Friday, March 6th, 2009
Hauser 102, Hauser Hall
Harvard Law School
Schedule
Friday, March 6th, 2009
1:00-1:30pm – Keynote Address
Peter Uvin, Academic Dean and Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
1:30-3:00pm – Panel I: Corporate Responsibility in the Developing World
Tyler Giannini, Professor, Harvard Law School (Moderator)
Chris Jochnick, Fellow, Oxfam
David Baker, Newmont Mining
3:00-4:30pm – Panel II: Trade & Development
Rachel Brewster, Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (Moderator)
Chin Leng Lim, Professor, University of Hong Kong
Edwin Kneedler, Deputy Solicitor General, U.S. Solicitor General’s Office
Thomas Sebastian, Counsel, Advisory Center on WTO Law
Claire E. Reade, Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
4:30-6:00pm – Panel III: The International Financial System
Catherin Duggan, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School (Moderator)
Sean Hagan, General Counsel, International Monetary Fund
Scott White, Acting Vice President and General Counsel, World Bank Group
Ed Greene, Corporate Partner, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
The 2009 Harvard International Law Journal Symposium is made possible through the Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy Fund
Panel Descriptions:
Panel I: Corporate Responsibility in the Developing World
Development projects present special problems for both the company engaged in development and the host nation. These problems can be resolved through legal mechanisms, informal dispute resolution, or through overt power by one side. The panel will discuss experiences from the planning, execution, and post project phases of international development work focusing on disputes that arose, the manner in which they were resolved, and share ideas about how the process could function better.
Panel II: Trade & Development
Unlike Washington-based international financial institutions (i.e. the World Bank and International Monetary Fund), the World Trade Organization provides a unique forum for developing countries to protect their concerns through legal participation and law-making rights. But with the Doha round of negotiations dragging on into its eighth year and the rise of regional trade agreements, does the WTO still work for developing countries? In light of this question, some of the topics the panel will discuss are: tensions between other international agreements and the WTO agreement; the development of the legal principles shaping “special and differential” treatment; the rise (and fall?) of coalition forming; and the particular challenges facing lawyers representing least-developed countries.
Panel III: The International Financial System
Though the international financial system is undoubtedly global in scope, there are surprisingly few standards and norms to which all global actors are required to subscribe. The fragmentation of the system has a large impact on these actors – from individual investors to financial lending institutions and sovereign states – which has become even more apparent in the current economic environment. The International Financial System panel will first discuss the existing problems surrounding international financing. It will then examine models of regulatory reform to prevent global financial crises in the future. The panel will conclude by assessing the effect of these mechanisms on developing economies.
Speaker Bios:
Peter Uvin is the Academic Dean and The Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at the Fletcher School of Tufts University. He has taught at Brown University, New Hampshire College and the Graduate School of Development Studies, Geneva. He is also the winner of 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1999 Herskovits Award for most outstanding book on Africa. Dean Uvin regularly consults for multilateral and bilateral aid agencies and ministries of foreign affairs, as well as NGOs. He serves on the Editorial board for Kumarian Press and the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. He is the author of Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, Human Rights and Development, and The Influence of Aid in Situations of Violent Conflict. He has Licences in Diplomatic Science and in Political Science from the University of Ghent and a PhD in Political Science from the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, University of Geneva.
Edward F. Greene is a partner in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP. Mr. Greene’s practice focuses on securities, corporate governance, regulatory and financial services reform and other corporate law matters. Mr. Greene served as General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1981 to 1982 and Director of the Division of Corporation Finance from 1979 to 1981. From 2004 to 2008, Mr. Greene served as General Counsel of Citigroup’s Institutional Clients Group. He oversaw all legal aspects related to the group’s activities with issuers and investors worldwide, including investment banking, corporate lending, derivatives, sales and trading, and transaction services. He served as Chairman of the Institutional Clients Group Business Practices Committee in connection with his responsibility for regulatory and transactional matters. Mr. Greene originally joined the firm in 1982 and returned in 2009. Mr. Greene received an LL.B. degree from Harvard Law School in 1966 and an undergraduate degree from Amherst College in 1963.
Sean Hagan is General Counsel and Director of the Legal Department at the International Monetary Fund. In this capacity, Mr. Hagan advises the Fund’s management, Executive Board and membership on all legal aspects of the Fund’s operations, including its regulatory, advisory and lending functions. Mr. Hagan has published extensively on both the law of the Fund and a broad range of legal issues relating to the prevention and resolution of financial crisis, with a particular emphasis on insolvency and the restructuring of debt, including sovereign debt. Prior to beginning work at the IMF, Mr. Hagan was in private practice, first in New York and subsequently in Tokyo. Mr. Hagan received his Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center and also received a Masters of Science in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Scott White has been the Acting Vice President and Group General Counsel of the World Bank since April 2008. He is Deputy General Counsel and also served as Acting General Counsel from February-August 2006. He joined the Bank in 1984. His background is in providing legal and institutional advice in respect of the Bank’s capital markets, derivatives, liquid asset management and pension investment operations and for new financial products as well as in the financial policy and risk management areas. He has been counsel to the Audit and Budget Committees of the Board of Executive Directors of the Bank and to the Bank’s Pension Finance Committee, which supervises the investments of the Bank’s pension plan. In recent years, Mr. White also has been involved in the legal aspects of the Bank’s anti-corruption work, serving as liaison to the 2007 independent Volcker Panel that reviewed the effectiveness of the Bank’s Department of Institutional Integrity and on the Working Group on Implementation of the Volcker Panel’s recommendations to strengthen the Bank’s anti-corruption unit. Prior to coming to the Bank, Mr. White was a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C. and in New York. He graduated from Princeton in 1973, majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and from Columbia Law School in 1976.
