Responses to Atrocity: International and Domestic
Judicial Mechanisms
&
Transitional Justice Theory Building: Quantitative
and Qualitative Approaches
Friday, April 20, 2007 &
Saturday, April 21, 2007
University of Wisconsin Law School
Sponsors
University of Wisconsin Madison:
Global Legal Studies Center
(a joint initiative of UW Law School and the Division of International Studies) Humanitarianism
& World Order Research Circle
Legacies of Violence Research Circle
Division of International Studies
The International Institute
The African Studies Program &
Global Studies
(Research circles are supported by the Division of International Studies, the International
Institute & Global Studies) &
Political Science Department, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Responses to Atrocity: International and Domestic Judicial
Mechanisms
Conference Description
In the past ten to fifteen years, there has been a surge of legal activity aimed at redressing past
human rights atrocities. The purposes of these trials vary from accountability, to documenting a
historical record, to reconciliation, and reparation. From Darfur to Sierra Leone to the former
Yugoslavia and well beyond, the question of trials—whether international or domestic—is not
one that policy makers can ignore. Despite the instinctive appeal of legal processes to address
major human rights violations, the increasing use of courts raises a number of complex and
difficult questions.
This conference puts the spotlight on questions that have received relatively little attention in
the existing literature: what are the tensions and tradeoffs between international and domestic
judicial responses to past atrocities? Are international and domestic judicial mechanisms
competitive or complementary? What does an international trial accomplish that a domestic trial
cannot and vice versa? What are the limits of domestic and international trials? In what ways do
international trials influence domestic ones and vice versa? Is “local justice” better suited than
international trial standards or does “local” justice also have problems?
The conference brings together scholars and writers who work on a wide range of issues and
regions. Some will examine the global scene, examining the multiple ways that international,
foreign, and domestic trials interact. Some look at the interplay of international legal processes
and the behavior of states, from the former Yugoslavia to Northern Uganda. Others will examine
specific cases where courts succeeded and failed in redressing past human rights abuses, from
post-war Germany, to South Africa, Rwanda, and beyond.
For details, visit http://polisci.wisc.edu/tjdb/workshop.htm
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Responses to Atrocity: International and Domestic
Judicial Mechanisms
Agenda
Friday, April 20, 2007
(Room 3250 Law)
9:00-9:10 am
Introduction
Scott Straus
University of Wisconsin-Madison
9:10-10:30 am
Panel 1: Leigh Payne, Chair
“How International Tribunals Influence Each Other and How
They Interact with Domestic Efforts: An Overview”
Thierry Cruvellier
International Justice Tribune
“The Complementarity in Global and Domestic Trends in
Transitional Justice”
Kathryn Sikkink
University of Minnesota
10:45-Noon
Panel 2: Scott Straus, Chair
“Balance of Power and Justice in the Balance: International War
Crimes Tribunals and the Politics of State Cooperation”
Victor Peskin
Arizona State University
“The Delicate Dance: Law and Politics of Justice in
Central
Africa”
Peter Rosenblum
Columbia University
Noon – 1.30
(Room 7200 Law)
1:30-2:45 pm
Lunch Break (Husnus Restaurant, State Street)
(for speakers, chairs and commentators)
Panel 3: Heinz Klug, Chair
“The Hope(lessness) of Courts in Historical Reconstruction”
Judge Dennis Davis,
New York University and South Africa’s High Court
“Double Standards: Nazis and Terrorists on Trial in 1975 West
Germany”
Rebecca Wittmann
University of Toronto
3:00-4:15 pm
Panel 4: Sharon Hutchinson, Chair
“The Uses and Abuses of Local Justice”
Lars Waldorf
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University of London
“The LRA and the ICC: Peace, Reconciliation, and Justice in
Northern Uganda”
Ronald Atkinson
University of South Carolina
4:30-5:00 pm
Wrap-Up
Heinz Klug, Leigh Payne, and Scott Straus
University of Wisconsin-Madison
6:30 pm
7:00 pm
Reception – Harvest Restaurant (21 N. Pinckney)
Dinner – Harvest Restaurant
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Transitional Justice Theory Building: Quantitative &
Qualitative Approaches
Lubar Commons (Room 7200), UW Law School
Agenda
Saturday, April 21, 2007
8:30 - 9:00 am
Coffee and Muffins
9:00 - 9:15 am
Opening and Workshop Plan
Leigh Payne
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kathryn Sikkink
