The Work of the Schell Center

The Schell Center organizes frequent panels, lectures, and conferences on human rights topics. 

In academic year 2006-07, the weekly Human Rights Workshop: Current Events and Issues included talks by:  Thomas Pogge (Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, Professorial Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australian National University, and Professor, University of Oslo), Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Essential Medicines; Alejandro Madrazo (Mexico), Raúl M. Mejia (Mexico), and Efrén Rivera Ramos (Puerto Rico) (Members of the Organizing Committee for the Seminario en Latinoamérica de Teoría Constitucional y Política (SELA)), The Implications of the Mexican Presidential Election for Latin America and the United States; Sharon Hom (Executive Director, Human Rights in China), China, Technology, and Human Rights:  Exploring the Rise of Online Activism, the Role of International IT Companies, and U.S. Government Initiatives; Justice S. Sandile Ngcobo (Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa), The Right to Political Participation in South Africa; Asli Ü. Bâli (Irving S. Ribicoff Fellow, Yale Law School, Doctoral Candidate, Princeton University, and Attorney, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton), Scapegoating the Vulnerable: Preventive Detention of Immigrants in America=s >War on Terror=; Michael J. Wishnie (Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School), Prohibiting the Employment of Undocumented Workers: The Experiment Fails; Benedict Kingsbury (Professor, New York University School of Law), Can the Emerging Global Administrative Law Improve Accountability? How Much Use Is That?; Samuel Moyn (Associate Professor of History, Columbia University), How to Write the Historical Origins of Human Rights?; David Luban (Frederick Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center), Fairness to Rightness: Jurisdiction, Legality, and the Legitimacy of International Criminal Law; Sonja Starr (YLS =02, Climenko Fellow and Lecturer, Harvard Law School), Extraordinary Crimes at Ordinary Times: International Justice Beyond Crisis Situations; Bill Frelick (Refugee Policy Director, Human Rights Watch), Protecting Iraqi Refugees:  See No Evil, Hear No Evil?; Daniel Bonilla (J.S.D. YLS =05, Professor, Faculty of Law, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia), Legal Pluralism and Property in Latin America; Monica Hakimi (YLS =01,Visiting Assistant Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law), Evolving International Standards on the Detention of Suspected Terrorists:  Finding a Middle Ground Between the Secret Prison and the Criminal Court; Paul van Zyl (Program Director, International Center for Transitional Justice), Contemporary Transitional Justice Experiences: From Iraq, Uganda, Colombia and Beyond; and Nathaniel Berman (Professor, Brooklyn Law School), Human Rights vs. Jus in Bello:  Law in Denial or Law in Command?

Other Schell events included the annual Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Symposium, Defending Rights Through Law in China: Progress and Challenges;  a human rights career panel; talks by Sandra Babcock (Clinical Director, Center for International Human Rights, Northwestern University Law School), Enforcing International Law in U.S. Death Penalty Cases: From the Hague to Houston; Motoo Noguchi (Professor, UNAFI, International Judge of the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and 2006-07 Schell Center Fellow), Cambodia Khmer Rouge Trials: Ownership of Justice; Daphne Barak-Erez (Schell Fellow and Professor of Law, Tel-Aviv University), The Law of Historical Films: In the Aftermath of Jenin-Jenin; Louis Bickford (Human Rights Expert and Program Director The International Center for Transitional Justice ), Supporting Local Responses to the Aftermath of Violent Conflict: The Work of the International Center for Transitional Justice; Stephen Rickard (YLS >83, Director, Washington Office of the Open Society Institute, and Deputy Director, Open Society Policy Center), Lawyering for Human Rights in Washington: The Case of the Military Commissions Act; Holly Burkhalter (Vice President of Government Relations, International Justice Mission), Norm Change on the Right to Health: HIV/AIDS in Africa; Vivek Maru (YLS >01, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Timap for Justice, Sierra Leone, and Fellow, Open Society Justice Initiative), Timap [Stand up] for Justice Sierra Leone: Developing a Model for Advancing Justice in Post-Conflict West Africa; Chibli Mallat (EU Jean Monnet Professor in European Law, St Joseph=s University, Beirut, and Visiting Professor, Woodrow Wilson School, Law and Public Affairs Fellow, Princeton University), Law and the Failures of the Lebanese Cedar Revolution; Maria Burnett (YLS >05, Burundi Researcher, Human Rights Watch), Conflict and Justice in Burundi and Rwanda; Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt (International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations), China's Growing Global Role: Looking at the PRC's Engagement with Africa; Trevor Paglen (Author of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights), On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights: Dark Spaces, Disappeared People, and the War on Terror; Sam Gregory (Program Manager for Strategic Networks, WITNESS), Using Video for Change: WITNESS' Model for Human Rights Advocacy; Susan Benesch (YLS >02, Clinical Fellow, Center for Applied Legal Studies, Georgetown University Law Center) and Noah Novogrodsky (YLS >98, Director of International Human Rights Programs, University of Toronto Law School, and Visiting Professor, Georgetown University Law Center), Speech Before Genocide: Protected Right or Heinous Crime?

