Faculty Details

Lisa J. Laplante

Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Law and Policy

Education:

JD, New York University School of Law

MEd, University of Massachusetts Amherst

BA, Brown University

Email: llaplante@nesl.edu

Phone: 617-422-7374

Professional Background

Before joining the New England Law faculty, Professor Laplante spent more than five years as a human rights lawyer and researcher in Peru.

She has provided legal counsel to victims bringing complaints to the Inter-American Human Rights System. She was also a researcher with the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as a grantee of the Notre Dame University Transitional Justice Program. She co-founded the Praxis Institute for Social Justice, where she served as deputy director. Before her work in Peru, she was a Furman Fellow with Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (Human Rights First) in New York. Through CILP, she currently oversees the Operational Level Grievance Mechanism Research Project as well as the Transitional Justice in the USA Project.

Professor Laplante was visiting assistant professor and Richard D. Tulisano Human Rights Fellow at the University of Connecticut School of Law in 2011–2012, and was a research fellow there in 2012–2013. She also served in 2012–2013 as the interim director of the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, working in consultation with Senator Christopher Dodd. Prior academic posts include a visiting assistant professorship at Marquette University Law School (2008–2011) and a fellowship with the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science at Princeton University (2007–2008). In 2015, Professor Laplante was elected co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s Transitional Justice and Rule of Law interest group.

Courses

Business Compliance and Human Rights

Public International Law

Transitional Justice

Torts

Areas of Expertise

Business and Human Rights

Comparative Law

Compliance Law

Human Rights

International Law

Postconflict Reconstruction

Remedies

Torts

Transitional Justice

Publications

Effective and Meaningful Dialogue through Company Grievance Mechanisms: Promoting Community Engagement, Sustainable Development and Conflict Prevention, Business, Human Rights and Sustainable Development (2025)

Administrative Reparations Programs and Transitional Justice: Dilemmas, Debates and New Directions, Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2022 (2025)

Using OLGMs to remedy human rights & environmental issues in supply chains, California Lawyers Association ESG-in-Law (2024)

The United States 2024 National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct, Business and Human Rights Journal Blog Symposium (2024)

Admissibility: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACommHR), Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law (2024)

Measuring Up: A Dialogical Model for Assuring a Reparative Process, 49 Law & Social Inquiry (2023)

African Development Bank Independent Recourse Mechanism, Max Planck Encyclopedias of International Law (2023)

Right to remedy, Teaching Business and Human Rights (2023)

The Wild West of Company-Level Grievance Mechanisms: Drawing Normative Borders to Patrol the Privatization of Human Rights Remedies, 64 Harvard International Law Journal (2023)

Chief Justice Roberts is right about the importance of civic education, The Hill (2020)

This national reckoning is overdue, The Hill (2020)

A Balancing Act: The Right to Peace and Justice (Comment), 59 Harvard International Law Journal (2019)

Plural Justice: A Holistic Approach to Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding, Peace Lab (2018)

Human Torts, 39 Cardozo Law Review (2017)

Talking Points on the Right to Remedy and Reparations: Considerations for a Business and Human Rights Treaty, The Center for International Law and Policy (CILP), New England Law | Boston 47 (2016)

Just Repair, 48 Cornell Int’l L. J. 66 (2015)

The Third Pillar: Remedies, Reparations and the Ruggie Principles, The Business and Human Rights Landscape: Moving Forward, Looking Back 17 (2015) (with Jonathan C. Drimmer)

Memory Battles: Guatemala’s Public Debates and the Genocide Trial of José Efraín Ríos Montt, 32 Quinnipiac Law Review 54 (2014)

Transitional Justice and Peace Building for the Future: Diagnosing and Addressing the Socioeconomic Roots of Violence Through a Human Rights and Intergenerational Framework, Sustainable Development, International Criminal Justice, and Treaty Implementation, Cambridge University Press 15 (2013)

The Plural Justice Aims of Reparations, Transitional Justice Theories 14 (2013) (edited by Susanne Buckley-Zistel, Teresa Koloma Beck, Christian Braun and Friederike Mieth)

Negotiating Reparations Rights: The Participatory and Symbolic Quotients, 19 Buffalo Law Review (2012)

The Domestication of International Criminal Law: A Proposal for Expanding the International Criminal Court’s Sphere of Influence, 43 John Marshall Law Review 681 (2010)

Evaluating Truth Commissions and Reparations through the Eyes of Victims, 28 L’Observateur des Nations Unies 8 (2010)

Mediating Post-Conflict Dialogue: The Media’s Role in Transitional Justice Processes, 93 Marquette Law Review 203 (2009) (with Kelly Phenicie)

Outlawing Amnesty: The Return of Criminal Justice in Transitional Justice Schemes, 49 Virginia Journal of International Law 915 (2009)

Commissioning Truth, Constructing Silences: The Peruvian Truth Commission and the Other Truths of ‘Terrorists’, Mirror of Justice: Law and Power in the Post-Cold War Era 15 (2009) (with Kimberly Theidon)

Out of the Conflict Zone: The Business and Development Case for Community Consent Processes in the Extractive Sector, 11 Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal 69 (2008) (with Suzanne Spears)

Transitional Justice and Peace Building: Diagnosing and Addressing the Socioeconomic Roots of Violence Through a Human Rights Framework, 2 The International Journal of Transitional Justice 24 (2008)

Expanding the Definition of the Right to Mental Health: Attending to Victims of Political Violence and Armed Conflict in Their Communities of Origin, 2 Essex Review of Human Rights 19 (2008) (with Roxana Castellon)

On the Indivisibility of Rights: Truth Commissions, Reparations and the Right to Development, 10 Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal 141 (2007)

The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru’s Political Transition, 23 American University International Law Review 51 (2007)

The Peruvian Truth Commission’s Historical Memory Project: Empowering Truth-Tellers to Confront Truth Deniers, 6 Journal of Human Rights 20 (2007)