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
9:15 - 10:45
am
Session I: Trials and Prosecutions
Moderator: Scott Straus
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Sara Dahill-Brown, Tricia Olsen, Leigh Payne & Andrew Reiter
University of Wisconsin- Madison
Ellen Lutz
Cultural Survival
Joachim Savelsberg
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Commentator: Kathryn Sikkink
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
11:00- 12:30 pm
Session II: Truth Commissions
Moderator: Eric Brahm
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Hunjoon Kim
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Geoff Dancy
University of North Texas
Commentator: David Mendeloff
Carleton University
12:30 – 1:30 pm
Lunch
1:30 – 2:00 pm
Breakout Sessions
2:00 – 3:30 pm
Session III: Amnesty
Moderator: Louise Mallinder
Queen's University
Glenda Mezarobba
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University of São Paulo
Leslie Vinjamuri
Georgetown University
Commentator: Andrew Reiter
University of Wisconsin-Madison
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Breakout Sessions
4:00 – 5:30 pm
Session IV: Lustration, Reparation, and Other
Moderator: Courtney Hillebrecht
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Monika Nalepa
Rice University
Veronica Michel
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Commentator: Sara Dahill-Brown
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Tricia Olsen
University of Wisconsin-Madison
5:30 – 6:00 pm
Breakout Sessions
6:00 – 6:30 pm
Wrap-up
Leigh Payne
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kathryn Sikkink
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
7:00 pm
Dinner
Leigh Payne’s house
(2306 West Lawn Avenue; Phone: 608-233-0363)
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Abstracts
How International Tribunals Influence Each Other and How They Interact with Domestic Efforts:
An Overview (Thierry Cruvellier)
The interaction between war crimes prosecutions can occur at all levels: between two domestic
efforts, between two international undertakings, and between an international tribunal and a
national judicial system. Focusing primarily on international/international and
international/domestic interactions, and based on concrete experiences from Sierra Leone,
Rwanda, Bosnia, Congo or Colombia, the paper will present a brief overview of how diverse and
contingent the relationship between war crimes prosecutions efforts can be.
The Complementarily in Global and Domestic Trends in Transitional Justice (Kathryn Sikkink)
The doctrine of complementarity built into the statute of the ICC can be seen as a metaphor for
a much broader form of interaction of the international and domestic legal and political spheres
in the area of transitional justice. I will first document trends in international, foreign, and
domestic human rights trials, using data from a new data set that I have created together with
Carrie Booth Walling. The data suggests that these different trials are all part of a related global
phenomenon that I will refer to here as a new model of global regulation of core political rights.
For the most part, the new model uses a decentralized system of enforcement that depends
primarily on enforcement through domestic courts. International and foreign courts, however,
are the backup institutions necessary to create a fully functioning international model.
Balance of Power and Justice in the Balance: International War Crimes Tribunals and the Politics
of State Cooperation (Victor Peskin)
This presentation examines the shifting balance of power between the ad hoc International
Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and states implicated in mass
atrocity. The presentation will demonstrate that the tribunals’ lack of police powers has 1)
empowered states to defy their legal obligation to hand over war crimes suspects, witnesses, and
evidence to the tribunal; 2) compelled the tribunals to engage in a political process of
confrontation and negotiation to persuade defiant states to cooperate.
The Uses and Abuses of Local Justice (Lars Waldorf)
When it comes to confronting mass violence, the preferred transitional justice mechanisms –
international tribunals and national truth commissions – share two serious limitations: (1) they
cannot reach the majority of low-level perpetrators; and (2) they do not provide meaningful
restitution for most victims. These limitations point up the need for more attention to using
local justice mechanisms in post-conflict states. However, with the International Criminal Court
(ICC) starting its first prosecutions in northern Uganda and eastern Congo, there is a real
danger that international criminal justice will displace and discourage local justice initiatives.
