2012-2013 Hauser Research Scholars
Brian Flanagan
Hauser Research Scholar
Fulbright Scholar in Law
Ireland
Dr Brian Flanagan is a graduate of University College Dublin, Université Paris II (Panthéon-Assas) and Oxford University. His work on legal interpretation and judicial decision-making has been published in the International & Comparative Law Quarterly, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Moral Philosophy and Ratio Juris. While a Hauser Research Scholar, Dr Flanagan will undertake research into the notion of collective legislative intentionality and the role of conceptual analysis in general jurisprudence. Dr Flanagan is a lecturer at the School of Law, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
http://law.nuim.ie/staff/dr-brian-flanagan
Niels Petersen
Hauser Research Scholar
DAAD Visiting Fellow
Emile Noel Fellow (courtesy appointment)
Germany
Niels Petersen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods. His main areas of research are international law, comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory. He holds a Ph.D. in law from the University of Frankfurt and an M.A. in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences from Columbia University. Furthermore, he worked as a legal advisor for the GIZ Legal Advisory Service in Beijing in 2005/06 and was a Visiting Professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin in spring 2012. At NYU, Niels will be working on a project on the Rationality of balancing in constitutional adjudication. The aim of the project is to compare different approaches of constitutional courts with regard to the resolution of conflicting constitutional values.
2011-2012 Hauser Research Scholars
Georgios Dimitropoulos
Greece
Georgios Dimitropoulos completed his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2011 under the supervision of Prof. Eberhard Schmidt-Aßmann with the grade summa cum laude. The title of his thesis is “Zertifizierung und Akkreditierung im Internationalen Vewaltungsverbund” (“Certification and accreditation in the context of international integrated administration”) and his monograph with the same title will be published by Mohr Siebeck Publishers. Georgios’ doctoral research was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Georgios studied law at the Universities of Athens and Heidelberg. He also holds an LL.M. from the University of Heidelberg. In 2008, he obtained the Academy of European Public Law Diploma from the European Public Law Organization (EPLO).During his Ph.D. studies, Georgios was a research assistant to Prof. Schmidt-Aßmann at the Institute for German and European Administrative Law of the University of Heidelberg and at the interdisciplinary research institute FEST e.V., Heidelberg. He also performed independent research at the library of the European Commission in Brussels and the Italian Constitutional Court. Georgios has published in the fields of Global and EU administrative law and the theory of public law in English, German and Greek. During his stay at NYU Law School, Georgios will be conducting research on peer reviews of administrative bodies in global and EU law, focusing on the fields of conformity assessment, finance, nuclear safety and OECD law. He will be furthermore exploring the rising phenomenon of global administrative self-regulation. Prof. Richard Stewart will be his sponsor at NYU.
Emanuel Towfigh
Germany
Dr Emanuel V. Towfigh is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. He studied Law, Economics and Chinese at the Universities of Münster (Germany) and Nanjing (PR China), and subsequently completed his Legal Clerkship. He earned his Ph.D. with an award-winning dissertation on the legal constitution of religious communities under state and religious legal regimes at the University of Münster in 2005, where he worked as a Research Fellow between 2003 and 2007. Since 2011, he is an elected member of the German Young Academy at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and at the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. His present research focuses on constitutional law and constitutional theory, applying a behavioral law and economics perspective, and heavily drawing on empirical methods. Currently, he works on questions of political parties, democratic representation, and legitimacy.
2010-2011 Hauser Research Scholars
Josephine Van Zeben
Netherlands
Josephine van Zeben is in the final stages of her PhD research at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci and Prof. Marc Pallemaerts. Her research uses law & economics methodology to consider the creation, implementation and enforcement of environmental regulation at different regulatory levels – global, regional and local – and the changing role of national governments in this context.
