Continuing Legal Education Course Materials

5:20 - 5:50 p.m. | Check-in

5:50 - 6:00 p.m. | Welcome Remarks

Matthew Diller, Dean and Paul Fuller Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Peter Angelica, Editor-in-Chief, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Fordham University School of Law 2023

6:00 – 6:30 p.m. | Fireside Chat

Breon Peace, 48th United States Attorney, Eastern District of New York
Elizabeth Geddes, Partner, Shihata & Geddes LLP

6:30 - 7:30 p.m. | Panel Discussion

(1.0 Professional Practice CLE)

Kenneth Montgomery ‘97, Criminal Defense Attorney, Kenneth J. Montgomery, PLLC; Co-founder, The Brooklyn Combine; Adjunct Professor of Law, Fordham Law School
Sharon L. McCarthy ‘89, Partner, Kostelanetz LLP
Derick D. Dailey ‘17, Senior Counsel, New Jersey Attorney General; Adjunct Professor of Law, Fordham Law School
Eliza Orlins ‘08, Public Defender, Legal Aid Society in Manhattan
Moderator: Professor Bennett Capers, John D. Feerick Research Professor of Law; Director, Center on Race, Law, and Justice, Fordham Law School

7:30 - 8:30 p.m. | Reception

Professor Bennett Capers (moderator)

John D. Feerick Research Professor of Law; Director, Center on Race, Law, and Justice, Fordham Law School

Bennett Capers is the John D. Feerick Research Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where he teaches Evidence, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure, and is also the Director of the Center on Race, Law, and Justice. A former federal prosecutor, his academic interests include the relationship between race, gender, technology, and criminal justice, and he is a prolific writer on these topics. His articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, New York University Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. In addition to co-editing Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and Law (Cambridge University Press) (with Devon Carbado, Robin Lenhardt, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig), Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions (Cambridge University Press) (with Corey Rayburn Yung and Sarah Deer), and Criminal Law: A Critical Approach (Foundation Press) (with Roger Fairfax and Eric Miller), he also has a forthcoming book about prosecutors, The Prosecutor’s Turn (Metropolitan Books). His commentary and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media. He has been a visiting professor University of Texas Law School, Boston University Law School, and Yale Law School.

Prior to teaching, Professor Capers spent nearly ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. His work trying several federal racketeering cases earned him a nomination for the Department of Justice’s Director’s Award in 2004. He also practiced with the firms of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He clerked for the Hon. John S. Martin, Jr. of the Southern District of New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he graduated cum laude and was awarded the Class of 1983 Prize, and of Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Prior to joining Fordham Law School, he taught at Brooklyn Law School, where he was the Stanley A. August Professor of Law, and before that at Hofstra University School of Law, where he served as Associate Dean of Faculty Development in 2010-11, and where he received the 2009 Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication. He has thrice been voted Teacher of the Year, is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has served as the Director of Research for the Uniform Laws Commission, a Senior Technology Fellow at the NYU Policing Project, Chair of the AALS Criminal Justice Section and Chair of the AALS Law and Humanities Section. Governor Cuomo twice appointed him to serve on judicial screening committees, first the New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the New York Court of Claims, and then the New York Judicial Screening Committee for the Second Department. In 2013, he served as Chairperson of the AALS 2013 Conference on Criminal Justice. That same year, Judge Scheindlin appointed him to Chair the Academic Advisory Council to assist in implementing the remedial order in the stop-and-frisk class action Floyd v. City of New York. He has also served for several years as a Commissioner on the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Derick D. Dailey ‘17

Senior Counsel, New Jersey Attorney General; Adjunct Professor of Law, Fordham Law School

Derick D. Dailey is Senior Counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General.

As a member of the Attorney General’s executive leadership team, Derick provides oversight to the Division on Civil Rights and State’s Juvenile Justice Commission. He also spearheads the Department’s Racial Justice Initiative. In addition, Derick works on matters relating to alternatives to policing, transparency in policing, firearms safety, hate and bias, domestic terrorism, and youth justice. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. His writing has appeared in Law360, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications.

Derick joined the Office of the Attorney General from a New York-based law firm where he worked in the litigation and dispute resolution practice groups. He previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Delaware. As a federal prosecutor, Derick led civil rights investigation, prosecuted white-collar and fraud crimes and managed the District’s financial restructuring docket. He also served as Chief of the Financial Litigation Unit. At the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Derick was a member of the Office’s Leadership Council and served on the District’s Re-entry Team.

Derick received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, where he was a Stein Scholar and was National Chair of the National Black Law Students Association. During law school, Derick also served as the James E. Johnson Legal Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

He received his B.A. from Westminster College, and his Master’s Degree in Theology and Ethics from Yale University. After college, he taught middle school in the Teach for America program. Derick serves on the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Governor’s Reentry Training & Employment Center; the Yale Club of Philadelphia; and the Bryan Allen Stevenson School for Excellence. He is a also a Board member of the Fordham Law Alumni Association. He is a former Board Member (Executive Committee) of the Yale Black Alumni Association and Bread for the World.

Derick has been named Top 40 Under 40 by the National Black Lawyers for two consecutive years (2021 and 2022). He was also the recipient of the Alumni of the Year Award from his alma mater (Westminster College) in 2022.

Elizabeth Geddes

Partner, Shihata & Geddes LLP

Elizabeth Geddes has extensive experience investigating complex crimes and litigating in federal court. Prior to founding Shihata & Geddes LLP, Liz was a federal prosecutor for more than 15 years, serving in several senior leadership positions, including most recently as Chief of the Civil Rights Section within the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, where she oversaw the Office's investigations into civil rights violations, hate crime offenses and sex trafficking. Liz also served as a Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division, where she helped to manage more than 115 attorneys and oversee all of the Office’s criminal investigations, including large-scale fraud, bribery and corruption cases.

