Events
Jeffrey Addicott, J.D., LL.M.
Jeffrey Addicott, J.D., LL.M., Professor of Law, Director of the Warrior Defense Project, is a retired Lieutenant Colonel who spent 20 years in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, including as senior legal adviser to U.S. Army Special Forces.
Addicott writes on the law of armed conflict, national security and terrorism law. He pioneered law of war and human rights training for the militaries of emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and his recent work examines the division between jus ad bellum and jus in bello in contemporary conflicts.
Publications
- Rightly Dividing Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello in the Israel/Hamas War, 37 Pace International Law Review 199 (2025).
- Covid-19 Pandemic: Policy and Legal Issues, The Officer Review 7 (March–April 2020).
- The Trump Travel Ban: Rhetoric vs Reality, 44 University of Dayton Law Review 491 (2019).
- Prosecuting the War on Terror in the Trump Administration: The Trump Doctrine – Is There Really a New Sheriff in Town?, 11 Albany Government Law Review 209 (2018).
Mason Clark, J.D.
Mason Clark, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law, Englehardt Research Fellow
Clark writes on privacy and cybersecurity — fields now governed as much by cross-border regulation as by domestic law.
Before entering academia, he served as the global deputy privacy officer for an international life sciences corporation, acted as data breach counsel for multinational companies, and advised on privacy compliance across jurisdictions at Baker McKenzie. His scholarship addresses consumer privacy, youth privacy and the constitutional dimensions of data regulation.
Publications
- Consumer Privacy and the Dobbs Disruption, 58 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform (2024).
- Rethinking Youth Privacy, Virginia Law Review (with Ari Ezra Waldman).
- Youth Privacy’s Constitutional Reckoning, Georgia Law Review (forthcoming).
- Code Is Not Law (with Andrea Tosato and Drew Hinkes).
Robert Hu, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D.
Robert “Bob” Hu, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., Professor of Law and Director of the Institute on Chinese Law and Business, is one of the leading American authorities on Chinese intellectual property law. His research guides pm Chinese patent, trademark and copyright law are standard references for practitioners and scholars.
Hu’s recent work compares American and Chinese approaches to intellectual property remedies. He teaches Conflict of Laws — the core of private international law — alongside international intellectual property and directed the law school’s previous study abroad program in China.
Publications
- Research Guide to Chinese Intellectual Property Law (William S. Hein & Co., 2024).
- Apology as an Intellectual Property Remedy in China: A Preliminary Examination of American Litigation Experiences (2023).
- Research Guide to Chinese Patent Law and Practice, 2nd ed. (William S. Hein & Co., 2022).
- Reconstruction of the Reasonable Person Standard under Chinese Patent Law, 26 Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review 11 (2022) (co-authored).
- St. Mary’s University Institute on Chinese Law and Business: Remarkable Success in the First Ten Years, 51 St. Mary’s Law Journal 839 (2020).
Ramona Lampley, J.D.
Ramona L. Lampley, J.D., Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and the Ernest Clemens Professor in Corporate and Securities Law.
Lampley’s scholarship focuses on United States policy and domestic liability for corporate reliance on human trafficking, forced labor or child forced labor in the international supply chain. She has been published in The Pepperdine Law Review, American University Law Review, Washington Law Review, BYU Law Review, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Publications
- A Haven for Traffickers: How the United States Provides a Legal Safe-Haven for Businesses That Rely on Forced Labor or Slave Labor in the Supply Chain, 51 Pepperdine Law Review 75 (2024).
- Mitigating Risk, Eradicating Slavery: The Business Case for Eradicating Slave Labor in the Supply Chain to Reduce Domestic Liability, 68 American University Law Review 1707 (2019).
Chenglin Liu, J.S.D., LL.M.
Chenglin “Gary” Liu, J.S.D., LL.M., Professor of Law and a Katherine A. Ryan Chair for Global, Comparative and International Law
Liu works at the intersection of comparative law, public health and global regulation. His research examines how food and drug safety is governed when supply chains cross borders, how international institutions perform in a pandemic, and how Chinese legal traditions shape contemporary Chinese law. His book Chinese Law in Context introduces the Chinese legal system through the scandals and cases that have defined it.
Publications
- Beyond Compulsory Licensing: Pfizer Shares Its COVID-19 Medicines with the Patent Pool, 25 NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy 1 (2022).
- The World Health Organization: A Weak Defender Against Pandemics, 28 Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law 174 (2021).
- Chinese Law in Context (Carolina Academic Press, 2020).
- Confucius and the Chinese Legal Tradition, 28 Michigan State International Law Review 477 (2020).
- Socialized Liability in Chinese Tort Law, 59 Harvard International Law Journal Online 16 (2018).
- Risks Faced by Foreign Lawyers in China, 35 Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law 131 (2018).
Jena Martin, J.D., LL.M.
Jena Martin, J.D., LL.M., Professor of Law and a Katherine A. Ryan Chair for Global, Comparative and International Law. A former senior counsel in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Enforcement, Martin is a leading voice in business and human rights.
