Constitution Day Event - Pre Conference Reading Material

Seton Hall Law CONSTITUTION DAY
September 17, 2007

Speaker Biographies

Catherine Amirfar	Edward J. Flynn
Professor Baher Azmy	Aziz Huq
Professor Kristen E. Boon	Darius Rejali
Jack Cloonan	Hina Shamsi
Professor Mark Denbeaux	Charles D. Swift

Professor Mark Denbeaux received his B.A. degree from the College of Wooster and his J.D. degree from New York University School of Law. Prior to teaching, he was senior attorney in charge of litigation for the New York City Legal Services program. He was subsequently Chair of the Board of Directors of the New York City Legal Services Program. He has published numerous scholarly articles on evidence, constitutional law, civil procedure and remedies. He co-authored New Jersey Evidentiary Foundation: New Jersey and Federal Rules of Evidence and Trial Evidence, Cases and Materials. He has been an elected member of the American Law Institute since 1980.

Professor Denbeaux has been teaching at Seton Hall since 1972. He is the founder and Director of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research. The Center for Policy and Research has produced a series of reports on Guantánamo. http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_reports.htm These reports were the result of the efforts of co-author Joshua W. Denbeaux and the Seton Hall Law students who were members of and fellows of the Center for Policy and Research

The Guantánamo Reports have been cited by the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations Committee and introduced into the congressional Record.
Professor Denbeaux currently represents two detainees in Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp. In addition to his role in the Guantánamo litigation Professor Denbeaux has written books and articles on a variety of subjects including: Class Actions, Forensic Evidence, The First Amendment, International Law, Professional Responsibility and Restitution.

One of Professor Denbeaux's chief academic interests is the problems of proof. The most recent focus of his non Guantánamo Bay academic research has been the unique problems raised by expert witnesses especially those witnesses who profess to be forensic scientists. He has co- authored several law review articles on the deficiencies of forensic evidence and has spoken on the subject to numerous academic and professional gatherings.

Professor Denbeaux has testified as an expert witness on the limitations of forensic evidence more than 50 times in state and federal courts as well as in administrative proceedings.

He has testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Professor Denbeaux is invited to lecture frequently at Colleges, Universities, Law Schools and other professional gatherings around the country.

Kristen E. Boon, B.A., McGill University; M.A., McGill University; J.D. New York University School of Law, joined the Seton Hall Law School faculty as an Associate Professor of Law in 2006.

Professor Boon brings a scholarly focus on international law, which she teaches at Seton Hall Law. She has served as a legal officer for the Canada Department of Foreign Affairs Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Section; as clerk to Supreme Court of Canada Justice Ian Binnie; as litigation associate with Debevoise & Plimpton in New York; and as legal officer (UNV) for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, and a Human Rights officer for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, New York.

She has authored and co-authored articles on such topics as legislative reform in post-conflict zones, international criminal courts, and federalism and the challenges of aboriginal self-government.

Professor Boon is a J.S.D. candidate at Columbia University. She earned her LL.M. from Columbia in 2005, and J.D., cum laude, from New York University School of Law in 2000; her M.A. in Political Science from McGill University in 1996; and her B.A., with honors, in Political Science and History from McGill University in 1994.

During her studies at New York University, she served as staff editor for the NYU JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLITICS, was a NYU Junior Fellow in International Law, and the recipient of an American Association of University Women International Fellowship. Kristen Boon is a member of the bar of New York (2002) and the Law Society of Upper Canada (2003).

Professor Baher Azmy received his B.A., magna cum laude, with a distinction in American History from the University of Pennsylvania before pursuing a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He received his J.D. from the New York University School of Law, magna cum laude, where he distinguished himself as a Root-Tilden-Snow Public Interest Scholar and as a member of the Order of the Coif upon graduation. After clerking for Honorable Dolores K. Sloviter, then Chief Judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, he entered private practice in New York City.

Professor Azmy joined the Seton Hall faculty full-time in 2000 as a clinical professor. His Civil Litigation Clinic focuses primarily on civil rights and consumer litigation cases; he and his students have pursued a range of innovative impact litigation cases in federal and state courts including:

challenging the termination of an aviation security expert from the TSA on the grounds of his Arab and Muslim heritage
amicus brief on behalf of 300+ Guantánamo detainees to the United State Supreme Court, urging the Court to grant cert before judgment;
a constitutional challenge to the adequacy of mental health treatment for certain civilly committed persons in New Jersey facilities;
amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the propriety of state and local police enforcement of federal immigration laws and to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals demonstrating the connection between predatory mortgage lending practices and mandatory arbitration agreements.
Lawsuits against United Nations diplomats and employees seeking damages and back wages for acts of human trafficking and involuntary servitude.
a challenge to the statewide late fee collection practices of a major national bank;

Professor Azmy represents Murat Kurnaz, a German resident of Turkish descent who was detained in Guantánamo as an enemy combatant. His efforts and the plight of his client have been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and a number of local and international publications. His client was released from Guantánamo to his home country in August 2006, never having been charged with a crime.

Professor Azmy also teaches Constitutional Law. He writes and speaks on issues related to civil liberties, equal rights, consumer fraud and predatory lending.

Edward J. Flynn is the Senior Human Rights Officer with the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) at the United Nations in New York. He previously served as Project Coordinator on human rights and counter-terrorism at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva. From 1998-2003, he was OHCHR Regional Coordinator for Europe, Central Asia and North America. He was an OHCHR field officer and head of office in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994-1995, and had previous UN field assignments in Haiti and Jamaica. Prior to that, he was a refugee and civil-rights lawyer in the United States. He is a graduate of Duke University and Hastings College of Law, University of California, USA.