Liz co-led the groundbreaking investigation and prosecution of R&B musician Robert Sylvester Kelly, also known as “R Kelly,” who was convicted after a six-week trial in the Eastern District of New York of racketeering and related offenses and sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment. This was the first time Kelly was held criminally accountable for his conduct after decades of allegations and abuse. In addition, Liz personally led numerous investigations involving civil rights violations, racketeering, public corruption, human trafficking, complex fraud and violent crimes, including dozens of unsolved murders, and tried ten cases. She also supervised dozens of criminal trials, and argued multiple appeals before the Second Circuit.

Sharon L. McCarthy ‘89

Partner, Kostelanetz LLP

Sharon L. McCarthy is a partner at Kostelanetz LLP in New York City, where she focuses on white-collar criminal matters, sensitive internal investigations, civil and criminal tax controversies, and complex civil litigation. Prior to joining Kostelanetz in 2006, Ms. McCarthy spent twelve years at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she served as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division and as Chief of the Violent Crimes Unit. From May 2008 until April 2009, Ms. McCarthy served as Special Counsel to the New York State Attorney General in an investigation into political interference with the New York State Police.

Ms. McCarthy is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and serves on the Board of the New York Council of Defense Lawyers. In April 2015, she was the first woman elected to serve as President of the Fordham Law Alumni Association. Since 2020, Ms. McCarthy has served as the Independent Hearing Officer for the District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America. Ms. McCarthy also serves on a panel of attorneys assigned to advise and assist the Grievance Committee of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. She is a member of the Advisory Board to the Archdiocese of New York, which conducts investigations into allegations of sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy.

Ms. McCarthy is a 1985 graduate of Colgate University and a 1989 graduate of Fordham Law School, where she was an Articles Editor on the Fordham Law Review. After law school, Ms. McCarthy served as a law clerk to the Honorable John F. Keenan, United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, an esteemed alumnus of Fordham Law School. For three years after her clerkship, and until she began her service as an Assistant United States Attorney, she was an associate at Lankler Siffert & Wohl.

Kenneth Montgomery ‘97

Criminal Defense Attorney, Kenneth J. Montgomery, PLLC; Co-founder, The Brooklyn Combine; Adjunct Professor of Law, Fordham Law School

Derick D. Dailey is Senior Counsel to the New Jersey Attorney General.

After graduating Fordham Law School in 1997 Kenneth honed his skills as a litigator at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. As a prosecutor he worked in the red zone which covered high crime areas in the northern section of Brooklyn including East New York and Flatbush. He also worked in the sex crimes unit, the juvenile designated felony unit, grand jury and investigations, the complaint room, and the Violent Gang Bureau.

In 2001, Kenneth formed his own law firm specializing in Criminal and Civil Rights litigation. For the last 22 years Kenneth has represented clients charged in both federal and state court and defended clients charged under the federal death penalty statute across the country. Kenneth is a member of both the SDNY and EDNY CJA panel and both capital panels; and sits on the Death Penalty Working Group (DPGW) in Washington D.C.

As a criminal defense attorney he has litigated over 100 criminal trials as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, securing over 60 not guilty jury verdicts as a defense attorney.

Kenneth is an adjunct professor of law at Fordham law in the trial advocacy department and previously lectured in the Black Studies department at Brooklyn college.

Having grown up in the Brownsville and Crown heights section of Brooklyn at a time where many of his peers were incarcerated or killed, the work that Kenneth is most proud of is not his impressive legal career, he is most proud of his work as a member of the Brooklyn Combine, which is a non-profit focused on education and ideology and self - determination. The Combine partners with schools, educators, and community to offer solutions to systemic oppression and racism, helping community members to control their narrative through critical thinking programs, education, mentoring, leadership, and social programs for youth and young adults in low-income and under-served communities.

Eliza Orlins ‘08

Public Defender, Legal Aid Society in Manhattan

Eliza Orlins is a public defender at the Legal Aid Society in Manhattan. For 13 years, she has dedicated herself to the zealous defense of some of society's most vulnerable individuals. She has litigated suppression hearings, as well as bench and jury trials in New York State Supreme Court and New York State Criminal Court.

Orlins also appeared in 2004 and again in 2008 as a contestant on the CBS reality television show, Survivor. In 2018, she appeared on The Amazing Race.

In 2021, Orlins ran for Manhattan District Attorney on a progressive, decarceral platform designed to make real, systemic change to our current cruel, unjust criminal legal system. She brought to the national stage issues of ending money bail, decriminalizing sex work, and more. She continues to use her platform to rage against injustice.

Orlins is a 2008 graduate of Fordham University School of Law, where she was Symposium Editor for the Urban Law Journal.

Breon Peace

48th United States Attorney, Eastern District of New York

Breon Peace, appointed by President Joseph Biden, is the 48th United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. As U.S. Attorney, Mr. Peace leads an office that is responsible for all federal criminal and civil cases in a district comprised of more than 8 million people in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, and in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. Mr. Peace now supervises a staff of approximately 160 Assistant United States Attorneys and 120 support personnel. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Peace was a partner in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and was a member of the firm’s White-Collar Defense & Investigations and Litigation Groups.

Mr. Peace has had a distinguished career, having joined Cleary in 1996. From 1997 to 1998, he served as law clerk to The Honorable Sterling Johnson, Jr., of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. From 2000 to 2002, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where he successfully handled a wide array of federal criminal cases, including those involving fraud, organized crime, and narcotics trafficking in the district court, and argued criminal appeals before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. During the 2002-2003 academic year, Mr. Peace was an Acting Assistant Professor of Clinical Law at the New York University School of Law where he trained aspiring prosecutors in the Prosecution Clinic.