The LRA and the ICC: Peace, Reconciliation, and Justice in Northern Uganda (Ronald Atkinson)
This paper will focus on a case study of responses to atrocity currently in process. Peace talks
to end the more than twenty-year war in northern Uganda are set to resume this month in Juba,
Southern Sudan. These talks represent the best chance to end the war in more than a decade,
and perhaps since it began. This paper examines the complex dynamics driving this process and
its likely success (including the strong commitment of the Lord’s Resistance Army/Movement to
ending the conflict), the problematic role of the International Criminal Court, and the potential
of local approaches to reconciliation and justice to serve as alternatives to the ICC.
The Hope(lessness) of Courts in Historical Reconstruction (Judge Dennis Davis)
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The presentation will discuss the transformation of domestic courts within the context of
redressing a brutal history in the case of South Africa. The country’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission had profound limitations, some of which were revealed in subsequent cases like
that of Wouter Basson, head of the Apartheid chemical program. The courts then became the
arena of redress and failed. This raises questions as to why and whether another outcome was
possible.
Double Standards: Nazis and Terrorists on Trial in 1975 West Germany (Rebecca Wittmann)
This paper will examine two enormous criminal trials that began in 1975 in West Germany: the
Majdanek Trial of Nazi camp guards, and the Stammheim Trial of the Red Army Faction (RAF)
terrorists. First, between 1975 and 1981 in Düsseldorf, 16 camp guards from the concentration
and death camp Majdanek in Lublin, Poland were tried for murder, and only one was found
guilty of perpetrating murder; 7 were convicted of aiding and abetting murder, 5 were
acquitted, and the rest either died during the trial or were removed from the case. Despite the
much larger body of information, evidence, and understanding regarding the Nazi crime
complex available in the 1970s than ever before, this result indicates a relaxing of sentencing
standards,. In the end really only the most sadistic – and exceptional – of Nazi criminals, usually
camp guards, were tried and convicted of murder. Changes to the law made it easier for those
who had the most power in the Nazi regime – the desktop murderers – to go free or escape
trial.
In contrast, I will explore the infamous Stammheim trial, which began in the same year. The
trial of the four founding members of the left-wing terrorist organization the RAF (Red Army
Faction) was, unlike the Majdanek trial, a heavily publicized, sensational media event in which
the Federal State Attorney’s office attempted to prosecute “enemies of the state” who had
traumatized the nation in the early 1970s with department store bombings, kidnapping, and the
murder. It is my contention that the conservatism of the judiciary, the general public belief that
Nazi crimes had been adequately dealt with, and the growing sense of insecurity in Germany
shaped the outcome of these two distinct trials.
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Biography of Speakers
Ronald Atkinson is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where he is director
of the African Studies Program. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on
Uganda. Most recently, he co-authored Traditional Ways of Coping in Acholi: Cultural Provisions
for Reconciliation and Healing from War. Ron has been actively involved in the peace process in
Norther Uganda, including holding a number of meetings with members of the LRA delegation,
both in Juba and London. He also recently returned from a meeting with the ICC’s Chief
Prosecutor.
Eric Brahm is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His
research examines the politics of transitional justice and the effects of uncovering the past, as
well as how these mechanisms contribute to post-conflict reconstruction. He teaches human
rights and violence/terror at UNLV. In terms of research, he is interested in questions of
evaluating the contribution of transitional justice mechanisms to post-conflict societies and
nascent transitional justice efforts in Liberia and Aceh, particularly the role of transnational
activists. He is more generally interested in the strata of international expertise promoting
transitional justice and better understanding how they operate, assumptions, etc. He is the
author of “Truth and Consequences: The Impact of Truth Commissions in Transitional Societies”
(PhD dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, 2006) and
“Uncovering the Truth: Examining Truth Commission Success and Impact,” International Studies
Perspectives 8:1 (February 2007): 16-35.