Before starting her PhD research, Josephine obtained a B.A. in Social Sciences from University College Utrecht (Hons.), an LL.B in Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh and an LL.M in European Private Law at the University of Amsterdam. During her studies, Josephine was a research assistant to several professors at the University of Amsterdam and preformed independent research for Oxford University. She was also a visiting researcher at the Economic Development Foundation (Iktisadi Kalkinma Vakfi) in Istanbul during the summer of 2008.
She also attended courses at the University Institute in Florence, the Gerzensee Institute in Florence and spent a semester studying at the University of Bologna. Since starting her PhD, she has published extensively in international journals, including the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, the Review of European Community & International Environmental Law and the Carbon & Climate Law Review.
During her stay at NYU Law School, Josephine will be conducting comparative research regarding federalized methods of enforcement, focussing on the United States and the European Union and their use of market-based regulatory instruments, specifically emission trading systems. Her sponsor at NYU is Prof. Richard Stewart.
Ingo Venzke
Germany
Ingo Venzke is completing his PhD “On Words and Deeds. How the Practice of Legal Interpretation Develops International Norms” at the University of Frankfurt under the supervision of Armin von Bogdandy. His thesis builds on considerations of semantic pragmatism and it elucidates the agency of international actors in processes of communicative lawmaking. At NYU he will now focus on the power of international courts, on how their authority can be justified, and on how it may be dealt with in the interaction between different levels of governance.
Ingo has been a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and a Visiting Scholar at Tel Aviv University. He holds a LL.M. with distinction from the University of London (SOAS) and a B.A. in International Relations from the School of International Studies in Dresden. The German Academic Exchange Service also supports Ingo’s post-doctoral research.
2009-2010 Hauser Research Scholars
Conrado Mendes
Brazil
Conrado Hübner Mendes is a lecturer (on leave) at the Law School of Getulio Vargas Foundation, São Paulo. He received a Master (cum laude) and a PhD (cum laude) in political science from the University of São Paulo and is now a PhD candidate in legal theory at the University of Edinburgh. He participated, from 2002 to 2004, of the research team that helped to launch the Law School of Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, and had been the Coordinator of Teaching Methodology in 2005 and 2006. His research is mainly focused on theories of rights, democracy and constitutionalism. His new PhD thesis tries to develop normative standards to assess the deliberative quality of constitutional courts.
Martins Paparinskis
Latvia
Martins Paparinskis, LL B (University of Latvia) (2004), M Jur (Dist) (Oxon) (2005), M Phil (Dist) (Oxon) (2006) is a D Phil candidate at the Queen’s College, University of Oxford. While in Oxford, he has been a Chevening Scholar, Clifford Chance Prize winner, Freshfields Bruchaus Deringer Scholar and Commercial Bar Scholar (twice). Martins is finishing his thesis on the customary minimum standard of investment protection law, discussing the historical development, sources aspects and comparative arguments in investment protection law. He has been a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Public International Law and International Economic Law at the University of Oxford. His research concentrates on investment protection law, particularly in the broader context of sources of law, treaty interpretation, State responsibility and international dispute settlement. Martins has published and spoken in conferences about investment protection law. As a Hauser Scholar, Martins will research the operation of systemic integration in investment protection law.
2008-2009 Hauser Research Scholars
Nehal Bhuta
Canada
Nehal Bhuta , BA 1999 (Melbourne), LLB 1999 (Hons) (Melbourne), MA 2004 (Poli. Sci., New School for Social Research), LLM 2005 (NYU), is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. He has previously worked with the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch and as a consultant for the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York. His areas of interest are human rights law, humanitarian law, political theory and political economy. He is admitted to practice in Victoria, Australia, and has worked as a clerk in the Federal Court of Australia.
As a Hauser Research Scholar, he will be working on a book manuscript under contract for Columbia University Press, entitled "Between Power and Principle: International Law and Politics after Iraq". He will consider the extent to which the Iraq war and certain aspects of its aftermath may be considered a crucible for certain tensions and contradictory developments in the international legal order after 1989.
