EGYPT: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: A Conference on the Impact and Implications of the Egyptian Revolution in the Middle East and Beyond
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APRIL 8, 2011 9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
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REGISTRATION: $25 Complimentary Registration for all students, Seton Hall Law Faculty, and Cairo Summer Program Alumni
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3 NY/NJ CLE Credits Financial Assistance Available |
Lunch sponsored by
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Conference Information
This Conference, sponsored by Seton Hall Law School’s Program for the Study of Law in the Middle East (Cairo Summer Program), will invite leading academics, diplomats, activists, and religious thinkers to consider the impact and implications of the Egyptian Revolution for law, policy and geopolitics in the Middle East and the world today.
Three (3) NY/NJ CLE credits will be awarded for full attendance.
PANEL DETAILS
| Panel 1 - The Egyptian Revolution: Implications for International and Constitutional Law | |
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| This panel will consider two related topics: (1) the implications of the Egyptian revolution for the development of international law and diplomacy in the Middle East and the world; and (2) the issues and dilemmas posed by proposed constitutional reform in Egypt, specifically democracy and judicial reforms, the fostering of a viable and robust political culture, and the liberalization of the state security apparatus and the emergency law. | |
| Raymond M. Brown, Esq. Mr. Brown has practiced international criminal law (ICL), and taught, written, lectured on ICL and served as an international legal journalist. He is a memeber of List Counsel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and is Legal Representative for Victims in the case of OTP v. Bashir and in the Darfur Situation. He was a Delegate from the International Criminal Bar (ICB) to the Rome Treaty Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. He has trained lawyers on ICC practice for the ICB and the ICC Registry. He served as Defence Counsel at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and has dealt with complex extradition issues in US courts. Additionally he has conducted investigations throughout the US as well as in Kenya, elsewhere in East Africa, Liberia, El Salvador, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, the Bahamas, Colombia, and Sierra Leone. Mr. Brown has taught ICL in the Seton Hall/American University Program in Cairo, Egypt, at Seton Hall University School of Law and Seton Hall's Diplomacy School where he has also taught "Peacekeeping and Peacemaking." He has frequently lectured to criminal and civil lawyers, law enforcement personnel and judges, students civil society elements and others on inter alia trial practice, human rights and international law. In July 2005 he spoke on the "American Perspective on Nuremberg" in Courtroom 600 of the Justice Palace, Nuremberg, Germany, on the 60th Anniversary of the proceedings before the International Military Tribunal. In July of 2008 he served as an expert on the ICC and Human Rights to the Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Conference in Entebbe, Uganda. As a journalist at Court TV, Mr. Brown covered proceedings of the ICTY (OTP v. Tadic) reporting from the Hague and anchoring "War Crimes on Trial." He also served as Editorial Advisor and guest on programs at Court TV and elsewhere dealing with humanitarian law issues. As the Host of the New Jersey Network's "Due Process" he has examined allegations of Torture at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, civil rights and immigration issues confronting Muslims after September 11, 2001, interviewed security officials and human rights activities with roles in the "war on terror." As Host of "Inside the Law" he covered several aspects of international law with senior diplomats and members of the international judiciary. Since 1999, Mr. Brown has been a member of the Board of Human Rights First (former the Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights). He is also a member of the Board of International Refugee Rights Initiative. He is also Co-Founder of the International Justice Project, a US Non-Profit whose mission is to promote international justice and protection of human rights. Mr. Brown practices in the US as a partner in Greenbaum Rowe Smith Davis' Litigation Department and is the Chair of the White Collar Defense and Corporate Compliance and Human Rights Practice Group. He concentrates his practice in internal investigations, corporate compliance and all other aspects of white collar criminal defense. He is a member of the New Jersey and New York Bars, a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and of the American Board of Criminal Lawyers, past president of the Association of Criminal Trial Lawyers of New Jersey and former member of the Board of Directors and former Parliamentarian of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. |
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| Professor Bernard K. Freamon Professor Freamon's primary teaching focus is in evidence and legal philosophy, with a particular concentration in Islamic Jurisprudence and Islamic Legal History. He also has strong interests in ethics, international law, comparative law, and Anglo-American legal history. In recent years, Professor Freamon has increasingly turned his attention to the problem of slavery in the Islamic world. His J.S.D. doctoral dissertation, submitted and approved in 2007 and slated for publication soon, is concerned with conceptions of equality in Islamic Law and their relation to the problem of slavery in Islamic legal history. Professor Freamon has wide experience, he has lectured, consulted, and published in the areas of Islamic Jurisprudence, Islamic Legal History, American Legal History, Comparative Law, Evidence, Prisoners' Rights, Slavery and the Law, and Professional