Schedule
All panel sessions were held in the Law School, Room 290. To view video footage of the conference, you will need the QuickTime player, available for free download here.
Friday, February 16, 2007
| 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm: |
Panel: Global Influence on U.S. Jurisprudence |
| Panelists: | David Gray - bio |
| Professor John McGinnis - bio |
| Professor Nick Rosenkranz - bio |
| Professor Mattias Kumm - bio |
| Professor Amos Guiora - bio |
| Moderator: | Professor Allen Weiner - bio |
| Watch a video of this panel. |
| 3:15 pm - 4:45 pm: |
Panel: Effects of U.S. Law on Other Nations' Jurisprudence |
| Panelists: | Professor Dieter Grimm - bio |
| Justice Stefan Trechsel - bio |
| Justice Asher Grunis - bio |
| Chief Judge Deanell Tacha - bio |
| Moderator: | Professor Helen Stacy - bio |
| Watch a video of this panel. |
| 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm: | Keynote Address, Law School Room 290 |
| Video will be available shortly. |
Saturday, February 17, 2007
| 8:30 am - 9:00 am: | Breakfast |
| 9:00 am - 10:30 am: |
Panel: Creating Constitutions |
| Panelists: | Ambassador Feisal Istrabadi - bio |
| Vikram Raghavan - bio |
| Justice Sam Rugege - bio |
| Professor Michel Rosenfeld - bio |
| Moderator: | Dean Larry Kramer - bio |
| Watch a video of this panel. |
| 10:30 am - 10:45 am: | Break |
| 10:45 am - 12:15 pm: |
Panel: National Security and Constitutional Protections |
| Panelists: | Dr. Laura Donohue - bio |
| Lord Lloyd of Berwick - bio |
| Sir David Omand - bio |
| Professor Clive Walker - bio |
| R. James Woolsey - bio |
| Moderator: | Professor Kathleen Sullivan - bio |
| Watch a video of this panel. |
| 12:15 pm - 12:30 pm: | Break |
| 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm: | Closing Lunch |
Panel Descriptions
All panel sessions will be held in Room 290 of the Law School.
Panel: Global Influence on U.S. Jurisprudence
Interpreting and applying the law in the U.S. legal system is no longer entirely a domestic enterprise. In Roper v. Simmons and Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court relied on international and foreign law to construe the U.S. Constitution. Because of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Guantanamo Bay detainees can invoke the protections of not only the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but also the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Hamdan decision has also rekindled debates on the role of the federal government's three branches in conducting and adjudicating the war on terror, issues that have been addressed by foreign Supreme Courts in countries with deep experience in confronting terrorism. These developments and the growing cross-border interdependence between countries, courts, and judges have sparked a discussion over the broadening influence of international and foreign law on the United States. This panel will serve as a platform for that conversation. It will address when international and foreign law should inform, or even trump, U.S. law, and when the United States should follow the practices of other nations. The panelists will debate questions ranging from whether Congress can expand its legislative power through treaties and when courts should apply non-self-executing international law. In answering these questions, the panelists will argue over the influence of treaties, customary international law, and foreign law on the U.S. legal system.
Panel: Effects of U.S. Law on Other Nations' Jurisprudence
With the spread of democratic government in the latter half of the 20th century, more and more nations have adopted constitutions as foundational political texts. This panel will examine the extent to which the United States Constitution as the oldest written constitution still in use has influenced the foundational documents and interpretive
approaches of these newer constitutions. It will examine the role of other western states such as Germany as potential sources of constitutional doctrine for emergent national constitutional courts, and analyze the factors that lead to the selection by new nations of different constitutional precedents. The panel will also question whether and to what extent the perceived willingness, or lack thereof, of U.S. courts to consider foreign sources of law has impacted the
practice or frequency of others nations' references to U.S. law. The panel's participants come from various judicial backgrounds, including both national courts and inter-governmental tribunals, and have varied personal experience in both observing and developing constitutional jurisprudence.
Panel: Creating Constitutions
How and to what extent do nations building new constitutions look to and choose between the constitutional jurisprudence of other nations? The recent experiences in drafting constitutions in Iraq, Rwanda, and the European Union and the sixty-year history of
constitutions in South Asia offer illuminating windows into the concerns that underlie modern constitution-making. The process requires framers
to survey and evaluate the constitutional jurisprudence of other nations for purposes of establishing their own constitutional norms. Positivist
reference to existing constitutional models has been part of this exercise, as has normative comparison of the models in the context of
the relevant nation's unique circumstances and constitutional history. As such, those personally involved in constructing new constitutions can
offer special insight into how to place the U.S. Constitution alongside the constitutions of other nations and how, more generally, a nation
should understand and interpret its constitution vis-a-vis those of other nations. This panel will provide the perspective of
constitution-makers from Iraq and Rwanda and comparative constitution scholars from the United States and South Asia on the questions posed by
the other panels, as well as pointers specifically on how nations intent upon building new constitutions can best proceed with that task.
Panel: National Security and Constitutional Protections
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States rapidly expanded its antiterrorist authority, adopting broader surveillance provisions, the freezing of assets, and the indefinite detention of foreign terrorist suspects as part of the "Global War on
Terror." The United Kingdom also introduced detention without trial, control orders, and new criminal offences-such as "glorifying terrorism"-to counter the terrorist threat. These and other counterterrorist initiatives raise constitutional questions on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the Supreme Court has enforced constitutional limits the scope of asserted executive authority with respect to the detention and trial of "enemy combatants," while other issues, such as the scope of executive authority to disregard congressional limits on electronic surveillance, have yet to reach the highest court. In the United Kingdom, which has no single written constitution, important battles are being fought between the House of Lords and the Government over the appropriate course of action to take. This panel brings together prominent political, judicial, and academic figures from the United States and the United Kingdom to address the constitutional issues raised by national security law and to compare the American and British approaches.