Tally Kritzman
Israel
Tally Kritzman will receive her PhD from Tel Aviv University School of Law's direct PhD Program. Her thesis was written on socio-economic refugees under the Supervision of Eyal Benvenisti. She completed her LLB (Cum Laude) at the Tel Aviv University School of Law.
Tally's main research and teaching interests are refugee law, immigrants rights and international human rights. She has taught at the Tel Aviv University School of Law, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Ramat Gan College. She has also been a part of the Refugee Rights Clinic in Tel Aviv.
Tally was a Fox International Fellow at the Yale Macmillan Center in the academic year of 2006-7, and received the Fulbright Doctoral Researchers Fellowship for that year. Tally also received the Yad Hanadiv Foundation Fellowship for her post-doctoral studies in NYU.
Tally worked as a clerk for the Deputy President of the Israeli Supreme Court Mishael Cheshin (retired), and has been a member of the Israeli bar since 2004.
2007-2008 Hauser Research Scholar
Dr. Kaius Tuori
Finland
Dr. Kaius Tuori holds a doctorate in Law and a M.A. in History from his studies at the universities of Helsinki, Finland, and La Sapienza in Rome, Italy. His research interests include legal history, Roman law, legal anthropology, and classical archaeology. In his work on intellectual history he studied how modern law affected the history of ancient Roman law. During his stay with the Hauser Global Law School Program, he shall pursue a similar chronologically challenged project on how Americal Legal Realism influenced the study of early law during the mid-20th century.
Last year Dr. Tuori was the University Lecturer in Legal History at the Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki. In 2008, he shall continue his post-doctoral project at the Center of Excellence of Global Governance Research at the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights in Helsinki. His work has been published in The Journal of Legal History, Revue Internationale des Droits de l'Antiquite and the Legal History Review.
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/kaiustuori/
2006-2007 Hauser Research Scholar
Dr. Julio Ríos-Figueroa
Mexico
Dr. Julio Ríos-Figueroa holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Politics both from New York University. His research focuses on constitutional adjudication, judicial independence, and corruption with an emphasis in Latin America. While at the Hauser Global Law School Program he plans to expand his dissertation work on the effects of judicial independence on corruption, and to analyze the factors that determine variation in the institutional structure of judiciaries and prosecutorial organs across Latin America.
Dr. Ríos-Figueroa will become Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at CIDE, in Mexico City. His work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, Latin American Politics & Society, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.
2005-2006 Hauser Research Scholars
Christine Bateup
Australia
Ms. Christine Bateup is a J.S.D. Candidate at NYU School of Law from Australia. She specializes in comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory, with a particular interest in theories of constitutional dialogue. Her doctoral dissertation explores how a clearly defined form of constitutional dialogue between courts, the political branches of government and the people might be institutionalized if a Bill of Rights is incorporated into Australian law, building on existing forms of institutional interaction that exist in the Australian setting.
Ms. Bateup completed her B.A./LL.B. degrees at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1997, graduating with first class honors in Law. She subsequently was employed as a legal clerk at the Federal Court of Australia in Melbourne. In 2001, she graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom, receiving an LL.M. degree with Distinction.
Xin He
Hong Kong
Dr. Xin He is a lecturer in the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong, China. He obtained his LL.B. and LL.M. from Peking University, China, and his J.S.M. and J.S.D. degrees from Stanford University, United States, where he was an Asia-Pacific Scholar. He has published in Law & Society Review, The International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Stanford Journal of International Law, Columbia Journal of Asia Law, Australian Journal of Asian Law, and many Chinese journals.
His research interests include legal enforcement, law and court, law in transition economies, and property law. At NYU School of Law, he will conduct empirical research into the Chinese court system, including caseload change, litigants’ confidence toward the courts, and the relation between the courts and enterprises.