Mr. Peace returned to Cleary in 2003 and in 2007 made history by becoming the first African-American man to be elected partner at the firm. At Cleary, he represented clients in white-collar criminal matters and other government enforcement litigation involving various United States Attorney’s Offices, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and authorities outside of the United States. He conducted sensitive internal investigations for major corporations, and represented corporations, officers, and directors in complex commercial litigation matters. In addition, Mr. Peace held several positions of leadership at the firm, serving most recently as a member its Global Executive Committee.

In 2012, Mr. Peace was appointed by The Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York to serve as a Special Master in United States et al. v. City of New York, a high-profile case brought against the New York City Fire Department alleging discrimination on the basis of race and national origin in hiring black and Hispanic firefighters. While at Cleary, Mr. Peace also maintained an active pro bono practice vindicating the rights of clients in criminal, immigration, human trafficking, and civil rights cases. Notably, he led the team of lawyers that in 2016 won dismissal of the indictment of a man who had been wrongly convicted of murder, rape, and robbery in 1981 and spent almost 30 years in prison.

Mr. Peace received his J.D. in 1996 from New York University School of Law where he was a member of the Law Review and later served as a member of the Board of Trustees, and his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993.

Mr. Peace grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn and attended Clara Barton High School.

Panel Discussion

Roiphe, Rebecca and Green, Bruce A., A Fiduciary Theory of Progressive Prosecution (November 4, 2022). American Criminal Law Review, Vol. 60, 2023, NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 4268652

Capers, I. Bennet. Cornell Law Review.Against Prosecutors. (2020)

Mariarosa Cutillo

The current Chief of the Strategic Partnerships Branch of the United Nations Population Fund, Mariarosa Cutillo has devoted her career to international human rights. Ms. Cutillo previously served as the CSR Manager of Benetton Group where she spent eight years working in corporate social responsibility and sustainability, and was CEO and President of Benetton's UNHATE Foundation. Ms. Cutillo holds a degree in Advanced International Law from the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University of Milan and has post-graduate specializations in human rights and business administration, with a focus on social and environmental sustainability. Ms. Cutillo has lectured on International Law Cases at the Faculty of Law of the University of Milan-Bicocca and is a senior lecturer at the Catholic University of Milan, Faculties of Law and Political and Social Sciences. She presently authors and co-authors articles on human rights and corporate sustainability in numerous scientific and educational publications.

Bharat Desai

Dr. Bharat H. Desai is Jawaharlal Nehru Chair and Professor of International Law at School of International Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. During 2021-2022, Dr. Bharat published three ideational books: (i) Envisioning Our Environmental Future: Stockholm+50 and Beyond (Amsterdam: IOS Press; Ed.); (ii) Sexual & Gender Based Violence in International Law: Making International Institutions Work (Singapore: Springer Nature; co-author); and (iii) Our Earth Matters (Amsterdam, IOS Press; Ed.). Bharat serves as Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Policy and Law (Amsterdam: IOS Press).

Paolo Galizzi (moderator)

Paolo Galizzi is a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Sustainable Development Legal Initiative (SDLI) and the Corporate and Social Responsibility Program at the Leitner

Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He teaches and researches in the areas of international law, sustainable development, corporate and social responsibility, human rights and climate change law and policy.

Prof. Galizzi has had a distinguished academic career spanning three continents and almost three decades. After graduating in 1993 summa cum laude at the University of Milan, he continued his legal education at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he obtained an LLM in Public International Law in 1995. He then returned to his alma mater, the University of Milan, to pursue research for his doctoral degree, which he obtained in 1998 with a thesis on “Compliance with International Environmental Obligations”.

Prof. Galizzi began his academic career at the University of Milan and at the University of Verona in Italy. He later worked as Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) in London, before joining the School of Law at the University of Nottingham and moving to Imperial College London. Whilst at Imperial College London, Prof. Galizzi was awarded a prestigious Fellowship by the European Union (Marie Curie Fellowship) to pursue academic research in the United States on climate change law and policy and initially joined Fordham as a Visiting Professor (Marie Curie Fellow) in 2004. At the end of his visit, in 2008 Prof. Galizzi was offered a full-time position at Fordham Law School as an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and was later promoted to Clinical Professor of Law in 2012.

Since joining Fordham, Prof. Galizzi has founded and directed the Sustainable Development Legal Initiative (SDLI) and later, thanks to a generous donation of PVH Corporation, the Corporate and Social Responsibly Program (CSR) within the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice. He also directed Fordham’s Summer in South Korea and continues to direct Fordham’s Summer Program in Ghana.

For the past twenty years, Prof. Galizzi has worked in Africa and particularly in Ghana, where he has also held various academic positions (Visiting Professor of Law at the School of Law, GIMPA, Accra from 2015-2018; Founding Director of the African Center for International Criminal Law and Justice – ACICJ - and Founding Director of the African Center on Legal Ethics – ACLE – hosted by GIMPA Law School from 2016 to the end of 2018). He is currently affiliated with the School of Law at the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA).

Prof. Galizzi has been actively engaged in scholarship as well as in the practical application of international rules in areas as diverse as environmental law, climate change law and policy, development, and human rights. Over the years, he has worked on clinical projects with Ghanaian Law Schools and students on prisoners’ rights, customary law, access to justice and police reform. Prof. Galizzi has worked with stakeholders in the Ghanaian legal system to address issues on access to justice and critical legal reforms. In particular, he worked closely with his Ghanaian academic partners with the Judicial Service, the Legal Aid Scheme, the Prison Service, the Police Service and the Attorney General to promote capacity building, training and more generally the exchange of ideas between the United States and the Ghanaian legal profession. In 2015, the American Association of Ghanaian Lawyers (AGLA) recognized his work on legal education and the law in Ghana in an award ceremony.

