In the Building: The Search for Justice — a visit by Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp
BY DEAN DAVID
Today the law school welcomed Iowa native Stephen J. Rapp, Ambassador-at-Large for the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. Department of State. The visit to the College of Law was sponsored by the International Law Society.
Ambassador Rapp visited Iowa after attending the Friends of Syria Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, convened by states to support the opposition to the Syrian government. Ambassador Rapp spoke to the students in the Introduction to Public International Law class, where he spoke about experiences and answered questions.
Later he attended a law school lunch before heading to other parts of the university for additional opportunities to speak to the public.
At the lunch Ambassador Rapp commented on the US sponsorship of a program to document the stories of victims of government violence in Syria, with the hope of eventually bringing those responsible to justice. In addition to providing accountability, it is his hope these efforts will deter governmental leaders from future violence.
Speaking on the challenges of working in an international tribunal, he recounted stories that demonstrated how civil law and common law lawyers need to seek common ground in order to be effective in their work.
In response to a question about the stress of working with the victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, Ambassador Rapp reported that working with victims, in particular, fueled his efforts to seek justice. But his voice grew quiet as he referred to working with evidence of unspeakable crimes and meetings with people whose children were killed before them or who were given the choice between "a long sleeve shirt or a short sleeve shirt" when threatened with amputation.
Students were positive about the visit, noting it was great to learn about Ambassador Rapp's journey from a criminal defense attorney to US Attorney to international prosecutor.
Our thanks to the Ambassador for an informative and inspirational visit.
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- Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp
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- Ambassador Rapp discussing his experiences
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- The Ambassador at the student lunch
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- The Ambassador discussing his work with the ICTR
In the Building: Ambassador Vale de Almeida’s most excellent visit!
BY DEAN DAVID
It was a great treat to host the European Union's Ambassador to the United States, the Honorable João Vale de Almeida. Look here in the next few days for student reflections on his presentation; his lecture will be posted online next week. In the meantime, here are some visuals:
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- The Ambassador on the history of the EU and current challenges
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- Questions about the future of the EU — “Where does Europe end?”
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- The crowd included students, faculty, business and government leaders, and members of the Iowa City Community.
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- Students questioned the Ambassador about aspects of EU governance
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- The Ambassador and Prof. Enrique Carrasco
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- Emeritus Dean Bill HInes presents the Ambassador with his book, The History of the Iowa Law School, and a legal history of Iowa Law
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- The Ambassador greets a new follower, as Cindy Nance, Iowa Alumna and Dean Emeritus of the Arkansas School of Law, signs up as his newest Twitter follower!
In the News and In the Building: The European Question
Next week the College of Law welcomes The Honorable Joao Vale de Almeida, EU Ambassador to the United States to present "The State of the EU." This lecture will occur March 28, 2012 at 3.30 in the Boyd Law Building's Levitt Auditorium, and is free and open to the public.
The crisis of budgets, debts and confidence that today confronts the European Union experiment poses questions of politics, economics and law. Professor Alexander Somek, an expert in EU Law, offers some background below.
THE EUROPEAN QUESTION: BY PROF. ALEXANDER SOMEK
Prof. Alexander Somek
The European Union is based on the belief that the integration of the European continent into one larger whole is to be mediated by economic integration.
This has been, at any rate, the founding idea in 1957. Six states decided to create a “common market”, which was understood to be a zone without obstacles to economic mobility and free from distortions of competition that originate from market power and huge concentration of wealth.
Under the name of the “European Economic Community”, the European Union had a slow start. Only incrementally were customs duties abolished, not least because decision-making always took place in the shadow of a potential veto of one of the participating countries.
In the 1980s, however, the project became reinvigorated—now renamed into the “internal market”—and given a basically neo-liberal outlook. The emphasis rested on liberalization and privatization.
The remarkable success of the “internal market” gave rise to the official creation of the European Union in 1993. Part of this transition involved moving beyond the common and internal market and establishing “economic and monetary union” among the Member States.
The major difference to the mere market project lies in the obligation on the part of the Member States to co-ordinate their economic policies in view of sustaining price stability in the Union.