Thierry Cruvellier is the editor of the online newsletter International Justice Tribune. He has
covered the trials held before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) between
1997 and 2002, the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003 and the War Crimes Chamber in
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2005. He is the author of four leading reports on the ICTR and the
Special Court for Sierra Leone for the International Crisis Group. He has been a consultant with
the International Center for Transitional Justice since 2003, reporting on war crimes
prosecutions in the Balkans, Burundi, Sierra Leone and Colombia. In 2003-2004, Cruvellier was
a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He holds a Masters in Journalism from Sorbonne
University, Paris. His book on the ICTR, Le Tribunal des Vaincus – Un Nuremberg pour le
Rwanda?, was published by Calmann-Lévy in April 2006.
Sara Dahill-Brown is a Ph.D. Student in Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She
is completing her first year in the Ph.D. program in Political Science at UW-Madison. She
studies international relations and comparative politics with broad research interests in South
East Asia, war, and the efficacy of international governmental and non-governmental
organizations, IGOs, and INGOs respectively. Currently she is studying the roll that IGOs and
INGOs play in the resolution of and recovery from intra-state conflict.
Geoff Dancy is an Adjunct Instructor of International Relations, University of North Texas. He
will begin pursuing his Ph.D. in the fall of 2007 at the University of Minnesota. His research is
broadly interested in the merging of normative and rationalist studies of decision-making using
cross-national data. Specifically, Dancy has an interest in questions surrounding international
law, transitional justice, and human rights. His Master's thesis, "Do As They Say and As They
Do: An Integrated Approach to the Study of Norm Influence on Truth Commission Initiation,
1976-2003" (MA Thesis, Department of Political Science, University of North Texas, 2006),
examines not whether truth commissions are an "effective" institution, but why they are
established by state leaders in the first place. Dancy is also the co-author of "Judicial Decision
Making and International Tribunals: Assessing the Impact of Individual, National and
International Factors" Social Sciences Quarterly 86:3 (Sept 2005): 683-703 and "What Comes
Before Truth? An Analysis of the Political Determinants of Truth Commission Onset" presented
at the 47th International Studies Association Annual Convention.
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Dennis Davis has been since 1998 a judge of the High Court of South Africa, and since 2000,
the Judge President of South Africa’s Competition Appeal Court. Previously a Professor at the
University of Cape Town where he still teaches competition law, tax, and constitutional law, he
is currently a Global Law Professor at New York University. Between 1991-97, he was Director of
the Centre of Applied Legal Studies at Witwatersrand University.
Sharon Hutchinson is Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Conversant in Arabic and Nuer, a southern Sudanese language, Hutchinson
has conducted many years of anthropological field investigations on war-provoked processes of
social and economic change among the second largest ethnic group in the South. Her most
recent research efforts have concentrated on the plight of displaced southern Sudanese in
Khartoum and on ethnic conflict, oil development and religious change in the South. She is
author of a prize-winning book titled Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War and the State as
well as numerous scholarly articles. In addition to her scholarly writings, Sharon Hutchinson has
worked extensively with international humanitarian agencies active in the southern Sudan,
including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders and Save the
Children Fund. She also served during 2002-2003 on a front-line human rights field operation in
the southern Sudanese war zone. She was also honored by members of the Swiss Parliament as
among the “1000 women” collectively nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
Hunjoon Kim is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at University of Minnesota. His
dissertation examines the causes and impact of global diffusion of transitional justice measures.
His publications include “Peacebuilding: What is in a Name?” Global Governance 13 (2007): 3558 (coauthored with Michael Barnett et al.). His recent presentations include: “Why and When
Do Countries Seek to Address Past Human Rights Violations after Transition? An Event History
Analysis of 100 Countries covering 1980~2004” and “A Path toward the Establishment of a Truth
Commission on Jeju April 3rd Incident in Korea” at the 48th International Studies Association
Annual Convention.
Heinz Klug is Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an Honorary
Senior Research Associate in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also the Director of the Global Legal Studies Center and R H.
