Who’s Who at the Schell Center

Paul W. Kahn is Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities, and Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for Human Rights at Yale Law School.  He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University and his J.D. from Yale Law School.  He served as a law clerk to Justice White in the United States Supreme Court from 1980 to 1982.  Before coming to Yale Law School in 1985, he practiced law in Washington, D.C.  From 1993 to 1999, he was Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law.  He teaches in the areas of constitutional law and theory, international law, and philosophy.  He is the author of Legitimacy and History: Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory; The Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America; The Cultural Study of Law: Reconstructing Legal Scholarship; Law and Love: The Trials of King Lear; Putting Liberalism in its Place, and numerous articles.
 
James Silk is clinical professor of law at Yale Law School, where he directs the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. He is also executive director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights. He was formerly the director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights in Washington, D.C., where in addition to guiding the organization’s advocacy, his work focused on human rights in China, child labor, and corporate responsibility. He serves on the boards of the Fair Labor Association and of RUGMARK-USA.  He graduated in 1989 from Yale Law School. After law school, he was an attorney at the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter, where his pro bono work included representing a Virginia death row inmate in his appeals. Before attending law school, Silk was editor, policy analyst, and senior writer for the U.S. Committee for Refugees. He taught English in Shanghai, China, in 1982-83. He has a B.A. in economics from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in the humanities from the University of Chicago.

Elizabeth Brundige is the Robert M. Cover - Allard K. Lowenstein Fellow in International Human Rights at Yale Law School.  Liz co-supervises the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and supports the Schell Center’s human rights programming.  She is also a Lecturer with Yale College and teaches the course International Human Rights. 

Before returning to the law school as the Cover - Lowenstein Fellow, she was the associate legal officer for Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen in the Appeals Chamber of the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where she worked on cases involving serious violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Previously, she clerked for Judge Kermit V. Lipez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She has also worked with the International Association of Women Judges on several programs in Southern and East Africa designed to advance women’s human rights and address the legal and gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS.  Liz is a graduate of Yale Law School, Oxford University, and Yale College.

Barbara Mianzo, Senior Administrative Assistant
203 432-7480
schell.law@yale.edu

Lowenstein Clinic Student Directors
Carrie Gross
Karen Kudelko
DeLisa Lay

Schell Center Student Directors
Sharanya Kanikkannan
Chelsea Purvis

Lowenstein Project Directors
Yuan Ji
Jennifer Jones
DeLisa Lay
Anna Vinnik

Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal Editors
Jonathan Cochran
Nadia Lambek