Her work asks how corporate accountability can be made real — through securities regulation, disclosure, liability frameworks and beyond — and increasingly addresses the human rights implications of data privacy, algorithms and artificial intelligence. She co-authors the casebook International Human Rights Law, Policy and Process, and has taught at the St. Mary’s Institute on World Legal Problems in Innsbruck, Austria.
Publications
- International Human Rights Law, Policy and Process, 5th ed. (Carolina Academic Press, 2021) (with David Weissbrodt).
- When Business Harms Human Rights: Affected Communities That Are Dying to Be Heard (Anthem Press, 2020) (co-edited with Karen Bravo and Tara Van Ho).
- Everything New Is Old Again: The Coming Metaverse, Platforms as Premises, and Addressing Harms That Occur Behind the Veil of Scale, Yale Journal of Law and Technology (with Lara Putnam).
- Misaligned: An Update on Trends in Data Privacy Laws and Their Effect on Individuals (2025) (with Erin Kelley).
- Balancing Interests: AI, Business & Human Rights, and the Legal Landscape in an Era of Disruption, 127 West Virginia Law Review 1 (2024) (with Ritu Narula).
- The Securities and Exchange Commission as Human Rights Enforcer?, 18 Virginia Law & Business Review 93 (2024) (with Rachel Chambers).
- “A Change Is Gonna Come”: Developing a Liability Framework for Social Media Algorithmic Amplification, 13 UC Irvine Law Review 155 (2023) (with Amy Cyphert).
- Reimagining Corporate Accountability: Moving Beyond Human Rights Due Diligence, 18 NYU Journal of Law & Business 773 (2022) (with Rachel Chambers).
- Reckoning: A Dialogue about Racism, Anti-Racists and Business and Human Rights, 30 Washington International Law Journal 171 (2021) (with Erika George and Tara Van Ho).
- UN Guiding Principle Number 8, in Research Handbook on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Edward Elgar, 2024).
- Corporations 101, in Teaching Business and Human Rights (Edward Elgar, 2023).
- United States: Potential Paths Forward After the Demise of the Alien Tort Statute, in Civil Remedies and Human Rights in Flux (Bloomsbury, 2022).
- The Use of Disclosure-Based Regulation to Advance the State’s Duty to Protect, in Research Handbook on Human Rights and Business (Edward Elgar, 2020).
- It’s Complicated: The Challenge of Prosecuting TNCs for Criminal Activity under International Law, 29 Ind. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 219 (2019).
- Easing “the Burden of the Brutalized”: Applying Bystander Intervention Training to Corporate Conduct, 68 Catholic U. L. Rev. 1 (2019) (lead article)
- Parallel Worlds: Comparing Rural Development to Development in Global Communities, 120 W.V.. L. Rev. Art. 18 (with Karon Powell) (2018).
- Hiding in the Light: The Misuse of Disclosure to Advance the Business and Human Rights Agenda, 56 Columbia Trans’l L. J. 530 (2018).
Bill Piatt, J.D.
Bill Piatt, J.D., Professor of Law
Piatt has written 10 books and dozens of articles on human rights, with a particular focus on the rights of Indigenous peoples, language rights, immigration and human trafficking. His scholarship was the first to address the legal position of non-federally recognized Indians, and his recent work examines the multi-generational harms of the trafficking and enslavement of Native women and children. He has taught in Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Spain as well as at the St. Mary’s Institute on World Legal Problems in Innsbruck, Austria.
Publications
- Indigenous Communities Suffer Multi-Generational Trauma (“SUSTO”) from the Trafficking and Slavery of Native Women and Children 27 The Scholar 1 (2025) (with Karagan Carson, Meghan Monahan and Makayla Perez).
- Respecting the Identity and Dignity of All Indigenous Americans, 6 Howard Human & Civil Rights Law Review 83 (2021).
- Slavery in the Southwest: Genizaro Identity, Dignity and the Law (with Moises Gonzales, Carolina Academic Press, 2019).
Erica Schommer, J.D.
Erica Schommer, J.D., Clinical Professor of Law and the South Texas Professor of Law, teaches in the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic, where students represent clients in removal proceedings and asylum claims.
She began her career on the U.S.-Mexico border with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, leading its anti-trafficking team and directing the legal orientation program at the Willacy Detention Center. She has worked on human rights issues in Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
She writes and speaks on asylum policy, detention and the treatment of migrants at the border. She has taught short courses at Mexico’s Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, co-taught a comparative refugee law class with colleagues from Mexican universities, and at the St. Mary’s Institute on World Legal Problems in Innsbruck, Austria.
Publications
- Migración. Una perspectiva binacional: México y Estados Unidos (tirant humanidades, 2025 (Co-Coordinator with Alejandro Zeind Chavez, Antonio Zeind Chavez, and Jennifer Stevenson).
Amanda Stephens, J.D., Ph.D.
Amanda Stephens, J.D., Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, researches the domestic life of international human rights treaties: what actually happens once a state ratifies.
