Hosted by Santa Clara Law, the Santa Clara Journal of International Law, the Center for Global Law and Policy, and the Center for Social Justice and Public Service.
4.5 MCLE credits available for entire day, including 1 recognition and elimination of bias in the legal profession and society.
REGISTER ONLINE
Details
Symposium Schedule
Speaker Bios
The Santa Clara Journal of International Law and the Center for Global Law and Policy cordially invite students, faculty, practitioners, and members of the international legal and business communities to our sixth annual International Law Symposium. The topic this year is Global Justice for Women: Advancing Equality. The event will focus on critical issues currently affecting international law and social justice on a global scale.
The symposium will host panel discussions on topics such as human trafficking and immigration, economic equality, and women as agents of change. Panelists include professors, authors, and leaders from around the world with advanced work in the subjects. The Journal is honored to welcome Dr. Musimbi Kanoyoro, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women, as our keynote speaker.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro is President and CEO of Global Fund for Women and a passionate advocate for women and girls’ health and human rights, and social change philanthropy. Dr. Kanyoro is an accomplished leader with three decades of experience managing international non-governmental organizations, global programs, and ecumenical agencies in cross-cultural contexts. In addition to being a sought after public speaker who inspires people, mobilizes action and resources, Dr. Kanyoro has authored numerous articles, opinion pieces and written or co-edited seven books.
Dr. Kanyoro also serves on several International Boards and working groups including the Aspen Leaders Council, the UN High level Taskforce for Reproductive Health, CARE, and the UN Women Civil Society Advisory Board and PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board.
Symposium Schedule
8:30 to 9:00 AM – Registration
9:00 to 9:15 AM – Welcome
9:15 to 10:45 AM – Human Trafficking and Immigration Panel, moderated by Professor Lynette Parker
- Professor Elvia Arriola, Northern Illinois University
- Professor Karen Musalo, UC Hastings
- Martina Vandenberg, Founder and President, Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center
- Dr. Laurie Cook Heffron, Professor, University of Texas, Austin
10:45 to 11:00 AM – Break
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Health and Safety Panel, moderated by Professor Michelle Oberman
- Professor Maneesha Deckha, University of Victoria
- Kathleen Graham, Attorney and International Development Consultant
- Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol, University of Florida Levin College of Law
12:00 – 1:30 PM – Keynote with Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, President, Global Fund for Women, and Lunch
1:45 to 3:00 PM – Economic Equality Panel, moderated by Professor David Yosifon
- Dr. Eileen Boris, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Dr. Rosanna Hertz, Professor, Wellesley College
- Professor Darren Rosenblum, Pace Law School
- Deborah J. Vagins, Chief of Staff and Principal Attorney Advisor, EEOC
3:00 to 3:15 PM – Break
3:15 to 4:30 PM – Agents of Change Panel, moderated by Professor Deborah Moss-West
- Terry Ann Rogers, Attorney and International Development Consultant
- Dr. Gwynn Thomas, Professor, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
- Judge Sujin Lee, Incheon District Court, Republic of South Korea
- Dr. Meera E. Deo, Professor, Thomas Jefferson
Closing Remarks
5-6:15 PM – Wine and Cheese Reception
Speaker Bios
Elvia Arriola is a Latina feminist law professor at Northern Illinois University. Her articles and teaching have focused on civil rights, constitutional law, gender and sexuality theory and the impact of globalization on Mexican women working in the border factories called “maquiladoras.” In 2001 she founded Women on the Border, Inc (www.womenontheborder.org) to advance awareness about NAFTA’s impact on working women and children. She shares a home in Austin, Texas with her spouse and partner of 20 years Donna Blevins.