Dave Baker is the Vice President and Environment and Chief Sustainability officer of Newmont Mining Corporation. He joined Newmont in 1980 as a mine geologist. He was elected Vice President, Environmental Affairs in 1991. Mr. Baker spent a significant amount of his career addressing the regulatory implications on mining operations of state and federal programs, including CERCLA, RCRA, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Nevada Mining and Reclamation statutes. He has extensive experience in the development, permitting and financing of major mining projects in the international arena, including the United States, Africa, Indonesia, Peru and Uzbekistan. In addition to the environmental affairs responsibilities, he also served as Vice President, Environmental, Health and Safety, and Vice President for Government Affairs.In his current position, Mr. Baker has broad responsibility for developing and implementing Newmont’s strategy for environmental affairs and community development as we head into an era of increasing focus and expectation on corporate transparency, substantive community engagement and the broader issues around sustainability.Mr. Baker received his Bachelor of Science degree in Earth Sciences – Geology from the University of Arizona and has completed the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program in 1997.
Chris Jochnick is the Director of the Private Sector Department at Oxfam America and Coordinator of the Private Sector Team of Oxfam International. Mr. Jochnick is the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (NY) and the Centro de Derechos Economicos y Sociales (Ecuador). He has worked for over fifteen years on issues of human rights and corporate accountability, including seven years in Latin America supporting grassroots campaigns around trade, health and extractive industries. He has participated in a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives and sits on the Steering Committee of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and on the International Advisory Panel of JO-IN. Prior to joining Oxfam, Mr. Jochnick worked as a corporate attorney with the Wall Street law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, where he advised companies on environment and social liabilities. Mr. Jochnick is a graduate of Harvard Law School, a former MacArthur Research and Writing fellow and Echoing Green fellow. He recently co-edited the book Sovereign Debt at the Crossroads (Oxford, 2007) and has lectured widely on issues of human rights, business and development. He teaches a course on business and human rights at Harvard Law School.
Prof. Tyler Giannini was co-director of EarthRights International (ERI), an organization at the forefront of efforts to link human rights and environmental protection. As a founder of ERI, Giannini spent a decate in Thailand conducting investigative fact-finding efforts on human rights abuses in Burma and groundbreaking corporate accountability litigation. In particular, Giannini was co-counsel in the landmark Doe v. Unocal litigation. The case sought to hold the corporation accountable for abuses surrounding the Yadana gas pipeline project in Burma, and was settled in early 2005. Giannini holds graduate degrees in law and foreign policy from the University of Virginia, where he was a member of the law review. Mr. Giannini will co-teach (with Bonnie Docherty) the seminar Human Rights and the Environment:advocacy seminar in the Fall Term 2009 and will co-teach (with Chris Jochnick) the seminar Business and Human Rights in the Spring Term 2009.
Claire E. Reade was appointed Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement at the Office of the United States Trade Representative in August 2006. She coordinates USTR efforts to ensure China’s compliance with its international trade commitments, especially its WTO obligations. She also co-chairs the China Enforcement Task Force at USTR. Prior to joining USTR, Ms. Reade was a senior partner at Arnold & Porter where she was an international trade litigator and counselor. She represented American and foreign clients in major international trade disputes and other trade matters. Ms. Reade is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former chair of the American Bar Association International Trade Law Section, a former member of the ABA Council on Asia, and a frequent speaker on international trade law issues. An honors graduate of Harvard Law School, Ms. Reade also holds a Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. After receiving her law degree from Harvard, she spent 1979 -1980 in Taipei, Taiwan, studying Chinese dispute resolution procedures under a Harvard Sheldon Fellowship, pursuing her studies in written and spoken Mandarin Chinese. She and her husband have two grown children.
Prof. Chin Leng Lim’s research focuses on free trade agreements, democracy, constitutionalism and international law in Asia. At the University of Hong Kong, Professor Lim also teaches courses on Constitutional Law, Human Rights in Hong Kong, Global Business Law and International Economic Law. Before joining the University of Hong Kong in 2007, he was a faculty member of the National University of Singapore; Queen Mary, London; and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Outside academia, Professor Lim worked as a UN lawyer dealing with Gulf War reparations in Geneva (UNCC), and as a member of the Singapore Attorney-General’s staff where he advised on international law and acted as counsel to Singapore in FTA negotiations. Professor Lim also recently served as an APEC Human Resources Working Group expert on free trade agreements, as an advisor to the Timor-Lesté Prime Minister’s Office, and trains Asian trade policy officials for the WTO’s RTPC Programme. Professor Lim was born in Malaysia and educated there at the Free School, as well as in England at Buckingham and University College, Oxford. He attended the Fletcher School while earning an LL.M. degree from Harvard, and received his Ph.D. from Nottingham in 1995. He is currently writing on the first generation of Afro-Asian international lawyers, and their efforts to create a more balanced post-colonial legal order.
Thomas Sebastian is Counsel at the Advisory Centre on WTO Law in Geneva. In that capacity he represents developing and least developed countries in proceedings before the WTO dispute settlement system and provides advice on issues of WTO law. Mr. Sebastian holds a BA. LLB (Honours) degree from the National Law School of India University as well as BCL and MPhil degrees from Oxford University which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship. Prior to joining the ACWL, he worked briefly as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government and as a Clerk to the Chief Justice of India. He has published articles on issues of WTO law in the Harvard International Law Journal and the Journal of International Economic Law.