A former Fulbright-Nehru research fellow in India, her recent work traces how Indian courts have applied the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and compares the pathways by which the Women’s Treaty has — and has not — produced gender equality reform in Canada and India.
Publications
- Judicial Homophobia, Lesbianism, and the Future of Transgender Children’s Right to Gender-affirming Care, 33 William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, & Soc. Justice __ (forthcoming 2027).
- Already Binding? Rethinking America’s Obligation to Follow CEDAW through the Customary International Law Lens, 49 U. Hawaii L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2027).
- Is the Women’s Treaty a Paper Tiger? Indian Courts’ Application of the United Nations Treaty, 55 U. Memphis L. Rev. 189 (2025).
- A Model for Understanding CEDAW’s Impact on Implementing Gender Equality Reforms: Lessons from Canada and India, 72 Cleveland State L. Rev. 1027 (2024).
- On Women Professors Who Teach Legal Writing: Addressing Stigma and Women’s Health, 48 Vermont L. Rev. 237 (2023) (Co-authored).
Aaron Tyler, Ph.D.
Aaron Tyler, Ph.D., Professor of International Relations, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
As a field expert in conflict transformation and professor of International Relations and Global Affairs at St. Mary’s University, Tyler collaborates with partners around the world to train and consult with organizations and community leaders experiencing debilitating conflict. His research focuses on breaking cycles of group conflict and the sustainable work of collaborative engagement. He also writes and speaks widely on intercultural leadership and dialogue. Tyler routinely teaches for St. Mary’s Law.
Tara Van Ho, J.D., Ph.D.
Tara Van Ho, J.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Law
Van Ho is an internationally recognized expert in public international law, business and human rights, and international investment law. Her research asks how the law facilitates abuse in these contexts and what reforms would prevent business involvement in human rights and humanitarian law violations. Her work has been relied upon by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, U.N. Working Group on Business and Human Rights, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Palestine, and several other special procedure mandate holders.
Publications
- Trump’s Lawlessness and the International Legal Obligation to Restrict Arms Transfers to the United States, 36 Minnesota J. Int’l L. (2026).
- Enforcing International Humanitarian Law Through the Business Responsibility to Respect Human Rights, 9 Cardozo Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 55 (2025).
- “Which Businesses Owe Reparations for Staying in Russia? A Policy Report on Business and Human Rights Responsibilities to Ukraine,” Essex Business & Human Rights Project (2025) (with Anil Yilmaz-Vastardis), https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/report-which-businesses-owe-reparations-for-staying-in-russia-a-policy-report-on-business-and-human-rights-responsibilities-to-ukraine/
- Addressing (In)Equality in Redress: Human Rights-Led Reform of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Mechanism, 24 J. World Investment & Trade 398 (2023) (with Surya Deva).
- Insolvency Law Through the Lens of Human Rights Theories, in Re-Examining Insolvency Law and Theory: Perspectives for the 21st Century (Edward Elgar, 2023) (with Eugenio Vaccari).
- Angels, Virgins, Demons, Whores: Moving Towards an Antiracist Praxis by Confronting Modern Investment Law Scholarship, 23 J. World Investment & Trade 347 (2022).
- Defining the Relationships: “Cause, Contribute, and Directly Linked to” in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, 43 Hum. Rts. Q. 625 (2021).
- Cancelling Schmitt, 32 European Journal of International Law 730 (2021).
- Obligations of International Assistance and Cooperation in the Context of Investment Law, in Routledge Handbook on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations 325 (Routledge, 2021).
- Reckoning: A Dialogue about Racism, Anti-Racists and Business and Human Rights, 30 Washington Int’l L. J. 171 (2021) (with Erika George and Jena Martin).
- When Business Harms Human Rights: Affected Communities That Are Dying to Be Heard (Anthem Press, 2020) (co-edited with Jena Martin and Karen Bravo).
- Business and Human Rights in Transitional Justice, in Research Handbook on Business and Human Rights 379 (Edward Elgar, 2020).
- Assessing the Duty of Care for Social Auditors, 27 European Rev. Private L. 379-401 (2019) (with Carolijn Terwindt).
- The Duty to Prosecute and the Role of Victims’ Rights, in Beyond the Binary: Securing Peace and Promoting Justice after Conflict (Camilo Sanchez & Rodrigo Uprimny, eds.) 130-152 (Dejustica, 2019).
- Problems with Applying the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to the Mutual Fund Industry, 18 Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 1-29 (2018) (with Mohammed AlShaleel).
- ‘Band-Aids Don’t Fix Bullet Holes’: In Defense of a Traditional State-Centric Approach, in The Future of Business and Human Rights: Theoretical Challenges for a UN Treaty” (Nicolás Carillo-Santarelli and Jernej Letnar Černič, eds.) 111-138 (Intersertia, 2018).
-
International Programs
International law is not an abstraction at the St. Mary’s University School of Law. Most faculty at St. Mary’s Law have taught a course on international law through one of our long-standing programs. Students at St. Mary’s Law learn international law from people who have both written the scholarship and done the work.
-
Questions? Contact Us.
St. Mary’s Law Admissions Office