Eileen Boris, the Hull Professor of Feminist Studies and Professor of History, Black Studies, and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes on the home as a workplace—on domestic, industrial, care, and mother workers—and on racialized gender and the state. She is the President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She holds a Ph.D. from Brown University in the History of American Civilization. Her books include the prizewinning monographs Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States [Cambridge University Press, 1994] and, with Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (Oxford University Press, 2012), as well as Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care, coedited with Rhacel Parreñas (Stanford University Press, 2010). Caring for America became the basis for an amicus brief to the Supreme Court filed in support of the state of Illinois and SEIU in Harris v. Quinn. She now is writing a book tentatively called, Protection and Precarity: Global Standards, Gender Difference, and the ILO, which considers how the characteristics associated with women’s work have moved from the periphery to the center with transformations of the global economy and intensified regimes of precarity.
Maneesha Deckha is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. Her research and teaching interests include animal law, feminist analysis of law, law and culture, health law and bioethics. Her work has been published in Canada and internationally in legal and interdisciplinary venues including the McGill Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Gender and Law, Ethics & The Environment, Hypatia, and Sexualities. She has also contributed to several anthologies relating to feminism, cultural pluralism and health law and policy, and is the recipient of grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Program. In 2008, Deckha held the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Law & Society at New York University.
Meera E. Deo, J.D., Ph.D., is an interdisciplinary scholar who utilizes empirical methods to interrogate trends in legal education, institutional diversity, and affirmative action. During the 2013-14 academic year Professor Deo was a Visiting Scholar with Berkeley Law’s Center for the Study of Law & Society (Fall) and a Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law (Spring). Professor Deo’s research has been cited in numerous amicus briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. She has recently published multiple articles from her landmark Diversity in Legal Academia project, which examines how the intersection of race and gender affect tenure and promotion, work/life balance, institutional support, and other aspects of the personal and professional lives of American law faculty members. She currently serves on the Executive Committee for the AALS Section on Law and the Social Sciences and is an appointee to the California Commission on Access to Justice.xtensively in the areas of discrimination, civil rights, employment law, trial practice and federal procedure while practicing law in the United States.
Kathleen Graham is an independent contractor working in international/women’s human rights and gender-based economic development. She has worked primarily in countries with developing or transitional economies, for international agencies and non-profit organizations, to facilitate increased access, particularly for women, to material resources and political and social power. She espouses a rights-based approach to development, using the international human rights treaties and covenants to advocate for just economic allocations and the legal structures necessary to support them. Much of her work in the last decade has focused on economic advocacy strategies for the rural poor in Tajikistan, as well as assignments in Afghanistan and Central and Eastern Europe. She has also consulted and written for john powell’s Institute on Race and Poverty. Prior to 1995 Ms. Graham practiced law for more than 20 years, specializing in employment and class action discrimination litigation. She has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School (Gender-Based Discrimination) and the Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at Hamline University School of Law. She lectured and taught extensively in the areas of discrimination, civil rights, employment law, trial practice and federal procedure while practicing law in the United States.
Laurie Cook Heffron, LMSW, is the Dean’s PostDoctoral Fellow in Immigration and Violence Against Women at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research explores the experiences of, and relationships between, violence against women and migration. As former Associate Director for Research at UTAustin’s Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (IDVSA), she has contributed to multiple research studies since 2001. Recent projects include a program evaluation for services to survivors of human trafficking, a statewide domestic violence prevalence study, a program evaluation of Texas’ NonReport Sexual Assault Forensic Exam Program, and a study of resettlement experiences among Congolese refugee women. Dr. Cook Heffron also has direct social work practice with a variety of immigrant communities, including refugees, survivors of human trafficking, and asylees. Previously, she served as program coordinator for Green Leaf Refugee Services, providing intensive health and emotional health case management services to refugees, victims of trafficking, asylees, and other immigrants in Central Texas. Currently, she provides pro bono psychosocial assessments to support the immigration cases of women and children seeking T visas, U visas, and asylum based on domestic violence.
