Category: LIDS LIVE

By: Molly Doggett

The International Women’s Day event organized by Harvard Law and International Development Society and the Harvard Women’s Law Association featured three bright and diverse women, each with her own story of not only “leaning in” to her career, but staying in. The event began with a brief video address by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who acknowledged the accomplishments of women and our strides in women’s rights, and encouraged the audience to continue down this path towards equality. After the video address, each of the three speakers shared her story and encouraged the audience, comprised mostly of law students, professors, and other honorees, to “stay in” for ourselves and for the next generation as well. As a member of Harvard Law School’s first class of students evenly split between men and women, I am grateful to the three speakers, and all other strong women like them, for “staying in” and making it possible for me, my classmates, and my friends to be where we are today.

Panel speakers Mindy Roseman and Katherine Ashley shared their career and life experiences as successful women in the legal field. Mindy Roseman recounted her journey from a child who hated wearing dresses (as she was often forcefully encouraged to do), to the Academic Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard, and now Yale Law School’s Director of International Programs and Director of the Gruber Program on Global Justice and Women’s Rights. That journey included many years of hard work and dedication to the areas of reproductive and sexual rights and women’s rights. Katherine Ashley joined the panel as the first person at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to make partner on a part-time schedule, a feat that took her 17 years to accomplish. Katherine recounted her choice to start a family and to pursue a part-time schedule at the firm in order to maintain a dedicated presence to both her family and her work at the firm. Katherine “stayed in” for 17 years before being made partner – an accolade that most people on the partner track receive in half that time. Both Mindy Roseman and Katherine Ashley impressed the rapt audience with their patience, dedication, grace, and strength in pursuance of their chosen career paths.

The International Women’s Day event also reminded me that mere generations ago, there was an active struggle for women to be accepted into their chosen fields, and once over that hurdle, to be taken seriously. Keynote speaker Roxanne Conlin, one of the first women to be named United States Attorney, recalled her time in law school as one of three women in her class. She remembered how law firms would call the school and ask for the names of the top three students, to which the school would reply, “but, the top three students are women,” and the firm would answer, “ok then, give me the next three names.” She recalled being called on in class for every single case that dealt in some way with sex, adding that this meant that she was called on a lot because “a lot of cases dealt with sex.” She remembered attending class while pregnant during her second year of law school and not being called on – or even acknowledged – at all during the last month of her pregnancy, sensing that her professors were afraid that if they called on her, “the stress would cause the baby to come out right then!” Mrs. Conlin also recounted an episode of blatant sexual harassment that she experienced at one of her first jobs after law school, in which her supervisor said he heard rumors of sexual promiscuity in the office and asked “when his turn was.” Mrs. Conlin said she reacted to this event in the way that “women of the time did” – by asking herself what she was doing wrong. She asked herself what she had done to invite this from her superior – was she dressing “too provocatively,” had she said something to lead him on? Today, she dismissed these thoughts as ridiculous, but acknowledged how at the time she experienced feelings of personal doubt. Mrs. Conlin left this job shortly thereafter, but pushed ahead in her career, eventually becoming one of the first women to be named United States Attorney. President Jimmy Carter appointed her at the United State Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa in 1977, a job that she said she truly loved. Mrs. Conlin today works in the private practice at her own firm, where she says she continues to fight discrimination on behalf of her clients and people everywhere.

Each of the speakers at the International Women’s Day event shared a powerful self-narrative of patiently but actively pursuing her personal and career goals. Each echoed the advice of the others, noting that women should not only “lean in” to their careers but should also “stay in.” The three speakers had made it to where they were because they had stayed in – they had not backed down in the face of blatant adversity or an uphill battle, but had continued pushing on for themselves and for women like them. Perhaps the best advice of the day came from Roxanne Conlin, who said that “when a man steeples his fingers at you, that’s a power move,” and pausing to demonstrate, advised with a grin: “you should always steeple back.”