I. Romnes Faculty Fellow. He teaches International Human Rights Law, Comparative
Constitutionalism and Public International Law at the Law School. Growing up in Durban, South
Africa, he participated in the anti-apartheid struggle, spent 11 years in exile and returned to
South Africa in 1990 as a member of the ANC Land Commission and researcher for Zola
Skweyiya, chairperson of the ANC Constitutional Committee. He was also a team member on
the World Bank mission to South Africa on Land Reform and Rural Restructuring. He has
taught at Wisconsin since September 1996. Professor Klug taught law at the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg from 1991-1996, offering courses on Public International Law,
Human Rights Law, Property Law, Post-Apartheid Law and Introduction to South African Law,
among others. He also worked as a legal advisor after 1994 with the South African Ministry of
Water Affairs and Forestry as well as the Ministry of Land Affairs on water law and land tenure
issues. Professor Klug's book on South Africa's democratic transition, Constituting Democracy
was published by Cambridge University Press in 2000.
Ellen Lutz is the Executive Director of Cultural Survival, a non-profit human rights organization
that focuses on the rights of indigenous peoples. She received her J.D. from University of
California-Berkeley and her M.A. in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College. Prior to joining
Cultural Survival in 2004, she was the Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights and
Conflict Resolution at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where she
taught courses in international human rights, international criminal law, and international
organizations. She is the co-editor of two forthcoming books: Trying Heads of State (with
Caitlin Reiger), which examines the impact of the international justice movement on national
government willingness to try perpetrators of human rights and financial crimes; and Human
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Rights and Conflict Resolution in Context (with Eileen Babbitt) which explores the overlap
between human rights and conflict resolution initiatives in Colombia, Sierra Leone, and
Northern Ireland. Along with Kathryn Sikkink, she authored a series of articles exploring the
“justice cascade” in Latin America.
Louise Mallinder is a Research Assistant in the School of Law at Queen's University Belfast. She
has recently completed her doctorate at Queen’s University Belfast (December 2006). To
facilitate her doctoral research, Louise created an extensive database that compiled information
on 421 amnesty laws from 127 countries and their related jurisprudence. This will be made
available online in the future. Louise is currently preparing her first monograph, entitled To
Forgive but not Forget? Amnesties, Transition and the Price of Peace (Hart Publishing 2008). In
addition, Louise has published book reviews on texts on international criminal justice and
constitutional law, and has presented her research at international conferences. She is currently
working on a number of articles for publication and has been commissioned by the German
Development Agency to write a report on state practice relating to amnesties for an
international conference in June 2007. Finally Louise has taught a number of subjects at both
undergraduate and postgraduate level including public international law, international criminal
justice, conflict regulation, conflict resolution, constitutional law and research methods.
David Mendelof is an Assistant Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs
at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He currently teaches courses in conflict analysis, postconflict peacebuilding, and U.S. foreign security policy. He also serves as Director of the Centre
for Security and Defence Studies (CSDS), a leading Canadian research centre on international
and Canadian security and defence issues housed at NPSIA. He is also faculty associate of
Carleton’s Institute of European and Russian Studies. Mendeloff's research is on the causes and
prevention of war; nationalist, ethnic and identity conflict; historical memory and interstate
conflict; post-conflict peacebuilding and transitional justice; and national misperceptions and
ideational sources of foreign policy. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and B.A. (Hons.) in international relations from Pitzer College,
Claremont.
Glenda Mezarobba is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at University of São Paulo in Brazil.
A journalist since 1988, she is member of Brazilian Association of Political Science, the Nucleus
of Support to Research about Democratization and Development at USP, and the Group of
Research about Politics and Law at University of Campinas. She was granted a scholarship from
Fapesp and currently a visiting fellow at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
in New York. She is the author of Um Acerto de Contas com o Futuro: a Anistia e suas
Conseqüências - um Estudo do Caso Brasileiro, published by editora Humanitas, São Paulo,
2006.
Veronica Michel - Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Veronica Michel got her B.A. in International
Relations at the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). She is currently a
MacArthur Scholar in her first year of the PhD in Political Science at the University of
Minnesota. She is interested in understanding the conditions in which human rights are more
likely to be protected and enforced, and the processes and dynamics that enable these conditions
to emerge. She is currently working on a paper that seeks to explore the factors that may
account for the recent wave of judicial reforms in Latin America.