The basic deal struck with regard to the tasks pursued by the Union, on the one hand, and the Member States, on the other, is as follows: While monetary policy is in the hands of a system of European central banks, fiscal policy remains the preserve of the Member States. However, while the States are free to determine their public revenues and to design their taxes, they have to comply with a variety of constraints on budgetary spending that are fleshed out in European Union legislation (the so-called “Stability and Growth Pact”).
With that, the Member States obviously got the raw end of the deal. In contrast to monetary policy, which is the preserve of a few initiates who are in the know, fiscal policy is politically salient and contested. At the same time it is the only means available to the Member States to influence economic cycles and to react to sudden shocks, such as a subprime mortgage crisis, the potential collapse of the banking system and high unemployment. With the advent of the current megacrisis, many member states governments automatically reacted by increasing their public debt. After all, this seems to be the right thing to do, not least in the eyes of their electorate. However, as a matter of European Union law, Member State governments are not allowed to engage in huge deficit spending. The only legally acceptable way of creating leeway for intervention is the adoption of austerity programs. But these are unpopular.
This, at any rate, has been the road taken in the European Union over the last three years. It explains why we learn about daily about “haircuts” for Greek sovereign debt and the creating of organizations, such as the European Stability Mechanism, that are supposed to help affected countries to restructure their debt.
It seems, nonetheless, as though through the development of economic and monetary union the Member States created a straightjacket for themselves that detracts from the Union’s appeal. It does not come as a surprise that in a recent pamphlet a number of younger academics expressed their discontent with a situation in which European find themselves “sidelined and numbed by repetitive talk of austerity and economic stability.” (http://verfassungsblog.de/honeymoon-constructing-europe-market/)
The evolution of the European Union was undoubtedly the most fascinating development in public law at the end of the twentieth century. But the founders of the Union always understood it to be a provisional arrangement. Integration by economic means was not supposed to be an end in itself. With the current state of economic and monetary union, however, prize stability and the integrity of the Euro zone have become the fetish of Europe.
Perhaps the time is ripe to shift integration into a political mode. European integration now appears to be finally ready to confront the even more exciting question of what Europe is going to look like in the future when the European Union, in its present shape, has run its course.
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Alexander Somek
Hot Topic: The New U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training
BY BRIAN FARRELL
Brian Farrell '98
One of the rights proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, is the right to education. The Declaration specifies that one of the purposes of education shall be “strengthening respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” This call was reiterated in the International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights, which was adopted in 1966 and entered into force in 1976.
Until now, though, the international human rights system did not specifically define the nature of human rights education or the manner in which this education should be delivered. This changed on December 19, 2011, when the General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. The new Declaration explains that human rights education should be based on the principles of the UDHR and encompasses education about human rights (meaning it teaches knowledge of human rights norms), through human rights (meaning it occurs in a manner that respects the rights of educators and students) and for human rights (meaning it empowers individuals to enjoy their rights and respect those of others).
Hopefully, the Declaration will serve as the basis for thoughtful discussion about the integration of human rights into school curricula around the world. It also has the potential to establish a more common point of departure for college courses incorporating a human rights component. The term “human rights” is often said to mean “all things to all people,” and is sometimes invoked without any clear connection to established legal norms. The Declaration may offer the benefit of further grounding teaching about “human rights” in the defined principles of the UDHR.
The text of the Declaration is available here.
Interested in learnign abour Human Rights?
- Human Rights in the World Community will be offered again next year.
- Join the Iowa Campaign for Human Rights or the Society for International Human Rights Law at Iowa, two student organizations with an emphasis on human rights.
- Check out the International Law Society for programming on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law this spring.
Brian Farrell directs the College of Law’s academic support program and is the College’s liaison for the undergraduate Law and Legal Studies Living-Learning Community. Brian is also appointed as an adjunct lecturer in International Studies within the University. He is a co-founder and president of the Innocence Project of Iowa. Brian received his JD with distinction from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1998 and received an LLM in international human rights law with first-class honors from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2002.