Join the Hertie School after work to learn more about the promise and pitfalls of strategic litigation and critical lawyering. Look forward to a keynote speech and panel discussion followed by a Q&A session with prominent litigators. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to network with human rights practitioners, litigators and other experts in the field at a reception.
With democracy on the defensive in much of the world, what role should lawyers play in protecting human rights and advancing fundamental values? More than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 25 years since the founding of the International Criminal Court, litigation in the public interest has become a global phenomenon, practiced on all continents. What does it have to show for itself? Many criticise strategic litigation as slow, expensive, elitist, and unresponsive to the central concerns of communities it purports to serve. And yet, “landmark” decisions trumpeting widescale change are announced on a regular basis. What’s the reality? How should litigators striving to better the world understand our role and our craft in the coming years?
Event summary
As part of the Strategic Human Rights Litigation Summer School, taking place June 26-30, 2023, and inviting 20 participants from around the world, the Hertie School's Executive Education and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) are hosting this public event.
Join us for a keynote address by Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer and a panel discussion followed by a Q&A session with Dr. Roda Verheyen, Márta Pardavi, and Waikwa Wanyoike. James A. Goldston will serve as moderator.
Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to further discuss and network with human rights practitioners, litigators, and other experts in the field at a reception.
Agenda:
From 17:45 doors are open
18:00 - 18:10: Opening remarks by Prof. Dr. Andrea Römmele and James A. Goldston
18:10 - 18:30: Keynote address by Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer
18:30 - 19:30: Moderated panel discussion followed by Q&A with Dr. Roda Verheyen, Márta Pardavi and Waikwa Wanyoike
19:30 - 20:00: Reception and networking
Please register to attend no later than noon (CEST) on June 27, 2023.
Speakers
Prof. Dr. Susanne Baer
Susanne Baer is a German legal scholar and professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin (HUB), and has taught at CEU Budapest, Linz, Toronto, Erfurt and Bielefeld. She is also a Lea Bates Global Law Professor at Michigan Law School and a Centennial Professor at LSE London. From 2011 to 2023, she served as a Justice in the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court. At Humboldt, she headed a Gender Competence Center to advise the German government, founded the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Research - for Law and Society and initiated the Humboldt Law Clinic for Fundamental and Human Rights. Susanne Baer also served as Dean of the Faculty and Spokesperson of the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies as well as Vice President of HU. Her research focuses on comparative constitutionalism, critical approaches to law and fundamental rights.
Dr. Roda Verheyen
Roda Verheyen is an environmental lawyer with many years of experience in international environmental law and policy and climate change campaigning in Europe. She has written her Ph.D. on climate change damage in international law and now has her own private law firm specialised in environmental, energy and planning law in Hamburg, Germany. Dr. Verheyen was previously a Director of the Climate Justice Programme, which she founded in 2002 with Peter Roderick. Before registering as an attorney, she was an independent consultant for (inter alia) the GTZ (today GIZ), the Federal Environment Ministry, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Germanwatch e.V., as well as a member of the German delegation to the Climate Change Convention. She is also a board member of the Hamburg International Environmental Law Conference (HIELC), and a member of the Stakeholder Board of the University of Graz, Austria, for the Doctoral Programme on Climate Change. She publishes regularly on International and National Environmental Law topics.
Márta Pardavi
Márta Pardavi is Co-Chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a leading human rights NGO based in Budapest, Hungary. A lawyer by training, she has recently been focusing on the threats to the rule of law and civil society space in Hungary and in the EU. She also co-leads the Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) programme, which equips human rights defenders to build stronger organisations and alliances for joint action on civic space and rule of law in the EU.
Márta serves on the boards of PILnet, the International Partnership for Human Rights and the Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. She has been awarded the 2018 William D. Zabel Human Rights Award from Human Rights First, the Civil Rights Defender’s Civil Rights Defenders of the Year 2019 award and was chosen to be a member of POLITICO28 Class of 2019. In 2020/2021, she was a Policy Leader Fellow at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance in Florence, Italy.
Waikwa Wanyoike
Waikwa Wanyoike is Litigation Director at the Open Society Justice Initiative. Before joining the Justice Initiative, Wanyoike co-founded and directed for eight years the Katiba Institute, dedicated to promoting the implementation and understanding of Kenya’s transformative 2010 constitution through litigation and research. He was admitted to practice law in Ontario, Canada, and in Kenya, and has litigated high-profile cases in both jurisdictions before trial and appellate courts. He has led strategic litigation on issues ranging from refugee and citizenship rights, fair trial rights, transnational crimes, civil and political rights, socioeconomic rights, environmental rights, and electoral justice. He has developed and directed test cases addressing issues of public finance, accountability of state institutions, and the division and separation of powers, has taught seminars on public litigation and trial advocacy including at Osgoode Law School in Toronto. He is the author of numerous book chapters, scholarly papers, and editorial opinions and has served on the boards of Canadian and Kenyan human rights NGOs. He studied at Kenyatta University in Kenya and at York and Queen’s Universities in Canada.
James A. Goldston
James A. Goldston is the Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which advances the rule of law and rights protection worldwide through advocacy, litigation, research, and the promotion of legal capacity. A leading practitioner of international human rights and criminal law, Goldston has litigated several groundbreaking cases before the European Court of Human Rights and United Nations treaty bodies, including on issues of counterterrorism, racial discrimination, and torture. Goldston previously served as coordinator of prosecutions and senior trial attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, he was the legal director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre; director general for human rights of the Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and prosecutor in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he focused on organized crime. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School. He has taught at Columbia Law School, NYU Law School and Central European University.
Prof. Dr. Andrea Römmele
Andrea Römmele is Dean of Executive Education and Professor of Communication in Politics and Civil Society at the Hertie School. Her research interests are comparative political communications, political parties and public affairs. She was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Modern German Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2012/13 and has been a visiting fellow at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, and the Australian National University in Canberra. Römmele is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Political Consulting and Policy Advice and also works as a consultant to political and corporate campaigns. She obtained her master's degree from the San Francisco University within a Cross-Registration Program with the University of California at Berkeley, a PhD from Heidelberg University and a habilitation from the Free University of Berlin.
