Human Rights Brief
A Legal Resource for the International Human Rights CommunityWinter 1996
CENTER NEWS
Activities of the Co-Directors
In February, Professor Claudio Grossman, Dean of WCL and Co-Director of the Center, was elected President of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. He also was presented with the Distinguished Immigrant Award by the American Immigrants Lawyers Association. In January, Dean Grossman appeared before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on behalf of human rights victims in the Guatemalan Blake Case and Panel Blanca Case and the Venzuelan El Amparo Case.
Professor Herman Schwartz traveled in January to the Federal Republic of Georgia at the request of the Georgian Parliament to review a proposed Constitutional Court Act which has recently been adopted.
Professor Robert K. Goldman was elected by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States to a position on the seven member Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. His four year term began in January 1996.
Mr. Joseph Eldridge, Director of the Washington office of the Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights, acknowledged Professor Goldman's contribution to human rights, Bob Goldman has been a rousing champion for expanding the use and application of human rights and humanitarian law by NGOs in the Americas. His penetrating legal analysis has uplifted and informed all of us over the past two decades, advancing NGO effectiveness. We look forward to his efforts on the Commission and we wish him well in this important position.
Professor Goldman joins WCL Dean Claudio Grossman, who was recently elected President of the Commission.
Mental Disability Rights International
MDRI, a project of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, is active in supporting the recognition and enforcement of the rights of people with mental disabilities in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the United States. In March 1996, Eric Rosenthal, Executive Director of MDRI, and Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, will travel to the Czech Republic to conduct a human rights seminar for members of the Czech Parliament and Ministry of Health, as well as other leading reformers in mental health.
In addition, MDRI staff attorney Max Lapertosa and Elizabeth Jones, Director of the Maryland Disability Law Center, will conduct a fact-finding mission to Romania in March. MDRI also is sponsoring a delegation of Hungarian psychiatrists, consumers, and Budapest city officials who will travel to western Massachusetts in March to study the implementation of Brewster v. Dukakis, a consent decree mandating the establishment of community-based services and human rights oversight mechanisms for people with mental disabilities.
MDRI's newest staff attorney, Catherine O'Malley, will serve as Program Director of the Americas Advocacy Initiative. In partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), MDRI is establishing the Americas Working Group on Mental Disability Rights, which will provide advocacy training, technical support, and an information network to organizations throughout the Americas working for the rights of people with mental disabilities. MDRI has also recently submitted comments on the draft Inter-American Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities and will continue to support the development of the Convention.
Tribunal Research Office
The Center's Research Office for the War Crimes Tribunals continues to support the Rwanda and Former Yugoslavia Tribunals by providing legal research on humanitarian law issues. Funded by the Open Society Institute, this project will continue to operate at least until August of this year. The research is carried out by thirteen LL.M. and J.D. students under the supervision of Professors Diane Orentlicher and Robert Goldman. The Coordinator of the project, Rochus J.P. Pronk, was recently awarded first prize by the International Law Institute at the University of Utrecht for his 1994 graduation thesis on the War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In January of 1996, Pronk traveled to The Netherlands to deliver a lecture on the Tribunal before the Utrecht International Law Institute.
Inter-American Human Rights Digest
In early 1996, WCL and the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law were awarded a two-year grant to compile a digest of the case-law of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The digest, to be developed in English and Spanish, will further the use and accessibility of the Inter-American System's jurisprudence, encourage the "juridication" of the system, and generally enable state governments, NGOs, and individual petitioners to better and more consistently uphold rights protected by the Inter-American human rights instruments.
The digest project will be coordinated by attorneys trained in the Inter-American System, and will be supervised by Principal Investigator Claudio Grossman, Dean of WCL, and Robert Goldman, Dean of Graduate Studies at WCL. In addition, Professor Leo Zwaak, Director of the Digest of Strasbourg Case-Law based in The Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, will provide technical assistance with the development of methodology for the project.
The proper citation for this article in the Human Rights Brief Volume 3, Number 2, beginning at page 17 is: 3 No. 2 Hum. Rts. Brief 17 (1996).
