ABOUT THE TOPIC: Key human rights instruments and leading scholars argue that minority language rights should be treated as human rights, both because language is constitutive of an individual’s cultural identity and because linguistic pluralism increases diversity. These treaties and academics assign the value of linguistic pluralism in diversity. But, this paper demonstrates, major human rights courts and quasi-judicial institutions are not, in fact, prepared to force states to swallow the dramatic costs entailed by a true diversity-protecting regime. Outside narrow exceptions or a path dependent national-political compromise, these enforcement bodies continuously allow the state to actively incentivize assimilation into the dominant culture and language of the majority. The minority can still maintain its distinct language, but only at its own cost. The slippage between the promise of rights and their actual interpretation carries some important political and economic benefits, but the resulting legal outcome does not provide the robust protection of diversity to which lip service is paid.  Importantly, the assimilationist nature of the jurisprudence is not indifferent to human rights. However, instead of advancing maximal linguistic diversity as a preeminent norm, the regime that is applied by judicial bodies supports a different set of human rights, those protecting linguistic minorities from discrimination, and promoting equal access of the group to market and political institutions.  The result is a tension between two human rights values: pluralism and equality.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Moria Paz is a Law and International Security Fellow at CISAC. She was an affiliate at CISAC from February 2012-July 2013. Before joining CISAC, she was a Lecturer at Stanford Law School and the Teaching Fellow of the Stanford Program for International Legal Studies (SPILS). Her current research examines issues of state control and freedom of movement through the entry point of travel documents. Earlier work examined the intersection between minorities, language rights, and international law. Moria received her S.J.D. degree from Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, she was awarded a number of fellowships, including at the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations, The European Law Research Center, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

About the Topic: Re-establishing and strengthening the rule of international law in international affairs was a central Allied aim in the First World War. Revisionism in its many forms has erased this from our memory, and with it the meaning of the war. Imperial Germany’s actions and justifications for its war conduct amounted to proposing an entirely different set of international-legal principles from those that other European states recognized as public law. This talk examines what those principles were and what implications they had for the legal world order.

About the Speaker: Isabel V. Hull received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1978 and has since then been teaching at Cornell University, where she is the John Stambaugh Professor of History. A German historian, her work has reached backward to 1600 and forward to 1918 and has focused on the history of sexuality, the development of civil society, military culture, and imperial politics and governance. She has recently completed a book comparing Imperial Germany, Great Britain, and France during World War I and the impact of international law on their respective conduct of the war. It will appear in Spring 2014 under the title, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World War. Her talk is based on this latest research.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: In his talk, Jack Goldsmith will explain why he is skeptical about significant cybersecurity cooperation among military rivals, especially at the treaty level. He will, however, argue that the Snowden revelations make such cooperation more, not less, likely.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Jack Goldsmith is Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University, where he specializes in national security law, international law, internet law, and presidential power. Goldsmith is the author of five books and numerous articles covering these topics. His recent books include: Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 (W.W. Norton, 2012); The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (W.W. Norton, 2007); Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World (Oxford Press, 2006, with Tim Wu); and The Limits of International Law (Oxford Press, 2005, with Eric Posner). Prior to his time at Harvard, Goldsmith was Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel from October 2003 to July 2004 and Special Counsel to the General Counsel to the Department of Defense from September 2002 through June 2003. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Elaine Korzak joined CISAC in September 2013 as a predoctoral cybersecurity fellow. She is a PhD student in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. Elaine's thesis evaluates how cyber attacks challenge current legal norms and whether the identified challenges ultimately warrant a new legal framework. The analysis focuses on two areas in particular: international law on the use of force (jus ad bellum) and international humanitarian law (jus in bello). During her time at CISAC, Elaine is conducting empirical research examining states' responses to the legal challenges created by cyber attacks. Her analysis focuses on various state positions in key international forums, including the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union.

Elaine earned a Bachelor's degree in International Relations from the University of Dresden (Germany) before focusing her research interests at the interface of international law and security studies. She holds both an MA in International Peace and Security from King's College London and an LL.M in Public International Law from the London School of Economics. Her professional experience includes various governmental and non-governmental institutions (both national and international), where she has worked on various disarmament and international security issues. These include, most recently, NATO's Cyber Defence Section as well as the European Commission's Director-General on Information Society and Media.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: With their unique characteristics such as swiftness, its non-kinetic nature and anonymity, computer network attacks fundamentally challenge the current international legal paradigm which is based on a state-centered concept of armed force involving some degree of kinetic energy transfer through blast and fragmentation. It has been argued that a revolution in military affairs has been ushered in by technological advancements that cannot be accommodated within the existing legal framework. Both practitioners and scholars have called for a new regulatory framework to govern computer network attacks. This presentation will give an overview of Elaine's doctoral research project which evaluates these claims by examining if and how computer network attacks challenge key norms of international law on the use of force and international humanitarian law and whether the identified challenges ultimately warrant a new legal framework.   

ABOUT THE TOPIC: The use of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, as a counterterrorism tool has become the subject of considerable debate. Proponents point to drones as both effective for disrupting terrorist networks and compatible with international legal commitments. Critics assert that attacks create more terrorists than they kill while also violating international law. Both defenders and detractors have increasingly sought to make their case in the public sphere with the intent of swaying public support. This research studies the marketplace of ideas on the question of drones with an eye towards explaining 1) the type of arguments—i.e., whether or not drones are compatible with international law or are militarily effective—that resonate most with the public; and 2) the source of those ideas, whether international organizations, non-governmental organizations, or the government. In doing so, it fills a gap in a literature that has typically focused on sources of public support for initially going to war rather than attitudes toward states’ actual conduct and wielding of violence in the midst of armed conflict.

About the Speaker: Omar Dajani is one of the nation's foremost experts on the legal aspects of the conflict in the Middle East.  His scholarly work explores the links between international law, legal and political history, and contract and negotiation theory.  He also has considerable experience advising governments and development organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere.  Professor Dajani joined the McGeorge School of Law in 2004.  Previously, he was based in the Palestinian Territories, where he served first as legal advisor to the Palestinian team in peace talks with Israel and, subsequently, as an advisor to United Nations Special Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.  Prior to working in the Middle East, he clerked for Judge Dorothy Nelson on the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit and was a litigation associate at the Washington office of Sidley & Austin.  He received his Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School in 1997 and a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies, and Middle Eastern and Asian History from Northwestern University.