The Center also co-sponsored many events with other programs at Yale, including:  International Responses to Darfur (panel); Alternatives to Violence in the Middle East (a presentation by members of Combatants for Peace); 500 Bereaved Palestinian and Israel Families Work Together for Peace (a presentation by members of the Parents= Circle); Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment in Africa (panel); Justice in the Mirror: Law, Culture, and the Making of History (conference, with keynote address by Luis Moreno Ocampo, Prosecutor, International Criminal Court); and Debate Forum on Road Development in the Amazon (conference).

The Center also co-sponsored many events with other programs at Yale, including:  International Responses to Darfur (panel); Alternatives to Violence in the Middle East (a presentation by members of Combatants for Peace); 500 Bereaved Palestinian and Israel Families Work Together for Peace (a presentation by members of the Parents= Circle); Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment in Africa (panel); Justice in the Mirror: Law, Culture, and the Making of History (conference, with keynote address by Luis Moreno Ocampo, Prosecutor, International Criminal Court); and Debate Forum on Road Development in the Amazon (conference).

The Center also supports student involvement in human rights advocacy by providing summer and post-graduate human rights fellowships.  During the summer of 2006, 40 law students received the Schell Center=s Kirby Simon Summer Fellowships to do international human rights work in 21 countries.  Among the institutions and organizations with which students worked were: International Center for Transitional Justice (Afghanistan); Universidad de San Andres, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Asociacion Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia (Argentina); Pannasastra University and Open Society Justice Initiative (Cambodia); Hong Kong Judiciary (China); Alternative Law Forum, Small Enterprises Finance Center, and Tibet Justice Center (India); Supreme Court of  Israel; The Kyrgyz Committee for Human Rights (Kyrgyzstan); Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia; Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolome de las Casas (Mexico); Global Rights (Mongolia); International Criminal Court (Netherlands); Orphans of Rwanda (Rwanda); Rencontre Africaine Pour la Défense des Droits de l=Homme (Senegal); Centre for Human Rights - University of Pretoria Law School, Khulumani Support Group, OUT, University of Capetown - Centre for Gender, Health and Justice, and University of Witswatersrand - Refugee Unit (South Africa); World Health Organization (Switzerland); International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Tanzania); EarthRights International (Thailand); Refugee Law Project (Uganda);Chatham House (United Kingdom); and ACLU - Immigrants= Rights Project, Center for Justice and Accountability, Capital Area Immigrants= Rights Coalition, Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, and World Bank (United States).  The Center sponsored several panels during the year in which Schell Summer Fellows discussed the issues raised by their summer work.

The 2007-2008 Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowships went to Nick Robinson, YLS '06 to work with Human Rights Law Network to develop resources and implement a strategy for addressing the right to water; and to Katherine Southwick, YLS '05, to work with Refugees International investigating and publicizing situations of statelessness around the world. 

The Schell Center also provides a two-year Robert M.Cover-Allard K. Lowenstein Fellowship in International Human Rights Law.  The Fellow works closely with the faculty director and the executive director of the Schell Center in all aspects of the Center’s work, including supervision of the Lowenstein Clinic.  Two law students serve as student directors of the Schell Center and are largely responsible for coordinating the Center’s events.  The Schell Center also supports the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Project,  the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, and other student projects related to human rights.