International and Comparative Law

The following interview is based on an interview that Professor Horacio A. Grigera Naón gave for the ICC Arbitration Bulletin in Peru (Boletín de Arbitraje, No. 6, of July 2020). Professor Grigera Naón combines practice with teaching in a unique way. He is an Argentine national with worldwide experience in international arbitration. He served as Secretary General of the International Court of Arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris (France). He founded the Center on International Commercial Arbitration at American University Washington College of Law in 2004 as a hub for critical thinking about international commercial and investment arbitration in Washington, D.C. Since then, he has devoted time both to teaching as well as the practice of arbitration as independent international arbitrator. So far, he has been involved in well over one hundred arbitrations between parties from around the world. His legal thought, as reflected in his writings as well as in published arbitral awards, has contributed to the shaping of international arbitration the way we know it today. 

On October 25, 2020, Chile will hold a historic plebiscite to define the fate of the current Constitution, drawn up in 1980 by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. The plebiscite is unprecedented in constitutional history, as it will consult the citizens of Chile simultaneously whether or not they want to replace the Constitution and who will write it. Approximately 14.8 million Chilean citizens will be freely able to choose if the new Constitution should be drafted by a constitutional convention whose 155 assembly members will be specially elected for that purpose, or if that should be done by a mixed convention together with partliamentarians.

Ms. Katerina González graduated from the LL.M. in International Legal Studies in 2011 with a specialization in International Business Law. Since then, she has worked at various law firms in Washington, DC and Madrid, Spain. In August 2020, she was promoted to become a Partner at the law firm of Garcia Saavedra Abogados. We interviewed Ms. González about her time at AUWCL and its role in shaping her career path.

The Institute of International Law (IIL) created a special commission on Pandemics and International Law composed of 16 prominent international legal experts from all over the world to study the relationship between pandemics and international law. AUWCL’s own Dean Emeritus and Professor Claudio Grossman joined this working group in February 2020, when the group was first formed.

AUWCL Professor Diego Rodríguez-Pinzón started a four-year term as member of the Committee against Torture in January 2018, after being elected in October 2017 by the State Parties in Geneva, Switzerland. Recently, he was appointed Rapporteur (a.i.) of that Committee. The Committee against Torture supervises the States Parties’ compliance with the 1984 United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (“Convention against Torture”).