Prof. Galizzi worked with then Chief Justice Georgina T. Wood for over ten years during her tenure at the head of the Judicial Service of Ghana (2007-2017). He continued working with her successor, Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo on a court solarization program funded by the Australian High Commission in Accra. In 2014-2015, he was appointed Legal Advisor to former President of Ghana John A. Kufuor in his capacity as UN Special Envoy on Climate Change. In this role, Prof. Galizzi worked with President Kufuor to coordinate the efforts to increase the effectiveness and participation of developing countries in the climate change regime. In 2014-2016, Prof. Galizzi worked as an Advisor to the Chairman of the Council of the Ghana Prison Service on prisoners’ rights and access to healthcare for prisoners.

Prof. Galizzi’s work in Africa included setting up a Human Rights Moot Court Competition in East Africa (Great Lakes Human Rights Moot Court) with colleagues from the Faculty of Law of INES, Ruhengeri (Rwanda) and training of judges in East Africa in partnership with the Federal Judicial Center. His field work has included projects in Malawi as well as in South Africa. He has also conducted field work in Latin America and Eastern Europe during his career. In the past five years, Prof. Galizzi has also worked in partnership with White & Case and GIMPA Law School in Accra to train African law students on legal ethics issues. The last such training program took place in Kigali, Rwanda in July 2019 and saw the participation of over 70 law students from 10 African countries.

Prof. Galizzi has collaborated and supported the work of several international agencies and organizations throughout his career. In particular, he has collaborated with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Equator Initiative, the Red Ribbon Initiative, the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor and the UNPFA. He currently serves as the Co-Chair of TransformU within the UNFPA and sits on the Project Advisory Board of the Access to Laws/Regulations in Africa (IMF Anti-Corruption Innovation Competition).

Prof. Galizzi has been a successful fundraiser for his initiatives and programs. Over the years, he raised over $ 1 million (partly in partnership with his Ghanaian academic partners) from diverse sources (the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, GE Foundation, PVH, White & Case, the Dutch Embassy in Accra, the Australian High Commission in Accra and the European Union).

Prof. Galizzi is a prolific writer. He has edited volumes on customary law in Africa and international environmental law; he contributed to chapters in academic volumes and has written numerous articles. His latest publications include: Chapter on Atmospheric Pollution, 2nd Edition of the Routledge Handbook of International Environmental Law, forthcoming 2020 [with Kerry Gillich]; an article on Corporate Social Responsibility, Business and Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century: An Overview, in Global Law. Legal Answers for Concrete Challenges, Eds Maria Lucia Mantovanini Padua Lima & Jose Garcez Ghirardi, Jurua Editorial, 2018 [with Kwaku Agyeman-Budu]; Regulatory strategies, CSR and resource protection, in Natural Resources Law, Investment and Sustainability (S. Alam, J. Hossain Bhuiyan & J. Razzaque, Eds., Routledge: 2017)[with Emily Smith Ewing]; Human Rights and Climate Change, in Encyclopedia of Environmental Law, 15 pp.(Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2016) [with Sheila Foster]; From Ignorance, to Indifference, to Limited Familiarity: An Analysis of the Relationship Between International Environmental Law & Multinational Corporations in La Responsabilita` Sociale d’Impresa (2014).

Micaela E. Martinez

Dr. Martinez is an ecologist and activist. She is the Director of Environmental Health at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. She earned her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution in 2015 and has also served as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University and Emory University. She has worked on social justice, climate change, maternal and infant health, and social determinants of health. Over the past few years, Dr. Martinez has been working on how environmental racism and social inequities manifest health disparities, with particular emphasis on Black and Latinx communities in New York City.

John Yeboah Mensah (moderator)

John Yeboah Mensah is an Lecturer in Law at UPSA Law School. John obtained his LLB from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). He went ahead to acquire an MBA in Logistics and Supply Chain Management from KNUST Business School. He worked as an intern with the African Center of international Criminal Justice (ACICJ) and the African Center on Legal Ethics (ACLE) at Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) Law School, where he helped in the promotion and organization of conferences and training programs on the International Criminal Law and legal ethics for young African Lawyers.

Mensah was appointed a Dean’s Fellow with a joint appointment at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and the Access to Justice Initiative at Fordham Law School. In this capacity as Dean’s Fellow, Mensah worked, inter alia, on initiatives to promote access to justice in civil matters and conferences to highlight the challenges facing low-income communities in addressing civil matters. At the Leitner Center, Mensah researched legal issues on climate change in Africa and further worked as a Teaching Assistant in International Law, Human Rights, and Corporate and Social Responsibility. He was also tasked with coordinating Fordham’s Summer Law Program in Ghana.

His research focuses on the examination of the traditional legal systems and institutions and their role in addressing current environmental crisis, at the regional, national and global levels.

Angela Nguyen, DrPH, MPH

Angela Nguyen, DrPH, MPH, is a social epidemiologist by training. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health in 2022 and her MPH from the New York University School of Global Public Health in 2013. Angela’s interdisciplinary research to date has focused on vulnerable populations, social determinants of health, and environmental exposures. Her dissertation centered on the epidemiology of disaster mental health and the community- and individual-level factors associated with mental health recovery among displaced women survivors. More recently, she collaborated on a quantitative research study on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on period poverty in the U.S. Currently, she is a postdoctoral research scientist in the Gender, Adolescent Transitions, and Environment Program (GATE) within the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.

