The 2008 Stefan A. Riesenfeld Symposium
Realizing the Potential: Global Corporations and Human Rights
Date: Friday, March 24, 2008
Location: Room 105, Boalt Hall, University of California Berkeley School of Law.
Agenda
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1:00–1:30 |
Opening Address:
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1:30–2:50 |
The Potential Of Transnational Corporations To Advance Human Rights Practices: |
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2:50–3:00 |
Coffee Break |
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3:00–4:20 |
The Role Of The Legal Profession In Realizing The Potential Of Corporate Social Responsibility
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| 4:20–4:30 | Break |
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4:30–5:30 |
Keynote Address:
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5:30–7:00 |
Institute for Global Challenges and the Law Reception, Riesenfeld Award Ceremony: Honoring Professor David Weissbrodt |
Co-Sponsors
- The Institute for Global Challenges in the Law
- Human Rights Center
- Boalt Hall Committee for Human Rights
- Morgan Lewis
Biographies
Monica Oberkofler is Director of Social Responsibility at Gap Inc. Dr.
Oberkofler oversees strategy, policy, and public reporting on social
responsibility issues for the company. She was a key player in the
development of the company's landmark 2003 and 2004 Social
Responsibility Reports. Oberkofler works closely with several multistakeholder
groups, including the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and Social
Accountability International (SAI),as part of her policy and public reporting
responsibilities. She also represents Gap Inc. on the Business Leaders
Initiative for Human Rights (BLIHR), as well as the Global Reporting
Initiative's (GRI) working group to develop common reporting standards for
the apparel and footwear industries. Oberkofler has a PhD in European
politics and law from Oxford University and an AB in history, summa cum
laude, from Dartmouth College. She joined Gap Inc. in 2003.
Panel #1: The Potential Of Transnational Corporations To Advance Human Rights Practices
Laurel Fletcher is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law. She is active in the areas of transitional justice and humanitarian law, as well as globalization and migration. As director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, she utilizes an interdisciplinary, problem-based approach to human rights research, advocacy, and policy. She has conducted empirical studies of the human rights impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami, forced labor in the United States, forced migration from the Dominican Republic, and the relationship between justice, accountability, and reconciliation in Bosnia. Before joining the Boalt Hall faculty in 1998, Fletcher practiced complex civil litigation, including representing plaintiffs in employment discrimination class actions. She received her J.D. from Harvard University.
Patrick Keenan is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, where he founded and directs the school’s International Human Rights Clinic. He is presently visiting at the University of Chicago School of Law. Professor Keenan’s recent scholarship focuses on the effects of financial globalization on human rights practices. Before coming to the College of Law, Professor Keenan spent five years litigating death penalty cases in Georgia and Alabama as an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. While in law school, he also studied at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Before entering law school, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Christiana Ochoa is an Associate Professor of Law at the Indiana University
School of Law. Her scholarship concerns global governance and human
rights, focusing in particular on two inter-connected areas: the role of
individuals in law-formation and the inextricable links between global
economic activity and human rights. Before joining the faculty in 2003,
Professor Ochoa was an associate in the Banking and Finance Group at the
New York office of the global law firm, Clifford Chance, where she dedicated
her efforts to cross-border capital markets and asset-backed finance
transactions. Ochoa has also worked for a number of human rights and nongovernmental
organizations in Colombia, Brazil, and Nicaragua. She has lived
for extended periods in Latin America and has significant academic and other
work experience in that region. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law
School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Human Rights Journal.
Hannah R. Garry is Visiting Associate Professor of international law at
University of Colorado Law at Boulder. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a
Legal Officer for the Honorable Judge Fausto Pocar in the Appeals Chamber
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2004-
2007 working on cases involving serious violations of international
humanitarian law in the Balkans as well as Rwanda. During that time, she also
served as Deputy Chief of Cabinet in the Office of President Pocar assisting in
coordinating the judicial, diplomatic and administrative work of that office.
Professor Garry has previously been a law clerk to the Honorable Judge
Rosemary Barkett sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit. She has
also worked in the private sector as an Associate with Freshfields, Bruckhaus,
Deringer LLP's New York office practicing in the international arbitration,
dispute resolution and public international law groups. She received her J.D.
from the UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Managing Editor of the
Berkeley Journal of International Law, and her Master's in International
Affairs from Columbia University.
Panel #2: The Current State of International Human Rights Institutions
Oona A. Hathaway is a Professor of Law at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. Prior to coming to Berkeley, she was an associate professor of law at Yale Law School. She previously served as a law clerk for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and for D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Wald, held fellowships at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Center for the Ethics and the Professions, and served as an Associate Professor at Boston University School of Law. Her current research—for which she was awarded a Carnegie Scholars Award—focuses on the promise and limits of international law and on the intersection of U.S. constitutional law and international law. Professor Hathaway also serves as a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the United States Department of State. She is currently working on a book entitled, Strong States, Strong World: Why International Law Succeeds and Fails and What We Should Do About It. She earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Harvard University and her J.D. at Yale Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal.
