The State of International Law and Climate Change: Trade and Human Rights

The Minnesota Journal of International Law (MJIL) and the Human Rights Center are hosting a symposium on the state of international law and climate change, with a focus on trade and human rights. The Symposium will take place on Friday, April 12, 2024 at the University of Minnesota Law School in Mondale Hall Room 25, starting at 9:00am. We will have distinguished speakers attending from around the country who work in the field of international environmental law. They will share their research and insight into this important issue. More details on this event, including the event schedule, will be coming soon. We hope to see you there!

Event Schedule 

9:00 - 9:15 Breakfast and Registration 

9:15 - 9:30  Opening Remarks

Speakers: 

• Dom Detweiler, Editor-in-Chief, Minnesota Journal of Int’l Law (MJIL).
• Dean Oren Gross, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School.

9:30 - 10:45 Topics in Human Rights, Climate Change, and International Law CLE code for 1.25 Standard CLE: #505513

Speakers: 

• Sumudu Atapattu, Teaching Professor; Director of the Global Legal Studies Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
• Alex Huneeus, Evjue-Bascom Professor of Law; Director, Global Legal Studies Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
• David Tushaus, Assistant Dean of Graduate and Experiential Education at the Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law. 

11:00 - 12:00 Book Talk: “The Climate Emergency and the Ecology of Hope”

*This session will be in Spanish with simultaneous interpretation to English

Speakers: 

• Yaku Pérez, Lawyer, author, indigenous leader (Kichwa Kañari), and former presidential candidate in Ecuador. 

12:15 - 1:15 Lunch Event: COP 28 Reflections from the UMN Delegation

Speakers: 

• University of Minnesota students: Samuel Makikalli, Natika Kantaria, and Cat Cox

1:30 - 2:45 Topics in Trade, Climate Change, and International Law CLE code for 1.25 Standard CLE: #505514

Speakers:

• Robert Howse, the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at NYU School of Law.
• Jennifer Haverkamp, Professor from Practice at the University of Michigan Law School; Graham Family Director, University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Institute.
• Antonia Eliason, Associate Professor of Law, the University of Mississippi School of Law.

3:00 - 4:00 Reception — Auerbach Commons

Speakers: Topics in Human Rights, Climate Change, and International Law

 Sumudu Atapattu is a Teaching Professor and Director of the Global Legal Studies Center at University of Wisconsin Law School. She is affiliated with UW-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Global Health Institute, the Center for South Asia, and the 4W Initiative, and is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Program. She is also the Lead Counsel for Human Rights at the Center for International Sustainable Development Law; and affiliated faculty at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights, Sweden. She has published widely including several books on climate change and human rights, international environmental law, and environmental justice. 

 Professor Alex Huneeus' scholarship focuses on international law and human rights, with emphasis on Latin America. She is Evjue Bascom Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received her PhD, JD and BA from University of California, Berkeley, and was a post-doc at Stanford University’s Center on Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law. At UW, Professor Huneeus currently serves as Director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice. She is Co-Founder of the University of Wisconsin Human Rights Program, and former Director of the Global Legal Studies Program. She is a member of the American Society of International Law and the Law and Society Association. She has served on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, and of Law and Social Inquiry. Previously, she has served on the Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association and the American Society for Comparative Law, and as section chair for the Midwest Political Science Association (Law and Courts) and for the ASIL Midwest Interest Group on International law. In 2017, Professor Huneeus was named to serve a ten-year term as Foreign Expert Jurist in the Colombian Jurisdicción para la Paz (JEP), a court created as part of the Colombian peace process.

 Professor David Tushaus is the Assistant Dean of Graduate and Experiential Education at the Jigme Singye Wangchuck (JSW) School of Law in the Kingdom of Bhutan. Dave has served abroad in various capacities. He was a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in 2012 at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India. He also served as a Fulbright Specialist for the University of The Gambia Faculty of Law in 2017, an International Clinician in Residence and Fulbright Specialist in Myanmar in the summers of 2018 and 2019. He was then an Ambassador’s Distinguished Scholar at Bahir Dar School of Law, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia, in 2019–2020. Dave was a staff attorney and clinic director for the Midwest Innocence Project and the University of Missouri – Kansas City prior to going to JSW. Earlier in his career he was a professor and Chairperson in the Department of Criminal Justice, Legal Studies, and Social Work at Missouri Western State University. He served as Managing Attorney at Legal Aid of Western Missouri for 14 years.

Speaker: Yaku Pérez Book Talk

 Yaku Pérez is a Lawyer, author, indigenous leader (Kichwa Kañari), and former presidential candidate in Ecuador.