Monika Nalepa is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rice University. She applies
formal methods to the study of legislative institutions and institutional design in democratizing
countries. She has received support from the National Science Foundation and the United States
Institute of Peace to conduct field research on legal values and attitudes to the past communist
era in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. She will be spending the 2006-07 academic
year on a fellowship at the Harvard Academy of Scholars, where she will work on a book
manuscript, “Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in the Post-Communist World.” Most
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recently, Dr. Nalepa has published two articles in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. She also
served as guest co-editor of a special volume of the JCR devoted to Transitional Justice.
Tricia Olsen graduated from Carleton College with a B.A. in Latin American Studies and a minor
in Political Science, where she refined her Spanish and Portuguese language skills. She earned
her M.A. in Political Science from UW-Madison in 2006. Now in the Ph.D. program in Political
Science at the UW-Madison, Olsen’s primary role in the Transitional Justice Data Base Project is
to undertake the data compilation and statistical analyses. Trained as a comparativist and
methodologist, her substantive research interests include the fusion of political economy and
social movement literature, especially movements surrounding human rights. Her current work
focuses on whether the economic health of a country influences its decisions to employ specific
transitional justice mechanisms.
Leigh Payne is Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the
author of the forthcoming book Unsettling Accounts: Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in
Confessions of State Violence (Duke University Press, 2007). She co-edited the recently
published The Art of Truth-telling about Authoritarian Rule (University of Wisconsin Press,
2005). She also wrote Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right Wing and Democracy in Latin
America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) and Brazilian Industrialists and
Democratic Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). She is the co-editor with
Ernest Bartell of Business and Democracy in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1995). She has received research support for her various projects from the MacArthur
Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright
Commission, the Inter-American Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Victor Peskin is an assistant professor in The School of Global Studies at Arizona State
University. His scholarly and teaching interests lie at the intersection of international relations,
comparative politics, public law, and human rights. His research examines the politics of the
contemporary international criminal tribunals and their contentious relationship with states
implicated in war crimes and genocide. He has published articles in Europe-Asia Studies, Legal
Affairs, International Peacekeeping, the Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of International
Criminal Justice. Peskin is also the author of the forthcoming book, International Justice in
Rwanda and the Balkans: Virtual Trials and State Cooperation (Cambridge University Press).
Andrew Reiter - Now completing his third year in the Ph.D. program at UW-Madison, he
focuses broadly on comparative politics and international relations, with specific research
interests in the topics of transitional justice, democratization, violence, and civil war. Now in his
third year working on the Transitional Justice Data Base Project, Reiter is focused on
conceptualizing the balance of power and the strength of spoilers in transitional democracies,
and the impact of the use of amnesty as a tool of transitional justice - particularly in ending civil
wars and armed conflicts. He recently presented a paper "In Defense of Amnesty? An Analysis
of Transitional Justice and State Practice from 1974-2003" at the Annual Midwest Political
Science Association Conference that empirically demonstrates the high rates impunity still
prevalent in transitions to democracy. He is currently working on another paper, "How to Heal
Fresh Wounds: A Cross-National Analysis of Civil War and Transitional Justice," that seeks to
assess how civil wars end.
Peter Rosenblum is the holder of the newly created Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein
Clinical Professorship of Human Rights Law at Columbia Law School. A dedicated human rights
activist, his appointment marks his return not only to his undergraduate and LL.M. alma mater,
but to a city he considers the epicenter of international human rights work. He has had a wide
range of experience outside academia. He was a human rights officer with the Geneva-based
precursor to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, a program director of
the International Human Rights Law Group, and a researcher for both Human Rights Watch and
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the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights. Through these postings, he has served in more than
a dozen countries, though he continues to maintain a strong interest in Africa, particularly the
Democratic Republic of Congo. His work in that nation has given him a unique perspective on a
country that is often held up as a failure of diplomatic and humanitarian efforts.
