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WCRO Staff and Fellows, Fall 2011Clockwise from bottom left, Alison Plenge, Zachary Aune, Brady Williamson, Katherine Cleary, Anna Naimark, Susana SáCouto |
Staff and Officer
Susana SáCouto
Director
Susana SáCouto is Director of the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO) at the Washington College of Law (WCL), which promotes the development and enforcement of international criminal and humanitarian law. She also directs WCL’s Summer Law Program in The Hague, which offers JD and LLM students the opportunity for intensive study in international criminal law in The Hague. In addition, Ms. SáCouto is a Professorial Lecturer in Residence at WCL, where she teaches courses on international criminal courts, gender and human rights law and on the responses of international humanitarian law and international criminal law to women affected by conflict. She has also served as a faculty member at the Summer Program of WCL’s Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, where she co-taught a course on international justice for violations of human rights and humanitarian law. Ms. SáCouto’s background includes extensive practical and academic experience in the fields of human rights law, international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Prior to joining the WCRO, Ms. SáCouto directed the Legal Services Program at Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), clerked for the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and worked with the Center for Human Rights Legal Action in Guatemala. She also served as co-chair of the Women’s International Law Interest Group of the American Society for International Law (2006-2009 term), and was recently awarded The Women’s Law Center 22nd Annual Dorothy Beatty Memorial Award for significant contributions to women’s rights. Recent publications include The Women’s Protocol to the African Charter and Sexual Violence in the Context of Armed Conflict or Other Mass Atrocity, Wash & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. (forthcoming 2010) (with Katherine Cleary); The Katanga Complementarity Decision: Sound Law but Flawed Policy, 23 Leiden J. of Int'l L. 363 (June 2010) (with Katherine Cleary); and The Confirmation of Charges Process at the International Criminal Court, in Protección Internacional de Derechos Humanos y Estado de Derecho (Joaquín González Ibáñez, ed., 2009) (with Katherine Cleary); The Gravity Threshold of the International Criminal Court, 23 American J. Int'l L. 807 (2008) (with Katherine Cleary); Victim Participation before the International Criminal Court, 17 Transnat'l L & Contemp. Probs. 73 (2008) (with Katherine Cleary); Reflections on the Judgment of the International Court of Justice in Bosnia’s Genocide Case against Serbia and Montenegro, 15 Hum. Rts. Brief 2 (Fall 2007); and Advances and Missed Opportunities in the International Prosecution of Gender-Based Crimes, 15 Mich. St. J. Int'l L. 137 (2007).
Katherine Cleary
Assistant Director
Katherine Cleary is the Assistant Director of the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO). Prior to joining the WCRO, Katherine worked as a Research and Policy Associate with the CARE International Representative to the United Nations, specializing in issues related to countries in conflict. Through her work at CARE International, Katherine helped prepare working papers on the role of the ICC in Sudan and Uganda, as well as a policy paper regarding the importance of individual compensation to transitional justice initiatives. Before her work with CARE International, Katherine was an associate at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York City, where she spent four years as a member of the firm's Litigation Practice and International Arbitration Group. While at Simpson Thacher, Katherine participated in all aspects of several international arbitration proceedings before a variety of standing and ad hoc tribunals. She holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall); and a Master's Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
Chante Lasco
Jurisprudence Collections Coordinator
Chante Lasco is the Jurisprudence Collections Coordinator at the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO). Before joining the WCRO, she served as an Assistant State’s Attorney in Maryland for four years, focusing on domestic violence cases. Earlier, she clerked at the ICC in the Legal Advisory Section of the Office of the Prosecutor and served as a consultant for the WCRO, researching, drafting, and analyzing issues of international criminal law and procedure. Chante graduated magna cum laude with her J.D. from American University while also earning an M.A. in International Affairs from AU’s School of International Service. While in law school, she interned at the ICTR, where she assisted the prosecution team on a case against owners of media outlets for incitement to genocide; at the American Prosecutors Research Institute, where she helped create a database of state domestic violence laws; and at the United States Institute of Peace, where she was a research assistant.
Brady Williamson
Staff Assistant
Brady Williamson is the Staff Assistant at the War Crimes Research Office (WCRO). Brady recently returned from the Peace Corps, where he worked as an organizational and community development volunteer in Northern Kazakhstan. During his time there, he managed grant projects for a disability organization and trained staff in basic computer literacy. Prior to that, he was a student at American University, where his courses included international law from a European perspective and an honors colloquium on legal issues in globalization. He received his BA in International Relations in 2007.
Officer
Professor Robert K. Goldman
Faculty Director
Robert Kogod Goldman is Professor of Law and Louis C. James Scholar at American University's Washington College of Law, where he has taught since 1971. Professor Goldman is also Faculty Director of the War Crimes Research Office and Co-Director of the Law School's Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. He was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights from 1996 to 2003 and its President from March 1999 to March 2000. In 2004 and 2005 he served as the U.N. Human Rights Commission's Independent Expert on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, and in July 2005 he was appointed as one of eight experts, and the only American, to an International Commission of Jurists’ Eminent Jurists Panel to examine issues of counter-terrorism and human rights. Professor Goldman teaches and publishes on subjects relating to International Law, Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law. He is co-author, with Claudio Grossman, Claudia Martin and Diego Rodriquez, of The International Dimension of Human Rights: A Guide For Application in Domestic Courts (2002).