Nanda Kumar Krishnachar
India
Mr. Nanda Kumar Krishnachar has served as a faculty member in law for four years. For the academic year 2004-05 he was a serving on the faculty at Gujarat National Law University, India. His area of interest is environmental law; he has presented his papers in national level seminars and workshops, and has published articles in a variety of journals and web pages on various topics of interest.
Mr. Nanda Kumar Krishnachar was born in the Bangalore District, Karnataka State, India. He completed his schooling in Bangalore and holds a graduation degree (B.A.L.), professional degree (LL.B.) and a post-graduate degree (LL.M.) in Law from, Bangalore University, India. For post-graduation degree in law he focused on environment law. Having been introduced to the subject in post-graduate studies, he now aspires to study and understand environmentalism. With the exposure and experience he received from the past four years of studying the domain of environmental science in various capacities, he has formulated a fundamental hypothesis that all efforts in protecting the environment are in vein because mankind has not ascertained the clear and specific areas of interdependence of regional and global environment.
During his career as an academician, he would like to pursue his studies in the field of the environment in order to plan and coordinate the development of a knowledge bank which provides a basis to understand the intrinsic dependence of various factors in the global environment. A step towards these career objectives is the current proposal for research as a Hauser Research Scholar at NYU School of Law, 'A Study of Regional and International Factors Causing Impediments for Transfer of Safe and Eco-friendly Technology.'
2004-2005 Hauser Research Scholars
Sanem Baykal
Turkey
Dr. Sanem Baykal was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1969. She obtained her LL.B. in 1990 from Ankara University, Law Faculty and her LL.M. in European Law from University of London in 1994 with the Jean Monnet Scholarship of the European Commission. In 2001 she received her Ph.D. from Ankara University in European Union Law. During her Ph.D. studies she conducted research in Queen Mary College, University of London due to the award she received from Turkish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Sanem Baykal is Assistant Professor of European Union Law at Ankara University, Faculty of Law since November 2003. Prior to her appointment she was a research assistant at the European Studies Department of Ankara University, Institute of Social Sciences.
Dr. Baykal has published articles, book chapters and monographs mainly on EU Institutional/Constitutional Law and Turkey-EU Relations. Her current fields of research are constitutionalization process, legitimacy and democratic deficit in the European Union. Among her most recent works, an article entitled "Significance of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in Context of the Emerging European Polity" in Maria Gavouneli and Vangelis Kyriakopoulos (eds.), Olympia III: Human Rights in the 21 st Century, Ant. N. Sakkoulas Publishers, Athens, 2003 and her paper presented in the ECSA-C 6th Biennial Conference "A Constitution for Europe? Governance and Policy Making in the European Union" in Montreal, Canada on 27-29 May 2004 can be cited. She is also the co-author of the book chapter "Turkey-European Union Relations: 1990-2001" in Baskin Oran (ed.), Turkish Foreign Policy, Vol. II, Iletisim Publications, Istanbul, 2001, with Professor Tugrul Arat.
Robert Dufresne
Canada
Robert Dufresne is an NYU School of Law J.S.D. student from Canada, specializing in international law. His 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. His dissertation focuses on the involvement of foreign corporations in commercial transactions embedded in internal or transboundary conflicts and examines the forms of responsibility under international law entailed thereby. It deals for instance with the extractive industry's 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. He studies under the supervision of Professor Benedict Kingsbury.
Robert holds an 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 on top of 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. Robert has also worked as a research assistant for Professor Alain Pellet during the 2001 session of the International Law Commission. He has recently published articles on international IP rights regimes and distributive justice, as well as on the difficulty to attach international legal responsibility to oil corporations more or less directly involved in patterns of organized violence instrumental to their activities.
Shmuel Leshem
Israel
Shmuel Leshem is a J.S.D. Candidate at New York University School of Law. His main area of academic interest is law and economics, focusing on game theory and the law. Shmuel received a joint degree in Law and Economics (magna cum laude) from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1997. In addition, he has an M.B.A. in Finance from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an LL.M. degree from New York University School of Law.
