UC Davis Legal Experts on Iraq War
International criminal law, human rights
Professor Diane Marie Amann of the UC Davis School of Law is an expert in international criminal law, human rights, and constitutional law. A member of the board of advisers of the National Institute of Military Justice, she can offer comment on military justice, the Haditha affair, the Saddam Hussein trial, and the detention of alleged terrorists. She is author of Military and Civilian Justice in the United States and the Post-September 11 Military Commissions, part of The Changing Faces of Military Justice and Special Tribunals as They Confront International Law, a 16-country research project of the Mixed Comparative Law Research Unit of Paris. She has also written about the U.N. Committee Against Torture's position urging an end to Guantanamo detention for the American Society of International Law. Her other writings, including "Abu Ghraib," in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review in 2005, and "Guantanamo," published in 2004 in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, have examined legal issues related to the U.S. war on terrorism. Contact: Diane Marie Amann, School of Law, (530) 754-9099, [email protected].
Professor Anupam Chander of the UC Davis School of Law says "the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay" must be closed decisively by transferring the land to a trusteeship for the Cuban people and yielding control over the harbor to an international body. The professor, who studies international law, says a legal trick—in which the United States exercises absolute control and concedes that another nation has sovereignty —has allowed the U.S. government to detain people in Guantanamo without giving them access to lawyers or courts. Quitting Guantanamo, he says, will help demonstrate the United States' commitment to not be an imperial power. Among the courses Chander teaches is one on public international law. Contact: Anupam Chander, School of Law, (530) 754-5304, [email protected].
Women's human rights
Professor Madhavi Sunder of the UC Davis School of Law is an expert on women's human rights in Muslim countries and communities. With law and culture as the focus of her scholarship, Sunder says international human rights law often fails to address women's rights under even the most oppressive regimes because such law is reticent to interfere with religion and culture. A 2006 Carnegie scholar, she is researching and writing a book about activists working for the reform of women's rights in Muslim countries. Sunder published a leading article on women's rights activism in the Muslim world, titled "Piercing the Veil," in the Yale Law Journal in 2003. Her related article on dissent within cultural groups was published in the Stanford Law Review in 2001. Contact: Madhavi Sunder, School of Law, (530) 752-2896, [email protected].
Media contact(s):
* Claudia Morain, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9841, [email protected]