Speakers: COP 28 Reflections from the UMN Delegation

 Samuel Makikalli is a second-year law student at the University of Minnesota. He is interested in climate finance, with an emphasis on disaster insurance, carbon crediting, and energy infrastructure development. Prior to law school, Samuel worked in economic research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He has a B.A. in Economics and International Affairs from Lewis & Clark College.

 Natika Kantaria is a human rights advocate and communications strategist who has spent nearly a decade planning and implementing advocacy campaigns in the fields of human rights and the rule of law through projects funded by the Council of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations, USAID, SIDA, OSF, and NDI. She has experience in communicating the needs of the public and marginalized communities to governments, media, decision-makers, and other stakeholders. She is particularly passionate about advocating for Economic, Social, and Cultural rights and climate justice. As a Fulbright Scholar, Natika is currently pursuing a Master of Human Rights at the University of Minnesota. Natika was the University of Minnesota Observer at the 28th UN Conference of the Parties (COP28). She is an Edmund Muskie Professional Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow focusing on "Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls." Natika also holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Miskolc in Hungary and a Master of Public Relations from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs.

 Cat Cox is a 1L at Minnesota Law. She earned her BSBA from the University of Nebraska, Omaha with a primary concentration in business law and secondary concentrations in economics and management. Cat has been involved with environmental activism since her early teen years, when she first engaged with the Save the Boundary Waters initiative. As a virtual delegate at UN COP 28, Cat paid special attention to environmentally sustainable economic development initiatives particularly for countries in the global south.

Speakers: Topics in Trade, Climate Change, and International Law

 Professor Robert Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at NYU School of Law. Professor Howse received his B.A. in philosophy and political science with high distinction, as well as an LL.B., with honors, from the University of Toronto, where he was co-editor in chief of the Faculty of Law Review. He also holds an LL.M. from the Harvard Law School. He has been a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Paris 1 (Pantheon-Sorbonne), Tsinghua University, and Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada and taught in the Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence.

Professor Howse has been a member of the faculty of the World Trade Institute, Berne, Master’s in International Law and Economics Programme. He is a frequent consultant or adviser to government agencies and international organizations such as the OECD, the World Bank, UNCTAD, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Law Commission of Canada and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He was a contributor to the American Law Institute WTO project. He is a co-founder and co-convener of the New York City Area Working Group on International Economic Law and serves on the American Bar Association Working Group on Investment Treaties. Professor Howse serves on the editorial boards of the London Review of International Law, Transnational Legal Theory, The Journal of World Trade and Investment, among others. Professor Howse's article with Ruti Teitel "Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Why International Law Really Matters" was awarded the Global Policy Best Article Prize 2010 (shared with Joseph Stiglitz et al). 

 Professor Jennifer Haverkamp, an internationally recognized expert on climate change, international trade, and global environmental policy and negotiations, is the Graham Family Director of the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute. She is also a Professor from Practice at Michigan Law School and a Professor of Practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.    

Before coming to Michigan, Professor Haverkamp served as the U.S. Department of State’s Ambassador and Special Representative for Environment and Water Resources, where in 2016 she led the Department’s successful negotiations of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s landmark CORSIA agreement to control global greenhouse gas emissions, as well as of the Kigali HFC-phasedown amendment to the Montreal Protocol. Previously, Ms. Haverkamp directed Environmental Defense Fund's International Climate Program, spent nearly a decade as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Environment and Natural Resources in the Executive Office of the President, and held posts at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice. She has taught at Cornell Law School, George Washington University’s law school and Johns Hopkins graduate school, and has served on USTR's Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee and a number of nonprofit boards.  Ms. Haverkamp obtained a law degree from Yale Law School, earned a master’s degree in politics and philosophy at Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and majored in biology at The College of Wooster (on whose board of trustees she has served for many years).

 Professor Antonia Eliason is associate professor of law at the University of Mississippi where she has been teaching since 2013. Her research focuses on climate change and international economic law, particularly issues relating to climate justice, sustainable development, and trade facilitation. Her other research interests include cannabis legalization, geoengineering, and racial capitalism.

Before joining the faculty, Professor Eliason worked as an associate at Allen & Overy in London and Hong Kong in the US Corporate Finance group, focusing on debt and equity securities. Prior to joining Allen & Overy, she interned in the Legal Affairs division of the WTO and clerked for Judge Lenaerts at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Professor Eliason received her B.S. in Cell & Molecular Biology and Computer Science from the University of Michigan, her M.A. in European and Eurasian Studies from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, her J.D. from the University of Michigan, and, most recently, her LL.M. in Air and Space Law from the University of Mississippi. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in history at the University of Mississippi, focusing on political crimes in 1950s Hungary.