Lauri Mälksoo
Estonia
Lauri Mälksoo is currently the head of international and EC law lectureship at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He studied law in Tartu (LL.B.) and Göttingen and got his masters degree at Georgetown University Law Center. He defended his doctoral thesis "Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: the Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR" at Humboldt University Berlin. The thesis was published in 2003 in Erik Castrén Institute's monography series of Martinus Nijhoff. Beside working at the university, he has also served as the international and EC law adviser of the Legal Chancellor (ombudsman) of the Republic of Estonia. He is also serving as a member of the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights.
At NYU, he is pursuing a project on history and theory of international law. On the basis of the works and lives of five consequent international law professors at the university of Dorpat/Jur'ev/Tartu, he is studying the use of historical argument in international law discourse for the formation of political identities.
Arkadiusz Radwan
Poland
Dr. Arkadiusz Radwan obtained Master and Doctoral degrees from Cracow (Uniwersystet Jagiellonski) and LL.M. form the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Germany).
He also had numerous study and research stays in Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität), Cologne (Rechtszentrum für Europäische und Internationale Zusammenarbeit), Copenhagen (Copenhagen Business School), Florence (European University Institute) and Ghent (Universiteit Gent).
Since 2003 Arkadiusz Radwan has been assistant professor at the Frycz Modrzewski Cracow College and the Centre for European Studies, Jagiellonian University Cracow. He was also visiting professor at the University of Rzeszow and the Fachhochschule für Medienmanagement, St. Pölten (Austria). His major fields of research are European, International and Comparative Company Law, International Contract Law, Broadcasting Law, and Legal Education. He attended numerous national and international conferences on the above-mentioned topics giving speeches and presenting papers. He also authored one monograph and several journal articles.
Since April 2004 he has managed an international research project under the running title "European Company Law after Inspire Art and EU-Enlargement." At NYU he pursued a research project on corporate law federalism in the EU-U.S. comparison.
2003-2004 Hauser Research Scholars
Neus Torbisco Casals
Spain
Neus Torbisco Casals is Associate Professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, where she teaches legal and political philosophy. She completed her first law degree at the University of Barcelona in 1993 and a doctorate in law at the University of Pompeu Fabra in 2000. Neus has held several visiting positions at Ottawa University and Queen's University, Canada, and at the Centro di Ricerca e Formazione sul Diritto Costituzionale Comparato, Università Degli Studi di Siena, Italy. She has also been stagiaire at the European Court of Human Rights. She has published several articles and chapters, and has presented papers at conferences in Europe and South America. More recently, she has conducted research on cultural rights, immigrants integration and European citizenship for some private and public Catalan institutions like the Jaume Bofill Foundation. At NYU, she will be pursuing research on cultural diversity and models of political inclusion in supranational democracies.
Piibe Jogi
Estonia
Piibe Jogi graduated with the highest distinction from the Faculty of Law of Tartu University, Estonia, in 1994. She received a Magister iuris degree in 1996, also from Tartu University, an M.Phil. in philosophy from Cambridge University, England, in 1999, and an LL.M. from NYU in 2000. She has also been a visiting student at Helsinki University, Finland, and Oxford University, England. She taught Comparative Legal History at Uppsala University, Sweden, in 1993 and 1997, and courses in European Legal History and Legal Philosophy at Tartu University in 1994-1997. She is author of a textbook of legal philosophy which won an award as the best legal textbook published in Estonia in 1997. During her tenure as a Hauser Research Scholar, Piibe was also a J.S.D. candidate at NYU School of Law, writing a dissertation on the moral justifiability of post-socialist property restitution. She is interested in legal philosophy.