Ethics. In March 2010, Professor Freamon was elected to membership in the American Law Institute, the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work aimed at clarifying, modernizing and improving the law. He recently completed a year as Chairperson of the Section on Islamic Law of the Association of American Law Schools and he was one of the conveners of a ground-braking conference on "The Teaching of Islamic Law at American Law Schools," sponsored by the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He is the author of a number of articles and book chapters in Islamic law and jurisprudence, including "Some Reflection on Post-Enlightenment Quranic Hermeneutics," published as part of a symposium on the future of Islamic law scholarship in the Michigan State Law Review and "the Emergence of a New Qur'anic Hermeneutic: The Role and Impact of Universities in West and East," which is part of a collection entitled "The Law Applied: Contextualizing the Islamic Shari'a" (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). The collection is a festschrift of invited submissions from scholars in Islamic law honoring Professor Frank Vogel, the retired Director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard. Professor Freamon is also the author of two entries in the recently published Encyclopedia on Antislavery and Abolition (Greenwood Press, 2007), one entitled "The Qur'an and Antislavery," and the other entitled "The Ideological Origins of Antislavery Thought." His entry "Slaves," will appear in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2009). In addition to his work on slavery and equality, Professor Freamon also has an interest in the Islamic law of war and the intersection of Islamic law, Islamic Legal history, and international criminal law. He recently delivered a lecture on jihad at a University of Virginia Law School symposium organized by the U.S. Army War College and he is the author of a widely cited article on martyrdom in Islam entitled "Martyrdom, Suicide, and The Islamic Law of War: A Short Legal History," 27 Fordham Int'l L.J. 299 (2003). Consistent with these initiatives and his research interests, Professor Freamon is currently pursuing a major research and writing project on the abolition of slavery in the Islamic world. His forthcoming book, "Islam, Slavery, and Empire in the Indian Ocean World," will be the first installment in that effort. He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, spending the fall semester of 2007 in residence at Yale. In November 2008, he was an organizer and co-convener of an important Gilder Lehrman international conference at Yale entitled "Slavery and the Slave trades in the Indian Ocean and Arab Worlds: Global Connections and Disconnections." The conference attracted a number of significant scholars from around the world and the conference papers will appear in a Yale University Press publication, edited by Professor Freamon and Yale Professors Robert Harms and David Blight, in 2012. |
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| Professor Clark Lombardi Dr. Lombardi received his Ph.D. in religion (Islamic Studies) from Columbia University in 2001. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1998, where he was Editor in Chief of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. He clerked for Judge Samuel A. Alito, then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He is now Associate Professor of Law and Adjunct Associate Professor of International Affairs at the University of Washington in Seattle. He teaches Islamic law, constitutional law and "law and development." He has written extensively on the Islamic legal and political theory in modern Egypt and on constitutional law and legal reform in that country. Among his publications are State Law as Islamic Law in Modern Egypt: The Incorporation of the Shari'a into Egyptian Constitutional Law (E.J. Brill: Islamic Law and Society Series, 2006). He has also published articles such as "Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court: Managing Conflict in an Authoritarian, Aspirationaly Islamic State" and, with Nathan Brown, "Do Constitutions Requiring Adherence to Shari'a Threaten Human Rights?: How Egypt's Constitutional Court reconciles Islamic Law with the Liberal Rule of Law" (American University International Law Review, 2006). He has also written about and advised governmental bodies and NGOs on legal reform in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Muslim Southeast Asia. He is Senior Editor of the forthcoming Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic law and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. |
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| Mark S. Morgan, Esq. Mr. Morgan is a litigator with experience in the trial of jury and non-jury cases involving contracts, securities, and intellectual property matters. He has assisted clients with strategies for the containment, management and resolution of legal crises occurring at the federal/state, criminal/civil and domestic/international levels, including the Supreme Court of New Jersey, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York,and U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. Mr. Morgan also assists in the representation of corporations, as well as their officers and directors, in connection with investigations by grand juries and regulatory authorities of potential wrongdoing. He also counsels corporations as to the most effective means to mitigate the impact of any detected misconduct, and to implement or modify corporate compliance programs to minimize the likelihood of recurrent problems. Mr. Morgan is an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. He is the former chairman of the board of directors of a non-profit, non-governmental organization of the United Nations dedicated to global issues in education. He currently serves on various civic and charitable organizations though New Jersey, including the Corporate Advisory Council for the Morris Museum and is the President of the Coptic Lawyers Association. Mr. Morgan also participated in a forum titled "Together for a New Egypt" at Georgetown University on March 19, 2011. The one-day event examined the role of the Egyptian-American community in light of the recent historic changes in Egypt. Mr. Morgan's panel, "Supporting political reform in Egypt," featured individuals who are working toward political reform, human rights and democratic development in Egypt. |
