Thursday, October 28, 2010

IntLawGrrls

IntLawGrrls

The memory cascade in Cambodia

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:16 AM PDT

When I first began working in Cambodia almost fifteen years ago, I was shocked to learn that the history of the Khmer Rouge was not taught in the schools (prior post). The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) began pushing in 1999 to change this situation, publishing a high school textbook on the Khmer Rouge regime in 2007, the year after the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) began operating. The DC-Cam has subsequently held numerous teacher trainings to educate teachers in methods of presenting this history to their students.
Earlier this month, just two weeks after the indictments were filed in Case 002 at the ECCC, Indra Devi High School in Phnom Penh unveiled new anti-genocide slogans on their library building. The signs, pictured at left, say "Talking about experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime is to promote reconciliation and to educate children about forgiveness and tolerance," and "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide."
Through these signs, the DC-Cam aims to raise awareness among teachers and students about genocide and genocide prevention, a task that is particularly important given that 70 percent of Cambodians were born after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. By early next year, every high school in the country will display similar slogans.
The timing of these successful efforts to memorialize the crimes of the Khmer Rouge and the creation and operation of the ECCC are not coincidental. The ECCC has arguably served as a catalyst for this memory cascade, creating political space for non-governmental organizations to pursue creative transitional justice efforts. Other efforts have been more closely tied to the ECCC, such as the DC-Cam's Living Documents project through which victims of the Khmer Rouge visit to the tribunal to watch a trial and then facilitate public discussions about the proceedings in their home village.
But all of the numerous memory projects that have proliferated in recent years owe a debt to the tribunal. Though the ECCC's role in formal accountability has been limited to the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, the tribunal has played a crucial role in enabling a much broader range of activities, all of which will work in tandem to ensure that mass crimes are never again committed on Cambodian soil.

Go On! ASIL midyear in Miami

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 02:00 AM PDT

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

Next month the American Society of International Law will break from a long D.C. tradition and hold its 2010 Midyear Meeting in Miami, Florida. Of the plan to meet November 12 and 13 in that southernmost city, ASIL President David D. Caron explained:

Convening the international law community throughout the United States and the rest of the world is an important priority for the Society — to serve our far-flung members, and also to reach growing new constituencies of international law within the bar and the judiciary, among representatives of the media, and in the general public.
As they do every autumn, ASIL's Executive Council and the editors of the American Journal of International Law will gather. Additionally, those of us who are working on ASIL's Benchbook on International Law project look forward to the opportunity to vet drafts with a panel of federal judges.
Newly supplementing in camera sessions like these will be a day of events open to the public (many offering Continuing Legal Education credit). Examples of public events for Friday, November 12, at the University of Miami Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Alumni Center:
► "Stop the Hand-Wringing and Do Something: Solutions on the Table to What is Perceived to be Wrong with International Arbitration," featuring: Catherine Amirfar (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP); Edward Mullins (Astigarraga Davis LLP); and Michael Reisman (Yale Law). Chaired by IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP), ASIL's Immediate Past President.
► "The Top Six Recent Arbitrations Everyone Should Know," featuring: Mahnoush Arsanjani (International Law Associates), an ASIL Vice President; David Bederman (Emory Law); Ryan Reetz (Squire Sanders LLP). Chaired by Donald Francis Donovan (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP).
► Luncheon keynote, "Florida and the Globalization of the Legal Profession: Insights from the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20," by Carolyn Lamm (White & Case LLP) (above left), Immediate Past President of the American Bar Association.
► "Career Fair/Mentoring Session for Students"
► "Revisiting the Place of International Law in Domestic Law," featuring: Judge Rosemary Barkett (U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit) (right); Judge Adalberto Jordan (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida); Curtis Bradley (Duke Law); and Eyal Benvenisti (Tel Aviv Law); chaired by Laurence Helfer (Duke Law).
► "National, Regional, and International Perspectives on International Criminal Accountability," featuring: Olivia Swaak-Goldman (Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court); and Dinah Shelton (George Washington Law) (below left), a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Chaired by yours truly, IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann (University of California, Davis, Law), an ASIL Vice President.
All participants also are welcome to register for the conference dinner that evening at the Biltmore Hotel; featured will be "Justice and Leadership Dilemmas in Shakespeare," the keynote by Judge Theodor Meron, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and ASIL Honorary President.
Events are free for students, ASIL members, and affiliates of the meeting's cosponsoring law firms and law schools; for others, there is a fee. Details and registration here.

On October 28

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 12:44 AM PDT

On this day in ...
... 1830 (180 years ago today), the couple at right, Nancy and Josiah Henson, and their 4 children arrived in Canada, having escaped slavery in Maryland on the Underground Railroad. He would become pastor of a church in Dresden, Ontario, and start a technical school. He is said to have been the model for the lead character in Uncle Tom's Cabin, the antislavery novel published, as we've posted, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

(Prior October 28 posts are here, here, and here.)
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