John Bellinger served as Senior Advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to 2009. Previously, he served as Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House from 2001 to 2005. As Legal Adviser, he provided legal advice to President Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, NSC Principals, and NSC and White House staff on a broad range of national security and international legal matters. He was one of the principal drafters of the 2004 law that created the position of Director of National Intelligence. Bellinger received his A.B. cum laude in 1982 from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and his J.D. cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School. He also received an M.A. in Foreign Affairs in 1991 from the University of Virginia, where he was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Foreign Affairs Fellowship.
Elise Keppler is senior counsel with the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, which works to ensure accountability for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes through international, hybrid, and domestic courts. Ms. Keppler regularly engages in targeted advocacy with the US government and Congress to advance the program’s objectives. Ms. Keppler has been involved in several high-profile Human Rights Watch campaigns. These include successful efforts to see former Liberian president Charles Taylor surrendered for trial for alleged crimes committed in Sierra Leone, to secure a Security Council referral of crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and to defeat US-sponsored Security Council resolutions that gave immunity to UN personnel from states that are not part of the ICC treaty. Based on fact-finding in Sierra Leone in 2004 and 2005, Ms. Keppler produced two reports on the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2007, she conducted multiple trips to Uganda and wrote a series of memoranda on benchmarks for justice for serious crimes committed in the nearly two-decade conflict in the north of the country. Most recently, she helped to develop a briefing paper on Human Rights Watch’s international justice priorities for the Obama Administration. Ms. Keppler has been with Human Rights Watch since the summer of 2003. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Elise Keppler worked as a litigation associate at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP. Elise Keppler is a Berkeley Law alum.
- Dinah Shelton
is the Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law at George Washington University School of Law, a position that she has held since 2004. Prior to her current position, she was professor of international law and director of the doctoral program in international human rights law at the University of Notre Dame Law School from 1996 to 2004. She previously taught at Santa Clara University and has been a visiting lecturer at universities in the U.S. and France. Professor Shelton is the author of prize-winning books and many articles on international law, human rights law, and international environmental law. In 2006, she was awarded the prestigious Elizabeth Haub Prize in Environmental Law. She has served as a legal consultant to the United Nations Environment Programme, UNITAR, World Health Organization, European Union, Council of Europe, and Organization of American States. A board member of many human rights and environmental organizations, Professor Shelton graduated from U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
Introduction of Keynote Speaker: Richard M. Buxbaum is a Professor of Law at Berkeley School of Law and a Jackson H. Ralston Professor of International Law. Professor Buxbaum founded and was the first chair of UC Berkeley's Center for German and European Studies and Center for Western European Studies. From 1993 to 1999, he was dean of international and area studies at UC Berkeley. Professor Buxbaum was one of the five defense counsel in the criminal proceedings against the 773 members of the Free Speech Movement from 1964 to 1967; represented various campus organizations and individuals in cases arising out of Vietnam War protests; and was defense counsel in a large number of criminal proceedings that accompanied the Third World Strike of 1969-70, which was a factor in the development of affirmative action programs for student admissions on the campus. He was the first director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at Berkeley, serving from 1969 to 1974. His involvement with the National Housing Law Project goes back to its formation as a Backup Center for the Legal Services Corporation in 1969. Professor Buxbaum has also served on various state and national committees engaged in the drafting and review of corporate and securities legislation. He is contributing editor to a variety of U.S. and foreign professional journals and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Michigan, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munster and Sydney. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Cologne, Osnabruck and Eotvos Lorand Budapest, and received the 1992-93 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award for Humanities and Arts. Professor Buxbaum is a member of the American Law Institute and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
Keynote Speaker: Professor Philip Alston is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. A world-renowned scholar in international human rights law, Professor Alston has served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions since 2004 and undertook official missions to the Philippines, Brazil, Central African Republic, Afghanistan and the United States in 2007-2008. He was also a member of the Group of Experts on Darfur appointed in 2007 by the U.N. Human Rights Council, and has been Special Adviser to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals since 2002. He chaired the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights for eight years, until 1998. At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights Professor Alston was elected to chair the first meeting of the Presidents and Chairs of all of international human rights courts and committees (including the European and American Human Rights Courts and the African Commission). He was UNICEF's legal adviser throughout the period of the drafting of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and directed a major project funded by the European Commission, which resulted in the publication of a Human Rights Agenda for the European Union for the Year 2000 and a volume of essays on that theme. Professor Alston is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