Joachim J. Savelsberg is Professor of Sociology at University of Minnesota. He teaches courses in
the sociology of law, punishment, and criminal behavior (including elite crime), sociological
theory, and the sociology of knowledge. His recent work has explored the reciprocal relationship
between collective memory and institutional responses to atrocities, including legal responses.
His paper “Law and Collective Memory,” forthcoming in the Annual Review for Law and Social
Sciences (Vol. 3, 2007), focuses on atrocity accounts. Another article in the American Journal of
Sociology (Vol. 111, 2005: 579-616) addresses ways in which collective memories of evil become
institutionalized as law and law enforcement, for the case of hate crime law, comparatively for
Germany and the United States (both pieces are co-authored with Ryan D. King, a former
advisee, now Assistant Professor at SUNY Albany). His current projects deal with effects of the
ICTY on New York Times accounts of atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars; and the
effects of collective memories of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam on current responses to war
crimes committed by the U.S. military in Iraq.
Kathryn Sikkink is Regents Professor, the Arleen Carlson Professor of Political Science and the
McKnight Distinguished University Professor at the University of Minnesota. She has a M.A. and
Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Her publications include Mixed Signals: U.S.
Human Rights Policy and Latin America; Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics (co-authored with Margaret Keck); The Power of Human Rights:
International Norms and Domestic Change (co-edited with Thomas Risse and Stephen Ropp);
Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks and Norms (co-edited
with Sanjeev Khagram and James Riker); and Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil
and Argentina. She is a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Association
for Arts and Sciences, and a member of the editorial board of the American Political Science
Review, International Studies Quarterly, and International Organization.
Scott Straus is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
He is the author of two books on Rwanda: The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in
Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2006), and, with Robert Lyons, Intimate Enemy: Images and
Voices of the Rwandan Genocide (MIT/Zone Books, 2006). In February, The Order of Genocide
was given the 2006 Award for Excellence in Political Science and Government from the
Association of American Publishers. Straus also co-authored, with David Leonard, Africa's Stalled
Development: International Causes and Cures (Lynne Rienner, 2003), and he translated JeanPierre Chrétien’s The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History (MIT/Zone, 2003).
Straus has additionally published articles in Foreign Affairs, Genocide Studies and Prevention,
the Journal of Genocide Research, and the Wisconsin International Law Journal.
Leslie Vinjamuri is an Assistant Professor at the Georgetown University’s School of Foreign
Service. She currently teaches courses on International Organization, and International Politics
and is a member of the Mortara Center for International Studies. This academic year she is a
visiting fellow both at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, and the Centre for
International Studies at the London School of Economics where she is pursuing research on the
effects of justice and accountability on peace negotiations and postwar environments, and the
role of nonstate secular and religious actors in transitional justice. She is also completing a
book manuscript, Justice, War, and Accountability since 1945. Her research is supported by a
grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation. She has also held grants from the Institute of War
and Peace Studies at Columbia University, the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at
Georgetown University, the Eisenhower Institute, and the Institute for the Study of World
Politics. She has published on issues of accountability and justice in International Security,
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Survival, and other leading journals. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a fellow at Harvard
University's John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. She is a consultant to NGOs based in
Europe and the United States on issues of transitional justice and U.S. foreign policy and
received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Lars Waldorf is Lecturer in International Human Rights Law and Course Convener of the
Human Rights MA at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. He is
writing a book on Rwanda’s community genocide trials (gacaca) with support from a United
States Institute of Peace grant. He was a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program
from 2004 to 2005 after running Human Rights Watch’s field office in Rwanda for two years
and covering genocide trials at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
for a year.
Rebecca Wittmann is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Her research
focuses on the Holocaust, postwar German trials of Nazi perpetrators and terrorists, and
German legal history. She has received fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). She has
published articles in Central European History, German History, and Lessons and Legacies. Her
book, Beyond Justice: The Auschwitz Trial (Harvard University Press, 2005) won the Fraenkel
Prize in Contemporary History. She is currently on leave in Germany working on her next
project: “Nazism and Terrorism: The Madjanek and Stammheim Trials in 1975 West Germany.”
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