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| Panel 2 - Social Networking and Revolution | |
| This panel will examine the roles and paradoxes of social networking in facilitating revolutionary change. | |
| Mohammad Al Abdallah Mr. Abdallah is a Program Officer at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) in Washington, DC. He is responsible for assisting in the implementation of ICFJ's online courses and programs in the Middle East. Before joining ICFJ, Mr. Al Abdallah worked in the Beirut office of Human Rights Watch as a consultant on human rights issues in Syria and Lebanon. He has also written for several Arabic newspapers and blogs. Mr. Al Abdallah received a Bachelor of Law degree from Lebanese University in 2007. While working in Syria, he faced two military trials and was imprisoned for his writing. In 2009, Mr. Al Abdallah received political asylum and moved to the United States. |
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| Mohammad Al-Kassim Mr. Al-Kassim is a broadcast journalist who has reported on international, and national issues for the English and Arabic press. He served as the Middle East and United Nations producer for PBS international news program "Worldfocus." He has reported on the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions for ABC News. He has also reported for Middle East Broadcast Company (MBC) from Haiti. Mohammad is from Jerusalem, and fluent in English and Arabic. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. |
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| Susannah Vila Ms. Vila is the Director of Content and Outreach for Movements.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying, connecting and supporting youth activists from around the world who use technology to organize for social change. She oversees the website's editorial direction, strategy and training resources, and identifies and trains activists from over 27 countries. |
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| Panel 3 - The Egyptian Revolution and the Middle East: What Does the Future Hold? | |
| The recent events in Egypt have sparked dramatic geopolitical and cultural change in the Middle East, and have been a driving force for the rise of revolutionary fervor throughout the entire region. This panel will engage conference participants in a full-bodied discussion on where Egypt and the Middle East as a whole are headed in light of the continuing upheavals. | |
| Mary Gabriel, Esq. Ms. Gabriel is an associate in McCarter's Business & Financial Services Litigation Group. She focuses her practice on complex commercial litigation, securities litigation and white collar criminal defense matters. Ms. Gabriel regularly practices in federal and state courts in New York and New Jersey. She has represented clients in a wide variety of complex matters, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, professional negligence, fraud, New Jersey RICO and shareholder oppression actions. Prior to joining the Firm, Ms. Gabriel served as Assistant County Counsel for Union County, New Jersey and clerked for the Honorable Vincent LeBlon, Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division. Ms. Gabriel is active in a number of non-profit organizations throughout New Jersey. She has served as a Coordinator/Strategic Planner for BLESS USA, a 501(c)(3) organization formed to provide aid to disadvantaged Coptic Orthodox Christians living throughout Egypt and Sudan, since 1999. |
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| Professor Sherman Jackson Dr. Sherman A. Jackson is presently Arthur F. Thurnau professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. He is author of Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (Brill, 1996), On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's Faysal al-Tafriqa (Oxford, 2002), Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (Oxford, 2005), Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering (Oxford, 2009), and Sufism for Non-Sufis?: Ibn Ata Allah al-Sakandari's Taj al-'Arus (forthcoming) and Re-Thinking Jihad: Sadat's Assassins and the Renunciation of Political Violence (forthcoming). He has also authored numerous articles on various aspects of Islamic law, theology, history and Islam and Muslims in modern America. He is listed by Religion Newswriters Foundation's ReligionLink as one of the top ten experts on Islam in America. And he was recently named among 2009's top 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. |
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| Professor Chantal Thomas Professor Thomas is Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, where she also directs the Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to joining Cornell, Professor Thomas chaired the Law Department of the American University in Cairo. She teaches in the areas of International Development Law, International Trade Law, and Law and Globalization. She has consulted for the USAID Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Affairs, and the United Nations Development Programme. She currently serves on the U.S. State Department Advisory Council for International Law and the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, and has served on the International Trade Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the Board of Directors of the American Foreign Law Association. Professor Thomas focuses her scholarship on the relationship between international law, political economy, and global social justice in a variety of contexts. Professor Thomas earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. from McGill University. |
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