In this in-cites interview, Dr. Martin S. Flaherty discusses the Joseph R. Crowley Program in International Human Rights at Fordham University Law School in New York. Fordham is ranked at #156 overall among the 52,000 institutions covered in the ISI Essential Science Indicators Web product. In the field of Social Sciences, Fordham has 469 papers cited a total of 1,764 times to date. Dr. Flaherty’s paper, "History right?: historical scholarship, original understanding, and treaties as ‘supreme law of the land,’" (Columbia Law Review 99[8]: 2095-153, December 1999) was featured with his commentary in ESI Special Topics: New Hot Papers section in January 2002. Dr. Flaherty is the Co-Director of the Crowley Program at Fordham.

The Crowley Program in International Human Rights grew out of human rights work undertaken both by myself and my colleague, Tracy Higgins. Tracy had gone to Afghanistan under the auspices of the International League for Human Rights; I had done extensive work in Northern Ireland with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Belfast-based Committee for the Administration of Justice. We both thought that our law students should have the same sorts of opportunities we had, so we set about starting a program. Fordham Law School, where we both already taught, was a promising host for a number of reasons. It was committed to public interest law. It was also strong in international law. In addition, it is based in Manhattan, home to the UN and to numerous international human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

  What role did external support and funding play in this area?

A unique aspect of the Crowley Program is annual human rights missions to different countries involving professors, students, and advocates from outside human rights NGOs. The process begins when we select 6 to 8 students with exceptional promise to go on that year's mission. Those students then take a more general human rights survey in the fall (with 50 or so other students), then a seminar in the spring that concentrates on the particular nation and human rights standards relevant to that years mission. All this culminates in a two-week mission in the late spring that in turn forms the basis of a major human rights report published in the Fordham International Law Journal and as a stand-alone publication. A key aspect of this process is our partnering with a human rights NGO for that particular year. Among other things, the NGO's expertise complements our academic resources. We have been extremely fortunate in our partners, which have included: the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (for our mission to Turkey); the New York City Bar Association (Hong Kong); the Mexico City-based Centro PRODH (Mexico); Women in Law and Development in Africa (Ghana) and Human Rights Watch (this coming year, to Malaysia). For the Ghana mission, we were also accompanied by The Teaching & Learning Network, which is completing a documentary on our Program to air on PBS later this year. Last but hardly least, generous financial support from Fordham Law School alumni and administration, especially from our Dean, John Feerick, make all this possible.

The Crowley Program's work aims to combine rigorous academic study with practical advocacy. Our annual mission is the most obvious way in which this occurs. In that regard, substantial classroom work serves as preparation for an intensive mission that results in a publication that helps publicize the adherence to human rights norms in a given country. The Crowley Program further seeks to combine the theoretical and practical in other ways. Our Advocates Program helps place students with local NGOs throughout the US and world, especially for summer internships. These students thus get hands-on experience in places such as Northern Ireland, Haiti, South Africa, Central Asia, Mexico, and many others. We further have a speakers program in which human rights advocates and scholars can share their experiences at the Law School in programs ranging from informal "brown bag" lunches to major talks given by such individuals as Professor and Human Rights Committee member Louis Henkin, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, and South African Constitutional Court Judge Richard Goldstone.

Our immediate goals are to continue planning for our Malaysia mission, to continue follow-up work for the other countries we've been to, and generally to continue placing students with NGOs. Our long-term goals include: establishing an LLM program in human rights law for foreign students; obtaining funding to underwrite student internship in our Advocates Program, and expanding our academic programs.

  What research fields or capabilities do you see as critical for the future of your institution?

Currently, our "staff" consists of two professors and our Crowley Fellow, who is a recent law school graduate who works with the Program for a year (our current Fellow is Nicole Fritz, who is from South Africa and has done substantial human rights writing and advocacy work). To maintain our present level of activity, and certainly to expand, we would greatly benefit from administrative support (i.e. a secretary or assistant). More broadly, we would benefit substantially from a greater presence of foreign scholars and advocates. Ideally, as well, we would like to expand our own emphasis beyond traditional civil and political rights to issues related to globalization, such as labor and other economic and social issues. In this last regard, we are already fortunate in having recently hired faculty who are both interested in these issues and in taking part in our program.

Human rights work requires a degree of optimism. In that light, I expect and hope that human rights will become more integrated into mainstream academics and scholarship in the coming years. Though it has ancient roots, human rights law in many senses is only about 50 years old in its current form. During that time, nothing short of a conceptual revolution has occurred that has reversed the old notion that what nations do to people within their own borders is purely their business. Tremendous strides have been made in creating various sets of norms and standards through treaties and customs to hold nations accountable for their human rights records. That said, critical challenges remain. One is a woeful lack of enforcement of these standards. Another is a continued lack of attention to economic and social rights. In addition, human rights law remains "under-theorized" to a significant extent. I expect progress on all these fronts in the next decade.

  What would you like to convey to the general public about your institution's work?

What we are especially proud of is that in a few short years we have been able to establish a Program that has been innovative, has generated an immense amount of interest among current and prospective students, and has achieved a high degree recognition in the human rights community, both here and abroad.

Joseph R. Crowley Program in International Human Rights
Fordham Law School
New York, NY, USA
http://law.fordham.edu/crowley.htm

Related Features:

Read Dr. Martin S. Flaterty's comments  in the January 2002 issue of ESI Special Topics section: "New Hot Papers."

View the rankings of the Columbia Law Review, the journal in which Professor Flaherty published his paper, in the "Journal" category within incites.