New England Law | Boston students have dozens of opportunities to integrate scholarship and advocacy in a global context.

Through the Center for International Law and Policy (CILP), students and faculty collaborate to research, analyze, and provide resource documents on topics ranging from CIA renditions in Europe to intergovernmental peacekeeper accountability and hate speech. Students also immerse themselves in the practice of international law during overseas externships. New England Law has well-established relationships with a number of international criminal courts and tribunals that make it possible for several students each semester to assist in war crimes prosecutions. New England Law is one of only a handful of law schools in the country to place students regularly with these institutions.

The 2010 conference, "Reviewing the UN Human Rights Council," featured a diverse range of international experts.

To promote the development of global legal work, the center hosts an annual international law conference in Boston dealing with issues such as the UN Human Rights Council, Chinese reunification and Taiwanese independence, global standards for competition laws, responding to rogue regimes, and the first decades of the Yugoslavia and Rwanda war crimes tribunals.  CILP also hosts approximately 20 programs each year on pressing topics in international law.  Center activities enable students to gain front-line experience, which is an important step in building careers in international law and international policy.

Center projects and placements allow students to dive into this legal realm.

Political Violence Documentation and Analysis

• Provide training to staff of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission.
• Assist in the analysis of recent violence under various international legal frameworks.

Defense Counsel Project

• Provide legal advice to defense counsel currently arguing cases before international criminal courts.

U.S. Attitudes Toward Human Rights Treaty-bodies

• Document and analyze the approach of the U.S. to its human rights obligations under international law.
• Examine the U.S. interpretation of its human rights obligations and its understanding of the legal authority of the bodies that monitor the treaties to which the U.S. is a party.

Peacekeeper Accountability Project

• Research accountability mechanisms for sexual misconduct by civilian and military personnel working on behalf of intergovernmental organizations, including the United Nations.

Inter-state Complicity Project/CIA Renditions in Europe

• Conduct research for the Council of Europe on the issue of European state complicity in alleged unlawful arrest, detention, and rendition perpetrated by U.S. agents within the territory of Council of Europe member states.
• Investigate the applicable international legal framework with emphasis on the secondary rules of state responsibility and the interaction of those rules with the primary rules of human rights law.

The ECCC Training Project

• Develop training materials for the staff of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Universal Jurisdiction Project

• Provide legal research assistance to a coalition of human rights non-governmental organizations seeking advice on legal remedies for gross human rights violations.

Externships

• International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
• International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
• ICTY/R Appeals Chamber
  
• International Criminal Court
• Office of the Co-prosecutors of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
• Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition

The CILP office is located at 31 St. James Avenue, Suite 350,  Boston, MA

Click here for directions.