Eric Schaaf

Eric Schaaf served as the Regional Counsel for Region 2 of the United States Environmental Protection Agency from 2002 through 2021; in that capacity, he was responsible for the legal aspects of all EPA programs in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Eric first joined EPA’s Office of Regional Counsel as a staff attorney in 1984. Prior to being appointed Regional Counsel, Eric served for five years as the Deputy Regional Counsel and prior to that, he served for over 10 years as Chief of the New York/Caribbean Superfund Branch.

A graduate of Fordham University School of Law, Eric has taught the Climate Law & Policy course there, as a member of the adjunct faculty, since January 2017; he has also taught the environmental law survey course. In addition, Eric has served as guest lecturer at various schools, including Columbia Law School, the Environmental Law Center of Vermont Law School, New York Law School, and Rutgers University.

Eric is a member of the Environmental Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association and since 2004, he has been one of the organizers of the biennial conference, Key Environmental Issues in U.S. EPA Region 2. Before coming to EPA, Eric was an associate at the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel in New York City, where he participated in both general litigation and corporate practice.

Panel 1

The Climate Change Conundrum to (Environmental Policy and Law) special issue on climate change (vol.52, no.5-6, 2022).

Ondieki, G., Shetty, D., & See, A. B. (2023, January 3). Climate change puts more women at risk for domestic violence. The Washington Post. Retrieved from The Washington Post

Desai, Bharat H. and Mandal, Moumita. ‘Role of Climate Change in Exacerbating Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Against Women: A New Challenge for International Law’. 1 Jan. 2021 : 137 – 157.

Panel 2

Summary of the panel discussion on women’s rights and climate change: climate action, good practices and lessons learned-Report of the Office of the United Nations for Human Rights 24 July 2019 (A/HRC/42/26).

(Bluebook) U.N. GAOR, 42nd Sess., 1st plen. mtg., U.N. Doc A/HRC/42/46 (Sept. 9-27 2019)

G.A. Res. 38/4 (Jul. 5, 2018)

3:30 – 4:00 p.m. Check-in

4:00 – 4:30 p.m. Trial Reenactment

(0.5 Diversity CLE)

Judge Denny Chin, Co-Director, Center on Asian Americans and the Law; Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Lawrence W. Pierce Distinguished Jurist in Residence
Kathy Hirata Chin, Chair of Board of Advisors, Center on Asian Americans and the Law; Partner, Crowell & Moring LLP

4:30 – 5:30 p.m. Panel Discussion

(1.0 Diversity CLE)

Professor Aysha Ames, Director of Legal Writing, Fordham Law School
Professor Bennett Capers, John D. Feerick Research Professor of Law; Director, Center on Race, Law, and Justice

Moderator: Professor Thomas Lee, Co-Director, Center on Asian Americans and the Law; Leitner Family Professor of International Law, Fordham Law School

5:30 - 6:30 p.m. Reception in the Costantino room, on the second floor

Professor Aysha Ames
Director of Legal Writing, Fordham Law School

Aysha Ames is the Director of Legal Writing at Fordham Law School where she teaches the 1L legal writing course and helps develop the 1L and advanced legal writing curricula. Prior to teaching legal writing, she served as an attorney with the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and worked to ensure equal access to education and to resolve complaints of discrimination. Aysha is a graduate of Rutgers University School of Law (J.D.), Rutgers University-Graduate School of Education (M.Ed.), and Rutgers College (B.A.).

Professor Bennett Capers
John D. Feerick Research Professor of Law; Director, Center on Race, Law, and Justice

Bennett Capers is the John D. Feerick Research Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where he teaches Evidence, Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedure, and is also the Director of the Center on Race, Law, and Justice. A former federal prosecutor, his academic interests include the relationship between race, gender, technology, and criminal justice, and he is a prolific writer on these topics. His articles and essays have been published or are forthcoming in the California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Harvard Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, New York University Law Review, and UCLA Law Review, among others. In addition to co-editing Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and Law (Cambridge University Press) (with Devon Carbado, Robin Lenhardt, and Angela Onwuachi-Willig), Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Criminal Law Opinions (Cambridge University Press) (with Corey Rayburn Yung and Sarah Deer), and Criminal Law: A Critical Approach (Foundation Press) (with Roger Fairfax and Eric Miller), he also has a forthcoming book about prosecutors, The Prosecutor’s Turn (Metropolitan Books). His commentary and op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas Law School, Boston University Law School, and Yale Law School.

Prior to teaching, Professor Capers spent nearly ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. His work trying several federal racketeering cases earned him a nomination for the Department of Justice’s Director’s Award in 2004. He also practiced with the firms of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He clerked for the Hon. John S. Martin, Jr. of the Southern District of New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he graduated cum laude and was awarded the Class of 1983 Prize, and of Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Prior to joining Fordham Law School, he taught at Brooklyn Law School, where he was the Stanley A. August Professor of Law, and before that at Hofstra University School of Law, where he served as Associate Dean of Faculty Development in 2010-11, and where he received the 2009 Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication. He has thrice been voted Teacher of the Year, is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and has served as the Director of Research for the Uniform Laws Commission, a Senior Technology Fellow at the NYU Policing Project, Chair of the AALS Criminal Justice Section and Chair of the AALS Law and Humanities Section. Governor Cuomo twice appointed him to serve on judicial screening committees, first the New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the New York Court of Claims, and then the New York Judicial Screening Committee for the Second Department. In 2013, he served as Chairperson of the AALS 2013 Conference on Criminal Justice. That same year, Judge Scheindlin appointed him to Chair the Academic Advisory Council to assist in implementing the remedial order in the stop-and-frisk class action Floyd v. City of New York. He has also served for several years as a Commissioner on the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Judge Denny Chin
Co-Director, Center on Asian Americans, and the Law; Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Lawrence W. Pierce Distinguished Jurist in Residence

Judge Chin was confirmed as a Circuit Judge in April 2010, after serving some sixteen years as a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. He ook senior status on June 1, 2021. He graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude and received his law degree from Fordham Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Henry F. Werker in the Southern District of New York; was associated with the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell; served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; was a founding partner of the law firm Campbell, Patrick & Chin; and was a partner at a firm specializing in labor and employment law, Vladeck, Waldman & Engelhard, P.C.

