About Us
IILJ Graduate Scholars and J.S.D. Candidates
IILJ GRADUATE SCHOLARS
Megan Donaldson
LLM Hauser Global and IILJ Graduate Scholar (Australia)
Megan studied law and arts at the University of Melbourne. After completing an honours thesis in 2006 on aspects of the French Revolution, she spent a year in a commercial firm, was admitted to practice, and in 2008-2009 undertook an associateship with the Honarable Justice K M Hayne of the High Court of Australia.
While at university, Megan was a member, assistant editor and ultimately co-editor of the Melbourne Journal of International Law. She was the editorial assistant for the Public Law Review, and for Anne Orford (ed), International Law and Its Others. She undertook research work in international and constitutional law, and has recently co-authored a chapter on “Values in Australian Constitutionalism” for a collected work exploring the possibilities and limitations of reference to values in comparative constitutionalism.
At NYU she will undertake an LL.M. in Legal Theory, with a focus on history and international law.
Doreen Lustig
J.S.D. Candidate and IILJ Graduate Scholar (Israel).
Topic: History and Theory of International law and the Business Enterprise.
Doreen Lustig is a J.S.D. student and IILJ Graduate Scholar. Her dissertation traces the role of the business enterprise in the history of international law. Her work is supervised by Professor Benedict Kingsbury. Ms. Lustig completed her LL.M. in International Legal Studies as a Hauser scholar at NYU in 2006. Her thesis, The Modern Temples of India: International Law and Development Induced Displacement, was written under the supervision of Professor Benedict Kingsbury. She received both her LL.B., magna cum laude and a Bachelor's degree, Magna Cum Laude, in Sociology and Anthropology, from Tel Aviv University. Ms. Lustig served as an Associate Editor of the Tel Aviv University Law Review (Iyuney Mishpat). Subsequent to her Bachelor's studies she was employed as a legal clerk for Justice Eliezer Rivlin at the Israeli Supreme Court. During the summer of 2006, Ms. Lustig served as an IILJ intern at the UN International Law Commission in Geneva. She is the co-author of 'Displacement and Relocation from Protected Areas: International Law Perspectives on Rights, Risks and Resistance', Conservation and Society 4 (2006), 404-418 (with Benedict Kingsbury).
Eran Shamir-Borer
IILJ Graduate Scholar & J.S.D. Candidate (Israel)
Topic: The development of administrative law norms and mechanisms in global administrative bodies
Eran Shamir-Borer is a J.S.D. student and IILJ Graduate Scholar. His research seeks to contribute to the study of the emerging filed of Global Administrative Law (GAL) by exploring the factors that lead to the development of administrative law norms and mechanisms in global administrative bodies, with special focus on international standardization bodies. He studies under the supervision of Professor Benedict Kingsbury. Eran received his LL.B. degree, cum laude, in 1998 from Tel Aviv University, Israel, where he served as an Associate Editor of the Israel Journal of Criminal Justice (“Plilim”). In 2004 he received his LL.M. degree, cum laude, from the same institution. He also holds an LL.M. degree in International Legal Studies from NYU School of Law. His thesis, entitled “Taming of the Military Decision-Maker?: Administrative Legal Norms in the Laws of Armed Conflict”, was written under the supervision of Professor Joseph H.H. Weiler and dealt with the regulation and control of state discretion when exercising discretionary powers under the laws of armed conflict. From 1998 to 2004 Eran served as an officer (presently at the rank of a Major) in the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General Corps in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In this capacity, he provided legal counseling to IDF headquarters and government offices on matters relating to international law, participated in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and negotiated cooperation agreements with foreign militaries. In 2003 he was a delegate to the 28th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and a member of the Drafting Committee.
J.S.D. Candidates in International Law
Galia Rivlin
J.S.D. Candidate (Israel)
Topic: Extraterritorial application of constitutional norms.