Aziz Huq
Before joining the Brennan Center, Mr. Huq clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the October 2003 Term of the Supreme Court of the United States, and for Judge Robert D. Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (2001-02). He graduated summa cum laude from both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1996), and Columbia Law School (2001). At Columbia, he was Essay and Review Editor of the Columbia Law Review, and received several academic awards, including the John Ordonneux Prize (given to the graduating student with the highest grade point average). He is published in the Columbia Law Review, the Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, the World Policy Journal and the New School’s Constellations Journal. He has written for Himal Southasian, Legal Times and the American Prospect, and appeared as a commentator on Democracy Now! and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. Before and during law school, Mr. Huq has also worked on human rights issues overseas in Guatemala and Cambodia. In 2002, he received a Columbia Law School Post-Graduate Human Rights Fellowship to work with the International Crisis Group studying constitutional reform in Afghanistan. He has since worked with ICG in Pakistan, and Nepal on legal and constitutional reform issues. He is co-writing a book on presidential power and national security, to be published in March 2007 by the New Press.

Darius Rejali is a professor of political science at Reed College. He is a 2003 Carnegie Scholar and the author of Torture and Democracy (Princeton 2007), Torture and Modernity: Self, State and Society in Modern Iran (Westview 1994) and the forthcoming Approaches to Violence (Princeton 2008). He is an internationally recognized expert on government torture and interrogation. Iranian-born, Rejali has spent his scholarly career reflecting on violence, and, specifically, reflecting on the causes, consequences, and meaning of modern torture in our world. His work spans concerns in political science, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, and critical social theory. His work has appeared regularly in the mainstream media, including articles in Time, Slate.com, Salon.com, and The Huffington Post, interviews on ABC News, CNN, Talk of the Nation (NPR), and Court TV, as well as commentary on torture in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Rejali received his B.A. from Swarthmore College and his Ph.D. from McGill University. For more about Darius Rejali, see http://academic.reed.edu/poli_sci/faculty/rejali/rejali/academic.html

Hina Shamsi, Deputy Director & Senior Counsel, Law & Security Program, Human Rights First. Ms. Shamsi helps oversee Human Rights First’s research, litigation, and advocacy efforts to ensure that U.S. national security and counterterrorism policies reflect human rights protections under law. She is a frequent public speaker and lecturer on international human rights and humanitarian law issues, with a particular focus on U.S interrogation, detention, and fair trial policies and practices. Before joining Human Rights First, Ms. Shamsi worked from 1998 to 2004 at the New York law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP, where her practice focused on international and domestic litigation and arbitration, and regulatory investigations. Ms. Shamsi was the author of Human Rights First’s 2006 report, Command’s Responsibility, which analyzed investigations into, and accountability for, detainee deaths in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. She also coauthored Torture by Proxy: International and Domestic Law Applicable to “Extraordinary Renditions”, a report issued jointly in 2004 by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU Law School. She received her J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Law and Business and her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College.

Charles D. Swift currently teaches at Emory Law as a Visiting Associate Professor and Acting Director of Emory Law’s newly-established International Humanitarian Law Clinic.
As Acting Director of the newly-established International Humanitarian Law Clinic, Swift gives students the opportunity to gain firsthand experience in the practice of humanitarian law by assisting organizations, law firms and military tribunals in prosecuting or defending individuals.
Prior to joining Emory Law, Swift served as a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, assigned to the Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions. Swift has more than twelve years of litigation experience with the U.S. military, including serving as defense counsel for the well-publicized Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, which took him to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Known for his dedication to preserving the rule of law during wartime, Swift has been honored by the American Civil Liberties Union with a Medal of Liberty and named by the National Law Journal as one of the most influential lawyers in America.
Education: B.S., United States Navel Academy, 1984; J.D., Seattle University School of Law, 1994; LL.M, Temple Law School, 2006.

Catherine Amirfar is an associate in the firm’s Litigation Department whose practice focuses on international arbitration, international litigation and public international law. Ms. Amirfar has worked on a variety of public international law cases, including: representing Mexico before the International Court of Justice in Avena and other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States of America), a dispute with the United States of America concerning violations of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations; representing a Finnish company involved in a dispute between Argentina and Uruguay in the International Court of Justice; acting as counsel for a group of immigrant detainees arrested post-September 11 before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; and advising the International Center for Transitional Justice on legal issues relating to the establishment of the first U.S. truth and reconciliation commission. She has appeared in the US Supreme Court in Medellin v. Dretke and Sanchez-Llamas v. State of Oregon as a result of the Avena case and continues to litigate issues raised by the Avena decision in Texas courts. She has also acted as counsel in several international arbitration cases involving Latin America and in international litigation cases in U.S. courts, including a jury trial arising from environmental damage to a sustainable rainforest operation in Argentina, a patent infringement before the International Trade Commission, and a gray market goods trademark case involving a British company exporting goods into the United States.

Jack Cloonan, a 25 year veteran of the FBI and internationally respected security expert, has extensive strategic knowledge and experience in the areas of investigation, crisis management and intelligence analysis. He’s a skilled investigator and with exceptional ability to analyze, advise and resolve problems relating to criminal activity, geopolitical and corporate risk as well as terrorism.
Since retiring from the FBI, where he received commendations and awards for counter-terrorism and investigations, Cloonan has served as a counter-terrorism consultant and commentator for ABC News. He has also held positions as Security Specialist for the Exxon Corporation and, most recently, as a Managing Director for L.F. Stephens, Inc., where he led investigations for individuals and corporate clients in areas of due diligence, risk assessment, internal theft, global risk and employee integrity. Jack holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New England and is an active member of ASIS and Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.