Judge Chin was born in Hong Kong. He was the first Asian American appointed a United States District Judge outside the Ninth Circuit and the first Asian American appointed to the Second Circuit. He served as President of the Asian American Bar Association of New York from

1992-1993. Judge Chin and his wife Kathy Hirata Chin have written, produced, and presented, together with a team from the Asian American Bar Association of New York, a series of reenactments of historic cases involving Asian American litigants. He has taught Asian Americans and the Law at Fordham, Harvard, and Yale Law Schools.

Kathy Hirata Chin
Chair of Board of Advisors, Center on Asian Americans, and the Law; Partner, Crowell & Moring LLP

Kathy Hirata Chin is a Partner at Crowell & Moring LLP, where she is a member of the healthcare and litigation groups. She graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude and Columbia Law School, where she was Editor in Chief of the Transnational Law Journal. She has served on the NYC Planning Commission; the EDNY Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel; Governor Mario Cuomo's Judicial Screening Committee for the First Department; the Gender Bias Committee of the Second Circuit Task Force; Chief Judge Kaye’s Commission to Promote Public Confidence in Judicial Elections; and the Second Circuit Judicial Conference Planning and Program Committee, as well as on the Board of Directors of the NY County Lawyers Association and NY Lawyers for the Public Interest.

She currently serves on the NYC Commission to Combat Police Corruption (Acting Chair); the Governor's Judicial Screening Committee for the First Department; the Attorney Emeritus Advisory Council; the Commercial Division Advisory Council; the Second Circuit Judicial Committee on Civic Education & Public Engagement; and the Board of Directors of the Medicare Rights Center (as co-chair). She has received the NYC Bar's Diversity and Inclusion Champion Award, AABANY's Women’s Leadership Award, and the inaugural Hong Yen Chang award from Columbia APALSA and Columbia Law School Association. In 2021, she joined the Board of Directors of the New York City Bar Association (as Vice President) and of EmblemHealth, a national not-for-profit health insurer.

Professor Thomas Lee (moderator)
Co-Director, Center on Asian Americans and the Law; Leitner Family Professor of International Law, Fordham Law School

Thomas Lee is the Leitner Family Professor of International Law at Fordham University School of Law. He holds A.B. (summa cum laude), A.M. (Regional Studies—East Asia), and J.D. degrees from Harvard, where he was Articles Chair of the Law Review and a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in Government. He has written many articles and book chapters about constitutional law, international law, U.S. foreign relations law, federal courts, and legal history. He has also been a visiting professor at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Virginia Law Schools; U.S. law adviser to the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea; and Special Counsel to the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Before his academic career, Professor Lee clerked for Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and for Associate Justice David Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court and served as an active-duty U.S. naval cryptology officer ashore in Korea, Japan, and Washington DC, and afloat in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. He is also Of Counsel at Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, and a member of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) Panel of Conciliators and of the American Law Institute. Professor Lee was born in Seoul, Korea, and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1974.

9:15 - 9:30 a.m. | Welcome and Introduction

9:30 - 10:20 a.m. | Panel 1: Defending, Expanding, and Codifying the Right to Strike Under International Law
(1.0 Professional Practice CLE)

Professor Keith David Ewing, Professor of Law at King’s College London
Professor Jeffrey Vogt, Rule of Law Director at Solidarity Center

Moderator: Professor James Brudney, Joseph Crowley Chair in Labor and Employment Law at Fordham Law School

10:20 - 10:30 a.m. | Break

10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. | Panel 2: Striking the Weakest Link: How Unions Can Strategize around Supply Chains
(1.5 Professional Practice CLE)

Professor Katy Fox-Hodess, Lecturer in Employment Relations at the University of Sheffield
Professor Chaumtoli Huq, Associate Professor of Law at CUNY School of Law
Professor Ashok Kumar, Senior Lecturer of Political Economy at Birkbeck University
Ms. Jacqueline Wamai, Regional Coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa: International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network(ILAW)-Solidarity Center

Moderator: Professor Jennifer Gordon, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law

12:00 - 12:10 p.m. | Break

12:10 - 1:30 p.m. | Panel 3: Prospects and Failures: The Role of Trade Agreements in Establishing Labor Protections
(1.5 Professional Practice CLE)

Professor Janice Bellace, Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, and Professor of Management at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
Professor Desiree LeClercq, Proskauer Employment and Labor Law Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations
Professor Tonia Novitz, Professor of Labour Law at the University of Bristol
Professor Lizhen Zheng, Associate Professor in the Law School at Fujian Normal University in China

Moderator: Professor Lance Compa, Senior Lecturer Emeritus at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Professor Janice Bellace
Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics, and Professor of Management at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School

Janice Bellace is the Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Janice’s research in in the area of labor and employment law and employment relations, with a focus on how international human rights concepts shape regulation and corporate behavior. During her career at Wharton, she has taught the introductory foundation course in business law, and courses in the area of labor and employment law, negotiations, labor relations, human resources management and international human rights. Currently Janice is Judge and Vice President of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal. A specialist in international employment law, Janice was a member of the oldest UN supervisory body, the Committee of Experts at the International Labor Organization in Geneva from 1995 – 2010. Active in many professional organizations, Janice served as president of the International Labor and Employment Relations Association from 2009-2012, and as president of the International Society for Labor and Social Security Law from 2018-2021. She is a Fellow of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (of the United States), of which she was president 2016-2017. For ten years she was co-general editor of the Comparative Labor Law Journal, and continues to serve on the editorial boards of several journals. She is a former Secretary of the Section on Labor and Employment Law of the American Bar Association.

