Guest Speakers
WCL is quint essentially a D.C. institution. Our adjunct faculty and guest lecturers include the District's leading judges and attorneys, and our symposia feature policy makers from both here and abroad. The WCL community has held many lectures and events that discussed topics that effects the country and also the world, hosting over 200 conferences, lectures, and symposia each year.
Included in the many events held by WCL, the Grotius Lecture on International Law has been hosted by WCL, in conjunction with the American Society of International Law (ASIL), since the Spring of 1999. Speakers/Commentators have included:
- Moises Naim, editor of "Foreign Policy"
- Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former CIA General Counsel of the CIA & the National Security Agency
- Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights & former President of Ireland
- Ko-Yung Tung, Vice-President of the World Bank
WCL explores topics covering almost every imaginable subject area of the law, the following is a sample of conferences in 2003:
- Business & the Law: Securities Regulation & Corporate Responsibility
- Gender & Development: Successful Strategies for Developing & Improving Women's Lives
- New Policies & Realities in the Wake of the Terrorist Attacks on September 11th
- To Preserve the Past, To Serve the Present, To Improve the Future: New Challenges for Civil Legal Services & Criminal Defense
- Homophobia in the Halls of Justice: Sexual Orientation Bias in the Court System
- The Center for the Global South's 10th Anniversary Conference: Human Security for the Global South: Challenges of Peace & Development in the 21st Century
- The Courts & Civil Liberties in Times of War & National Crisis
Along with these compelling lectures are the lecturers themselves. They come from around the globe with different expertise. A sample list of lecturers/speakers follows:
- Ralph Nader, Consumer Rights Advocate
- Senator Edward Kennedy
- Judge Kathryn Sellers
- Congresswoman Constance Morella, Republican Representative for Maryland
- Nina Totenberg Supreme Court Correspondent for NPR
- Dean Erwin Griswold of Harvard Law School, 1984
- Rep. Patricia Shroeder spoke at the 2nd Annual WLA Alumni Luncheon, 1983
- Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at CUNY and 2004 ASA President, spoke at WCL in 1984
- Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes, Democrat Representative for the District of Columbia
- Senator Brock Adams, Spring Commencement, 1978
- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Associate Justice to the Supreme Court
- Reverend Jesse Jackson, President of the Rainbow Coalition & one of the 2004 presidential candidates for the democratic party.
- Nilmario Miranda, Minister for Human Rights, Brazil
- Kelly Askin, Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University; former Legal Advisor to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.
- Information provided by the WCL Office of Special Events and Continuing Legal Education.