 

LIDS is hosting a student writing contest for our blog, LIDs Live. The contest asks students to respond to the following question: Should developing countries give their courts the power of judicial review? Interested students should submit an answer to this question of between 1000 and 1200 words. We will select the top two answers–the best pro-judicial review post and the best anti-judicial review post–and publish both on our blog. Then, we will allow our readers to select one winner between the final two. The person who gets the most votes will win a dinner with HLS Professor Mark Tushnet.

Submit your posts by Wednesday March 2 at 11:59 pm to mperloff@jd17.law.harvard.edu.

How do international development and security interact with one another? Two panels at the LIDS Symposium looked at various dimensions that define the problem. The first examined the interplay between business development largely in the private sector and security. The second was addressed directly to humanitarian actors, and how security considerations affect their work. The panels were book-ended by two keynote speakers, Edith Quintrell of MIGA and Paul Brinkley of North America Western Asia Holdings (and formerly Deputy Undersecretary of Defense), who discussed how investors think about security concerns, and how we can catalyze development through careful interventions in the private sector that may have secondary effects on security.

Paul Brinkley, in his closing remarks, summed up some of the themes underlying the discussion throughout the day. Economic stability is a necessary condition for development. But without confidence in the security of an economy, foreign investment will not enter on its own, and as a consequence, a strong middle-class is unlikely to emerge. All the foreign aid in the world won’t, on it’s own, create a business environment conducive to investment and middle-class development—therefore, the security question needs to be addressed head-on.

Mr. Brinkley proposed a number of ways for approaching these problems. Many focused on providing incentives to bring foreign direct investment into regions typically too insecure to attract much investment on their own. Once the private sector arrives with some skin in the game, he argued, it will figure out how to prosper—bringing the development country’s economy along with it. Regardless of the merits of his particular solutions, Mr. Brinkley has a point: unless security can be maintained, developing countries will continue to struggle to improve their broader economic situations. Figuring out the most productive ways to encourage that security should be a primary focus of the development community moving forward.

By: Ameya Naik

On 30^th September, LIDS hosted a talk by Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery. Mr. Kos delivered a fascinating lecture on the issue of corruption in sports, which he described as a rapidly-evolving and challenging area of work. The primary challenge for this area of work is the lack of any clearly defined jurisdiction, offences, or enforcing authorities – making most law enforcement measures taken against corruption in sports ad hoc and difficult to coordinate, even with the efforts of bodies like the Working Group.

Mr. Kos outlined two broad areas where corruption is most likely to emerge in relation to sporting events: bidding and event organisation, and betting on various aspects of games. Among the former, broadly speaking, the larger the scale of the sporting event, the greater the scope for corruption; recent developments with FIFA (or the Sochi Winter Olympics ensuring adequate snow despite unseasonably warm weather) have brought these manner of offenses into focus. The precise manner in which FIFA’s infamously sordid dealings – large kickbacks to national football associations, dispensing extravagant per diems in cash at conventions – found their way into U.S. jurisdiction is a fascinating story, hinging almost on a chance detail of some transactions: not atypical of the ad hoc nature of law enforcement in this field.

The area of betting and match-fixing is marked, if anything, by even greater ambiguity. First, there are stark differences between national laws, in terms of whether betting is legal, on what sports, by whom, and under what conditions. Second, there is the sheer nature of sport itself – the appeal of watching any sporting event is precisely the uncertainty of the outcome, so who can say if a given result is genuine or a result of corruption? Third, there are myriad opportunities for both: betting and match-fixing. One need not alter the course of an entire match or tournament – small details (which player or side scores first, or how much time it takes them to do so, the exact manner of play involved, and so on) can all be the subject of large bets. Finally, there is the nature of the financial networks involved – global in scope, and (somewhat unexpectedly) insulated from the better-known channels of shadow banking and underground finance.

Taken together, he noted by way of conclusion, these features make sports organisations a most lucrative business that remains drastically under-regulated by law: a highly attractive prospect for both legitimate and criminal enterprises, and to the wide range of actors who operate in the grey area between those (already far from clearly-defined) categories.