Berta Esperanza Hernández-Truyol is the Levin, Mabie & Levin Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and an affiliate professor at the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies and the Center for Latin American Studies. She teaches international law, international human rights, and specialized, interdisciplinary, graduate seminars on human rights. She utilizes an interdisciplinary and international framework to promote human well-being around the globe. She is engaged in initiatives that seek to develop, expand and transform the human rights discourse with a focus on issues of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, language, and other vulnerabilities as well as their interconnections. Professor Hernández-Truyol has urged the use of human rights norms in domestic fora in order to promote the rights of women and racial/ethnic/linguistic/sexual minorities and other vulnerable populations. Her publications include: JUst Trade: A New Covenant Linking Trade and Human Rights (co-authored with Stephen J. Powell); Moral Imperialism: A Critical Anthology; and close to 100 articles and chapters.
Professor Hernández-Truyol is also a founding member of LatCrit, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation with consultative status in the United Nations Economic and Social Council. LatCrit aims to develop a critical, international, and interdisciplinary discourse on law and policy towards Latinas/os and other marginalized or disempowered populations, and to foster the development of an anti-subordination, coalitional theory and practice.
Rosanna Hertz is the Classes of 1919 – 1950 Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College and the current Chair of the WGST department. In broad terms Hertz researches families in a changing economy and how social inequality at home and in the workplace shape the experiences of women and men. Presently she is interested in the pivotal moments that influence certain kinds of women leaders. Her research, “Productive Rule Breakers and Innovators” is based upon interviews with women leaders in China and India. Professor Hertz also researches the complexity of “modern families” created through the use of donor gametes in the U.S. and the E.U. and how the Internet is both revolutionizing the choices for people seeking to enter into thirdparty reproduction arrangements and creating new possibilities for connection. Her most recent book is Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice. Recent article have appeared in Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Social Science and Medicine and Journal of Family Issues. She is quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Boston Globe. She appears in the broadcast media commenting on social problems for local news specials.
Sujin Lee is a South Korean Judge and a visiting scholar at Santa Clara Law School, where her research focuses on toxic pollution to the environment and humans, as well as the prevention of future harm to humans and the environment. Sujin holds an LL.B. from Seoul National University and an Attorney License from the Judicial Research and Training Institute, Korea. She began her career at the Seoul Northern District Court in Seoul, Korea in 2005 and then moved to Seoul Central District Court, Chamber of Environmental Trials, where she dealt with civil environmental cases. She also received the Master of Laws Degree from Stanford Law School specializing in Environmental Law and Policy. Most recently, Sujin was handling civil cases at Incheon District Court in Incheon, Korea, an executive Secretary, Korean Association of Women Judges (KAWJ), where she held seminars and conducted research focusing on woman and minority issues.
Karen Musalo is Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, California. She is lead coauthor of Refugee Law and Policy: An International and Comparative Approach (4th edition), and has written numerous articles on refugee law issues, with a focus on gender asylum, as well as religious persecution, and conscientious objection as bases for refugee status. Professor Musalo has contributed to the evolving jurisprudence of asylum law not only through her scholarship, but also through her litigation of landmark cases. She was lead attorney in Matter of Kasinga (fear of female genital mutilation as a basis for asylum), which continues to be cited as authority in gender asylum cases by tribunals around the world. Her litigation victories include Matter of RA, and Matter of LR, two cases that established the principle that women fleeing domestic violence may qualify for refugee protection. She participated as amicus in the recent BIA decision, Matter of ARCG, the first precedent decision affirming the viability of domestic violence asylum claims. Professor Musalo is recognized for her innovative work on refugee issues. She was the first attorney to partner with psychologists in her representation of traumatized asylum seekers, and she edited the first handbook for practitioners on crosscultural issues and the impact of culture on credibility in the asylum context. Her current work examines the linkage between human rights violations and migration, with a focus on the phenomenon of femicides in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras and its relation to requests for refugee protection from women from these countries. She is the founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which is internationally known for its research and legal advocacy and for its program of expert consultation to attorneys around the world.