Galia Rivlin is a J.S.D. candidate in International Law. Her doctorate research concerns the question of extraterritorial application of constitutional safeguards. Her work is supervised by Professor David Golove. Ms. Rivlin completed her LL.M. as a Grotius scholar at NYU in 2007. She received her LL.B., magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006. Ms. Rivlin was cited on the Hebrew University Faculty of Law Dean's List for outstanding academic achievements in each year of law school. In 2005 Ms. Rivlin also received the Faculty of Law Award for Outstanding Academic Achievements and the Faculty of Law Jonathan Greenwald Award for excellence in family law. During her second and third year of law school Ms. Rivlin was a member of the editorial board of Mishpatim, the Hebrew University Law Review. Ms. Rivlin served as a research assistant and teaching assistant to Dean Eyal Zamir in contract law and as a research assistant to Professor Israel Gilead in tort law. Upon graduation, Ms. Rivlin worked for a year as a law clerk at the Supreme Court Division: Constitutional and Administrative Affairs of the Israeli State Attorney Office in Jerusalem. As a law clerk, Ms. Rivlin conducted legal research and wrote drafts in response to petitions in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law and public international law. After the conclusion of her clerkship, Ms. Rivlin was admitted on June 2006 to the Israeli Bar.
Olivier Barsalou
J.S.D. Candidate (Canada)
Olivier is a J.S.D. student from Canada. He studied law at the Faculty of Political Science and Law of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) where he earned a B.A. (2005) in International Law and International Relations and a LL.M. (2007) in International Law. In 2008, he graduated from NYU School of Law with a LL.M. in international legal studies. He is interested in the areas of history, philosophy, and theory of international law. His J.S.D. research project will explore how international law responded and shaped the process of decolonization in the post-1945 world. Contact: obarsalou@nyu.edu
Hugh King
J.S.D. Candidate (New Zealand)
Hugh King is a J.S.D. student from New Zealand specializing in international law. He is writing his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Joseph Weiler on the extraterritorial human rights obligations of states.
Hugh holds an LLB(Hons) from Victoria University of Wellington, where he was a joint recipient of the University Medal, and an LLM from the University of Toronto. Before coming to North America he clerked in the High Court of New Zealand. His most recent work examines the liability of corporations under the Alien Tort Claims Act and can be found in volume 9(2) of the Melbourne Journal of International Law.
Hiram Melendez-Juarbe
J.S.D. Candidate (Puerto Rico)
Hiram obtained his Juris Doctor from the University of Puerto Rico Law School (2000), where he is currently Associate Professor, and holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School (2002). After four years teaching constitutional, administrative law as well as cyberlaw, in 2008 he received his second LL.M. from NYU Law.
He is founder of the University of Puerto Rico Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic and co-founder of the Creative Commons Puerto Rico project. Hiram has published various articles on constitutional and administrative law and, from 2005 to 2007, served as policy and constitutional advisor to the Government of Puerto Rico.
His J.S.D. research focuses on the intersection between freedom of speech and intellectual property law.
Patricia Palacios Zuloaga
J.S.D. Candidate (Chile)
Ms. Palacios Zuloaga is a J.S.D. student from Santiago, Chile, whose legal interests fall in the area of international human rights law. She received her law degree from the University of Chile and her LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School where she received a Stoffel Scholarship.
She is a member of the faculty at the University of Chile’s Law School where she teaches on matters such as discrimination and women’s rights in international law and where she also works as a researcher for the University’s Human Rights Center (HRC). Through the HRC she has published two books in Spanish: one on discrimination case law in the UN human rights system and another on the gendered interpretations of human rights treaties. Her LLM paper entitled “The Path to Gender Justice in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights” won the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on the Human Rights of Women awarded by the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law. The paper will shortly be published in the Texas Journal of Women and the Law.
Her dissertation will examine the obstacles to the transmission of international human rights law between supranational human rights protection organs.
Recent J.S.D. Graduates
Kirsty Gover
J.S.D. and IILJ Graduate Scholar (New Zealand)
Topic: Self-constitution and indigenous peoples’ governance.