According to polling firm Gallup’s recently released Global Law and Order 2015 report, those countries are all among the top ten where people have the highest sense of personal security and the best experiences with law enforcement and crime.

As important as a sense of safety and law and order is for someone’s personal well-being, it also has broad societal implications in other ways.  This Friday, Harvard Law’s Law & International Development Society will be exploring one of those aspects:  development.  Panels including representatives from the World Bank and USAID, among other institutions, will be discussing business development in post-conflict areas and the dilemmas humanitarian actors face in high conflict areas.

The resulting discussions may help offer some insight into the significance of attitudes like those captured by Gallup.  The idea that a secure environment is an important part of building up a country’s economy may seem intuitive, but there are many unanswered questions.  Is there room for post-conflict states to utilize businesses’ tendency to see risk as opportunity?  Do security-side actors have a role to play in delivering development aid, or would such involvement place humanitarian actors at risk through a perceived loss of their impartiality?  If a country seeking to improve its residents’ well-being has limited resources, what proportion of those resources should it devote to which sectors?  Issues like these and others may be explored at the symposium, which will take place on Friday, October 16, from 12-7 PM in the Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School’s Austin Hall.  A full schedule of events and list of speakers can be found here.

Since the Arab Spring began in 2010, the Middle East North Africa region has had low economic growth. Although MENA has a relatively average GDP per capita compared with the rest of the world, this hides the vast inequality within countries and the variation between oil and non-oil countries in the region. One contributing factor to this is the low regional integration in MENA. Compared to other regions, the Middle East North Africa region not only has low regional integration with neighboring countries, but is also one of the least integrated in the world economy. MENA integration has been consistently increasing over time, but it remains far behind its potential. For example, while MENA is comprised of approximately 5.5% of the world’s population and 3.9% of the world’s GDP, MENA’s non-oil world trade, as of 2010, was only 1.8%. Moreover, during 2008 – 2010, MENA’s “intraregional exports of goods… averaged less than 8% of total exports,” while ASEAN averaged 25% and the EU averaged 66%.

There are several reasons for low regional integration in the MENA region. Political factors such as regime type, the lack of a hegemon, political instability and the organization of labor affect integration. Regimes with a highly centralized power center such as a dictator or monarchy are concerned only with staying in power. Integration would require giving up some sovereignty and would limit their ability to use any and all means to suppress domestic dissent. Dictators and monarchies often make instable regimes, especially with the onset of the Arab Spring, and thus, rulers are even less likely to enter into regional agreements with unstable partners. Lastly, labor is very constrained in MENA. In wealthy oil states, migrant laborers work for menial wages and, due to their migrant status, have no political rights or ways to organize. Organized labor is usually a driving force behind regional integration. If labor forces lack the ability to organize, then there is less incentive for governments to pursue an agenda that would limit their sovereignty. Unless laborers are granted more rights and governments began to listen to their people, there is no hope for regional integration in MENA.

Additionally, there are many economic factors that contribute to the lack of regional integration. In 2010, The World Bank again conducted a study on the lack of intraregional trade in MENA. The World Bank declared that some aspects of policy, such as public sector governance and participation, accountability and transparency, and rents and privileges, remained an obstacle to integration. The low levels of trade in the region are due partly to tariffs, but mostly to non-tariff issues such as include overvaluation of exchange rate, overregulation, labor restrictions, intellectual property rights, corruption, rules of origin, state intervention, and language and cultural barriers.

This low level of regional integration has contributed to the slow economic growth and high levels of unemployment in MENA. MENA has attempted to integrate several times over the past decades and has failed in almost every opportunity. Smaller regional agreements such as the one between the Gulf States and bilateral agreements have replaced an overall regional plan. The type of regime, corruption levels, and availability of oil in the region has led to concentrated wealth among the elite while the poor remain unemployed and unable to feed their families. Integrating the region will lead to lower levels of unemployment, higher wages, and more trade. While this is not the only way to help development and income inequality, it is one way to address these growing issues in the MENA region.