Nico Krisch
Germany
Nico Krisch is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Law and Justice at NYU and a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Germany. Previously, he was a Visiting Senior Fellow at NYU Law's Center for International Studies, and a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. After studies in law and international relations in Berlin, Geneva and Heidelberg, he has received a Ph.D. in law from the University of Heidelberg. He also holds the Diploma of European Law of the Academy of European Law in Florence, Italy. Nico is the author of "Selbstverteidigung und kollektive Sicherheit" (Self-defense and Collective Security, 2001) and of several articles on the United Nations collective security system, on the use of force in international law, on international and European human rights law, and on the role of the United States in international law. He is currently pursuing projects on the role of constitutionalism in a fragmenting legal order, on hegemony in international law, and on global administrative law.
Yigal Mersel
Israel
Yigal Mersel graduated in 1996 with an LL.B. degree from Hebrew University, summa cum laude, while winning numerous prizes for outstanding achievements. He then took part in a research project of the European Union on international law and the status of Jerusalem in future peace negotiations. He later became law clerk for the president of the Israeli Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak. After his admission to the Israeli bar, Yigal worked from 1997 until 2003 as senior assistant to Justice Barak, in charge of numerous judicial and managerial issues, including comparative law research in a large variety of legal issues. He was also in charge of international relations of the Israeli Supreme Court as well as the Israeli representative to the Venice Commission at the Council of Europe.
At the same time, he continued his legal education, receiving in 1998 an LL.M. from the Hebrew University, summa cum laude. In 2000 he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. He also won the Wolf foundation prize for outstanding achievements. In 2002 he received a doctorate degree in law from the Hebrew University. His doctoral thesis was entitled "The Constitutional Status of Political Parties." Since 2002 he has been a lecturer of constitutional law at the Hebrew University. His main focus is institutional constitutional law, including political parties, parliamentary law and election law. Yigal is a Fulbright Scholar and will also be serving as an Emile Noel Fellow.
Jacqueline Peel
Australia
Jacqueline Peel is a lecturer-in-law at the University of Melbourne, Australia where she teaches in the graduate and undergraduate environmental law program. Jackie earned an LL.M. degree from NYU School of Law as an Australian Fulbright Scholar. Her graduate studies focused on international environmental law and its linkages with other areas of international law, including trade law and human rights.
In 1996, she completed a joint Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Laws program at the Universtiy of Queensland, Australia, graduating with First Class Honors and a University Medal in law. Following her time at New York University, Jackie received a scholarship to undertake an internship at the United Nations International Law Commission in Geneva, where she assisted the Special Rapporteur on State Responsibility, Professor James Crawford, in drafting commentaries for the Commission's Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts. Jackie has also worked as a solicitor in the planning and environmental division of the Australian legal firm of Allen, Allen and Hemsley Solicitors.
Gila Stopler
Israel
Gila Stopler graduated magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University in 1994. In 1995, she joined the Israeli Bar and began working as substitute legal counsel at the National Counsel for the Defense of the Child. She then became a staff lawyer for the Israeli Union for Environmental Defense, doing primarily environmental litigation. During this time, Gila was accepted to the New Israel Fund Fellowship for Human Rights Lawyers and, in 1997, completed an LL.M. degree in International Legal Studies at the American University in Washington, DC. She then returned to Israel to work for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), one of Israel's premiere public interest organizations. At ACRI, Gila litigated several cases before the Israeli Supreme Court and wrote a position paper on behalf of a coalition of NGO's advocating for the establishment of an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in Israel, that was distributed to Israeli Parliament members.
In the academic year 2000-2001 Gila was a Global Public Service Scholar at NYU School of Law pursuing an LL.M. degree in Public Service Law. She graduated first in her class and received the David H. Moses Memorial Prize to the member of the LL.M. class with the highest cumulative average. In the fall 2001 semester Gila began her J.S.D. degree at the NYU School of Law. The topic of her dissertation is the conflict between women's rights and culture and religion in a liberal state. She has recently published an article in the Columbia Journal of Gender and the Law entitled "Countenancing the Oppression of Women: How Liberals Tolerate Religious and Cultural Practices that Discriminate Against Women."