Terry Ann Rogers currently consults for the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) on women’s political participation, most recently in Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Cambodia, Afghanistan, India, Yemen, Morocco, Lebanon, and the Republic of Georgia. Her last international posting was as the director of the IFES Women’s Legal Rights Initiative in India, where she pioneered the development of a women’s lobbying organization and a Muslim women’s rights project. Prior to her employment at IFES, Rogers was the Country Director for Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia for the American Bar Association (ABA/CEELI) where she managed programs in judicial reform, bar association development, gender equity, legal aid, law school reform, public advocacy and human rights law reform. She was also the Chief of Party for AMIDEAST in Palestine, working on development of the Palestinian Bar Association from 19992000. She practiced law for seventeen years in Oregon at Multnomah County Legal Aid Service and started her legal career in private practice in California in 1974. She is a graduate of New York University School of Law.
Professor Darren Rosenblum serves as the Executive Director of Commercial and Private International Law Programs and the Faculty Director of the Institute for International and Commercial Law at Pace Law School. His scholarship focuses on comparative and international private law and sex equality. His recent scholarship examines the burgeoning movement for corporate board quotas for women. In 2011, he was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholarship for France, where he performed an empirical study on the French quota involving board members of leading French companies. In June 2015, the French National Assembly hosted a conference on the corporate board quota at which he presented his research in French as the guest of honor. He has also presented his quota research at the Federal Election Commission (U.S.) and the European Commission Justice Department. He has presented his work in four languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese) in fifteen countries.
Dr. Gwynn Thomas is an Associate Professor of Global Gender Studies in the Department of Transnational Studies at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Her first book, Contesting Legitimacy in Chile: Familial Ideals, Citizenship, and Political Struggle, 19701990 (Penn State Press 2011), examines the mobilization of familial beliefs in Chilean political conflicts. Her published work examining women’s political activism, women’s presidencies in Latin America and institutional change supporting gender equality has appeared in The Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, The International Feminist Journal of Politics, Journal of Latin American Studies, the ISA Compendium Project, and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Her research has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender, and the Humanities Institute.
Deborah J. Vagins is the Chief of Staff and Principal Attorney Advisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for Commissioner Charlotte A. Burrows. In this capacity, Deborah serves as the principal legal and policy advisor to the Commissioner rendering legal interpretations regarding federal civil rights laws governing equal employment opportunity and providing policy advice on agency actions. In addition to other duties, she also serves as a liaison for the Commissioner with high-level officials of the Commission, the White House, other government agencies, and congressional staff regarding complex legal and policy matters.
Prior to joining the EEOC in 2015, Deborah was the Senior Legislative Counsel on civil rights issues for the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office. In this position, Deborah was instrumental in advocating for major civil rights laws, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and served as co-chair of the national Paycheck Fairness Act coalition. She helped design and successfully advocated for recent executive action on employment discrimination issues, including the recent executive order banning punitive pay secrecy policies in federal contracting. Before working at the ACLU, Deborah was the Acting Deputy General Counsel and Senior Attorney-Advisor to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and prior to that, an associate in the Employment Discrimination and Civil Rights Practice Group at Cohen Milstein, where she litigated high-profile nationwide civil rights class actions. She represented more than 1.5 million women from Wal-Mart in the largest Title VII employment discrimination class action in history.
Martina Vandenberg is an attorney and the founder and president of The Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center. She founded the organization with the generous support of the Open Society Foundations Fellowship Program. Prior to her OSF fellowship, she was a partner in Jenner & Block LLP’s Washington, D.C. office, where she maintained an extensive pro bono practice representing women trafficked to the United States for forced labor. She has successfully represented trafficking victims in federal court seeking damages against their traffickers under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Vandenberg has spent nearly two decades advocating against human trafficking, forced labor, and violence against women. As the Europe Researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Women’s Rights Division, she participated in the negotiations for the United Nations Trafficking Protocol in Vienna, Austria. Vandenberg also conducted extensive human rights investigations in the Russian Federation, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Uzbekistan, Kosovo, Israel, and Ukraine. While living in Moscow, Vandenberg cofounded Syostri, one of Russia’s first rape crisis centers.
Vandenberg has testified on human rights issues before multiple Congressional committees; she is an expert on criminal restitution for trafficking victims. Vandenberg currently chairs the International Bar Association’s Human Trafficking Task Force. In 2015, Vandenberg received the Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize for her work combating human trafficking.