Professor James Brudney
Joseph Crowley Chair in Labor and Employment Law at Fordham Law School

James Brudney joined the Fordham faculty after nineteen years at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he was Newton D. Baker-Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law. Following graduation from law school, Professor Brudney clerked for the Honorable Gerhard A. Gesell of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. and then for Justice Harry A Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court. He was associated for four years with the firm of Bredhoff and Kaiser in Washington, representing individuals and unions in constitutional and statutory matters.

Professor Brudney served for six years as Chief Counsel and Staff Director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor. He has been Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown Law Center and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. At Fordham, Professor Brudney principally teaches Labor Law, Employment Law, and Legislation and Regulation. His scholarly writing is in the areas of workplace law and statutory interpretation.

Professor Brudney is co-chair of the Public Review Board for the United Auto Workers International Union, and is a member of the Committee of Experts of the International Labor Organization. He received a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to do research and lecturing at Oxford University in the Fall of 2000. In 2008, he received an Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching from the Ohio State University. In 2014, he was selected as Professor of the Year by Fordham Law School Students.

Professor Lance Compa
Senior Lecturer Emeritus at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Lance Compa is a Senior Lecturer Emeritus at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, New York, where he taught U.S. labor law and international labor rights from 1997 until his retirement in 2019.

Before joining the Cornell faculty in 1997, Compa directed labor law research at the NAFTA Commission for Labor Cooperation. Prior to his 1995 appointment to the commission, Compa taught labor law, employment law, and international labor rights as a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management. He also practiced international labor law for unions and human rights organizations in Washington, D.C.

In addition to his studies of workers' rights in the United States, Prof. Compa has conducted workers' rights investigations and reports on Cambodia, Chile, China, Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico, Sri Lanka and other developing countries. He serves on two federal advisory committees related to his research and teaching: the Department of Labor's National Advisory Committee for Labor Provisions of Free Trade Agreements, and the State Department's Stakeholder Advisory Board on the U.S. National Contact Point for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

After law school and before turning to international labor law practice and teaching, Compa worked for many years as a trade union organizer and negotiator; first for the United Electrical Workers (UE), and then for the Newspaper Guild. While on the UE staff, he was involved in organizing and collective bargaining negotiations in multinational firms like General Electric and Westinghouse, and at many medium and small-sized firms throughout the United States. At the Newspaper Guild, he represented editorial, business, and production employees at the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Agence France-Presse, and other news organizations.

Compa is a 1969 graduate of Fordham University, a 1973 graduate of Yale Law School, and a member of the Massachusetts Bar. He also undertook studies abroad at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris, France (1967-1968) and at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile (1972-1973).

Professor Keith David Ewing
Professor of Law at King’s College London

Professor Keith Ewing is Professor of Public Law at King’s College London. He has written extensively on labour law including recognition procedures and international standards. He is the President of the Institute of Employment Rights and a Vice President of the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom. He has been recognized as a leading scholar in public law, constitutional law, law of democracy, labor law and human rights; as well as “one of the world’s leading scholars of the constitution of social democracy.” His work have been cited as a “leading light of English public law” and act as the leading texts books in constitutional, administrative, and labour law in the UK.

Professor Katy Fox-Hodess
Lecturer in Employment Relations at the University of Sheffield

Katy Fox-Hodess is a lecturer in Industrial Relations at the University of Sheffield. Her research and teaching interests include industrial relations, globalization, political sociology, political economy, and social theory. She completed her doctorate in Sociology at the University of California Berkley. There she wrote her dissertation, Dockworkers of the World Unite: Transnational Class Formation and New Labor Internationalism. Her current work focuses on developing a non-orthodox theory of worker power able to account for its simultaneous grounding in economy, state, and ideology. She is also currently leading a research project with the Centre for Decent Work to analyse long-term workforce and management trends across public service. Her research has been published in British Journal of Industrial Relations, Latin American Politics and Society, Work, Employment and Society, Global Labour Journal, Labor History and New Labor Forum. These papers have been awarded the Labor and Employment Relations Association James. G. Scoville Best International/Comparative Industrial Relations Paper Award (2018) and the American Sociological Association Section on Labor and Labor Movements’ Distinguished Scholarly Article Award (2018).

Professor Jennifer Gordon
Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law

Jennifer Gordon founded the Workplace Project in 1992, a non-profit worker center in Hempstead, New York, which organizes immigrant workers, mostly from Central and South America. The Workplace Project lobbied for and won a strong wage enforcement law in New York state. Gordon was the executive director of the Workplace Project from 1993 to 1998. Gordon was a MacArthur Fellow from 1999 to 2004. She is the author of Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights, as well as several articles on immigrants, politics, and labor unions. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1987 and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1992. She is currently an associate professor at Fordham University School of Law, where she teaches courses on immigration and labor law.

