rights in Kashmir, and international assistance to war-torn Afghanistan. Her works include Judging the State: Courts and Constitutional Politics in Pakistan (Cambridge South Asian Studies, 2002), Double Betrayal: Repression and Insurgency in Kashmir (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1995) with Masashi Nishihara, and The Politics of Human Rights (editor) (New York University Press, 1981). Before coming to the University of Texas last year, she was Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. Professor Newberg holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan
Kiyoteru Tsutsui is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and an affiliated professor at the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to his position at the University of Michigan, Dr. Tsutsui was an Associate Professor of Sociology at SUNY-Stony Brook and a visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University. Dr. Tsutsui’s work focuses on topics related to political sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights and Japanese society. In 2010 his article with Dr. Hwa-Ji Shin, “Global Norms, Local Activism and Social Movement Outcomes: Global Human Rights and Resident Koreans in Japan,” (Social Problems, 2010) was awarded the 2010 Best Scholarly Article Award from the American Sociology Association. He is currently completing a book, Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan, and his book with Dr. Alwyn Lim, Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World is under review at Cambridge University Press. Other recent publications include “International Human Rights Law and Social Movements: States’ Resistance and Civil Society’s Insistence” (Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences, 2012), and “The Trajectory of Perpetrators’ Trauma: Mnemonic Politics around the Asia-Pacific War in Japan” (Social Forces, 2009). He has represented Japan several times at US-Japanese leadership conferences, and was the recipient of a 1999 MacArthur Fellowship Award. Dr. Tsutsui earned his B.A. and M.A. in Sociology from Kyoto University in Japan and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University.
Mila Versteeg
Associate Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law
Mila Versteeg is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her research interests include comparative constitutional law, public international law, and empirical legal studies. Her publications include “The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism” (with David S. Law) (99 Cal. L. Rev. 1163, 2011); “The Declining Influence of the U.S. Constitution” (with David S. Law) (87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 762, 2012); and The Social and Political Foundations of Constitutions (editor with Denis Galligan) (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2013). Professor Versteeg’s writing focuses on quantitative and empirical approaches to the study of comparative constitutional law and the influence and limitations of constitutions in various contexts, including human rights, authoritarian regimes, and the U.S. Before teaching at The University of Virginia, Professor Versteeg was an Olin Fellow and lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School, a Hauser Global visiting researcher at New York University Law School, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Empirical Research in the Law at Washington University in St. Louis. She previously worked as a researcher at the U.N. Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute in Turin and at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre in Johannesburg. Professor Versteeg holds a D.Phil. in socio-legal studies from Oxford University, where she was a Gregory Kulkes Scholar at Balliol College and recipient of an Arts and the Humanities Research Council Award. She also holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, and a B.A. and law degree from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.