Kirsty Gover is a recent graduate of the J.S.D. Program, where she was an IILJ Graduate Scholar and New Zealand Top Achiever Doctoral Fellow. Her dissertation is entitled: “Constitutionalizing Tribalism: States, Tribes and Membership Governance in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.” Kirsty received her B.A./LL.B., with honors, from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and her LL.M. from Columbia University, United States. She was a Columbia University School of Law Human Rights Fellow and James Kent Scholar, and was the first full-time Institute Fellow at NYU Law School's Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ). Kirsty was a Senior Advisor and then consultant to the New Zealand government on international and domestic policy on indigenous peoples, and taught in this field at the University of Canterbury Law School. Her research and publications address the law, policy and political theory of indigenous self-governance and self-constitution. In 2009, she will be a senior lecturer in law at the University of Melbourne Law School.
Robert Dufresne
J.S.D. (Canada)
Topic: Trade and violence in the international law of natural resources
Robert Dufresne received his J.S.D. in international law in 2007, supervised by Professors Benedict Kingsbury (chair) and Martti Koskenniemi. His dissertation was on “Law, Resources, and Violence: A Study of International Law’s Role in the Relation between Organized Violence and Global Resource Exploitation". It covered, inter alia, extractive industries' exploitation of resources located in regions under guerrilla control (e.g. as has occurred in Liberia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo ) or in close collaboration with state authorities of an oppressive regime. His wider academic interests include public international law, international law of human rights, the law of the use of force, history and theory of international law, and globalization. Recent publications include “The Opacity of Oil: Oil Corporations, Internal Violence and International Law”, New York University Journal of International Law & Politics (Summer 2004), and “Assessing Clashes and Interplays of Regimes from a Distributive Perspective: IP Rights under the Strengthened Embargo against Cuba and the Agreement on TRIPS”, 24 Michigan Journal of International Law 767 (2003). Robert received his LL.B/B.C.L.( Distinction ) from McGill University in Montreal. After having clerked with Justice André Brossard of the Quebec Court of Appeal, he graduated from NYU’s LL.M (International Legal Studies) program in 2000. In 2000-2001, he served as a law clerk with the International Court of Justice in The Hague, The Netherlands, and then worked as a research assistant for Professor Alain Pellet during the 2001 session of the International Law Commission before returning to NYU for his doctoral work. In 2005-06 he held a full-time fellowship in the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs dealing with extractive resource issues, and thereafter worked as a consultant for the Ministry before taking up his current position working in the Canadian Parliament.
Roy Schondorf
J.S.D. (Israel)
Topic: Theory and History of International Criminal Law
Roy Schondorf recently completed his J.S.D., with a dissertation entitled “A Theory of Supra-National Criminal Law”. That work aims to provide a comprehensive principled approach to the field so far known as ‘international criminal law’, and to challenge analogies often drawn between this field and traditional inter-state international law. His dissertation was supervised by Professor Theodor Meron, the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Roy's academic interests include international criminal law, international humanitarian law, international law of human rights, the law of the use of force, history and theory of international law, and globalization. His article, “Extra Territorial Armed Conflicts Between States And Non-State Actors: Is There A Need For A New Legal Regime?”, was published in New York University Journal of International Law & Politics (2004). In addition to his J.S.D., Roy holds a B.A. in economics (summa cum laude), an LL.B.(valedictorian), and an M.A. in law and economics (magna cum laude), all from Tel Aviv University. Roy currently specializes in international litigation and arbitration at a major US law firm. Before coming to NYU he served as senior legal advisor in the international law department of the Israeli Defense Forces Military Advocate General Unit, where he earned officer course honors and a special award for excellence. He took an active part in the Middle East peace negotiations, and represented the Israeli government in various peace negotiations with Syria, Jordan and the Palestinians. He was a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Commission on the establishment of the International Criminal Court. In Summer 2001, he interned with Judge Eric Mose, later the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