Professor Chaumtoli Huq
Associate Professor of Law at CUNY School of Law

Chaumtoli Huq is a leading expert on employment and labor law, migration and human rights with a focus on social movements in the US and South Asia and the founder/Editor of an innovative law and media non-profit focused called Law@theMargins (www.lawatthemargins.com). Huq’s recent scholarship include: Green Unionism and Human Rights; Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Global Governance; Charting Global Economic Inequalities and Emancipatory Human Rights Responses from the Ground Up on tea workers in Bangladesh, Women’s Empowerment in the Bangladesh Garment Industry, Opportunities and Limitations of the Accord: Need for a Worker Organizing Model in an edited volume titled, Labor, Global Supply Chains and the Garment Industry in South Asia. She has produced a documentary on her work in Bangladesh called Sramik Awaaz: Workers Voices, and has created a digital archive of her work on tea workers in Bangladesh called Chai Justice (https://chaijustice.com/) She is the 2019 Access to Justice Leadership Award by the South Asian Bar Association of New York, the 2020 Daynard Public Interest Visiting Fellowship awarded to nationally recognized public interest leaders. She was a 2022 Academic Fellow with the Wendland-Cook Program on Religion and Justice at the Vanderbilt Divinity School where she is researching the intersection between Islam and the labor movement and is presently a 2023 Fulbright US Scholar in Malaga, Spain researching Asian migration to Europe and Spanish brands producing apparel in Bangladesh. You can follow her on twitter @profhuq Her work is also available https://linktr.ee/profhuq

Professor Ashok Kumar
Senior Lecturer of Political Economy at Birkbeck University

Ashok Kumar is a Senior Lecturer of Political Economy at Birkbeck University of London. He is widely published on a number of issues including urban theory, development, capitalist crisis, workers’ movements, global supply chains and identity. His most recent book Monopsony Capitalism: Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age (Cambridge University Press) was the winner of the American Sociological Association's 2021 Paul Sweezy Outstanding Book Prize and the 2022 Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award. The book demonstrates that the production process under global capitalism is governed by a universal logic that shapes the structural bargaining power of workers. Alongside his research and teaching, he has sat on the editorial boards of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space and the urban geography journal City. He's currently a member of the editorial collective of the journal Historical Materialism.

Professor Desiree LeClercq
Proskauer Employment and Labor Law Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations

Desiree LeClercq is the Proskauer Employment and Labor Law Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. There she teaches international labor law, U.S. labor law, and employment law. She is the author or co-author of several articles (along with book chapter contributions), including those featured in the Fordham Law Review, American University Law Review, and Houston Law Review, as well as leading international journals such as the Virginia Journal of International Law and the American Journal of International Law Unbound. Her work explores the incoherence between international labor law, U.S. trade law, and constitutional law, as well as incoherence between international organizations. Her research places marginalized workers at the center of global and economic policies. In addition to research, LeClercq is an active member of international law societies and initiatives. She is the Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law International Organizations Interest Group. She also frequently consults with EU and US stakeholders and policymakers concerning trade policy and its effects on formal and informal sector workers. The European Commission has included her in its pool of candidates eligible to Chair disputes arising under the trade and sustainability chapters of EU trade agreements.

Professor Tonia Novitz
Professor of Labour Law at the University of Bristol

Tonia Novitz is a Professor of Labour Law at the University of Bristol Law School in the UK. A graduate of the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand) and Balliol College, Oxford, she has held fellowships at the International Institute for Labour Studies (Geneva), the European University Institute (Florence), the University of Melbourne and the University of Auckland. She is currently chair of the steering committee of the international Labour Law Research Network (LLRN), a UK representative on the advisory board of International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW), and a Vice President of the UK Institute of Employment Rights. She was a founding co-director of the Bristol Centre for Law at Work. Her research interests encompass collective labour rights, international and EU trade, sustainability and migration. Her publications have been cited in the Supreme Court of Canada and the UK Supreme Court. Recently, she has written on the relationship between sustainable development and labour standards in the gig economy, as well as the ways in which sustainable development chapters in EU free trade agreements may be enforced.

Professor Jeffrey Vogt
Rule of Law Director at Solidarity Center

Jeffrey Vogt is the director of the Solidarity Center’s Rule of Law department and has previously acted as the legal director of the International Trade Union Confederation. fore joining the ITUC in 2011, he was the Global Economic Policy Specialist for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL CIO) and later the Deputy Director of its International Department. Previously, he represented trade unions in litigation in US state and federal courts. He is a graduate of Cornell Law School, where he earned his JD and LLM in International and Comparative Law. He also studied international law at the University of Paris.

Ms. Jacqueline Wamai
Regional Coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa: International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network(ILAW)-Solidarity Center

Jacqueline Wamai is the Regional Coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa for International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network. Before Joining ILAW in July 2020, she was the Legal Advisor for the Kenya Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, and Hospital Workers (KUDHEIHA), based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has been a consultant on trade union issues in Africa including with the Bureau for Workers' Activities of the International Labour Organization. Wamai’s recent research interests focuses on due diligence in the automotive industry, violence and harassment in global supply chains in agriculture and plantations, working conditions in Chinese investment in Africa, formalizing the informal economy, and organizing workers in the platform economy. She is also a regular contributor to academic journals focusing on transforming the world of work.

Professor Lizhen Zheng
Associate Professor in the Law School at Fujian Normal University in China

Lizhen Zheng is an Associate Professor in the Law School at Fujian Normal University in China. She received her Ph.D. in international law in 2014 from Xiamen University Law School of China, and her dissertation subject was “The Reconstruction of Transnational Labor Regulation Regime Under the Theory of Reflexive Law.” For her dissertation work, she used an interdisciplinary survey between international law (especially economic international law) and labor law and tracked labor provision negotiation in economic treaties that might have legal significance to the reform of international economic rules. These include but are not limited to TPP, TTIP, China-EU BIT, China-US BIT, and FTAAP(currently as an initiative). Her book On the Reconstruction of Transnational Labor Regulation Regime won the Second Prize of Distinguished Research for Young Law Scholars, awarded by the China Law Society in 2016. Her Ph.D. dissertation got the provincial prize for “Excellent Doctoral Degree Dissertation,” awarded by the Fujian Provincial Government of China in 2016, and her article “Rethinking the Role of Labor Provisions under Asian International Investment Regime” is to be published as a chapter in the book Asian Perspectives on International Investment Law (Routledge, 2018).