Call for Papers Announcement

AALS Section on International Human Rights

Topic: Human Rights in Times of Conflict: New Voices in Human Rights

2013 AALS Annual Meeting

January 4-7, 2013

New Orleans, Louisiana

The AALS Section on International Human Rights is pleased to announce that it will sponsor a Call for Papers for its program during the AALS 2013 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA on Human Rights in Times of Conflict: New Voices in Human Rights.

The section program will be on Sunday, January 6, 2012, from 8:30 to 10:15 a.m. Here is the program description:

The first casualty of war may be truth, but the overwhelming majority of its victims are civilianswho have nothing to do with the conflict.They are victims not only of war itself -- strategic bombings, terrorist attacks, accidents, famine and disease. Tens of millions more have died in the past century from intentional policies directed at civilians, often by their own governments – genocide, forced pregnancy, sterilization, enslavement, ethnic cleansing, and torture. And then there are the refugees and internally displaced persons, forced from their homes, trapped in squalor, and destabilizing international relations in Africa, Asia, and the Near East. The Geneva and Hague conventions on the law of armed conflict go only so far in protecting noncombatants, and some argue that they displace international human rights law when they do apply. This panel will examine the role of law – especially international human rights law, international criminal law, and international humanitarian law – in protecting civilians in times of armed conflict.

Once again, New Voices in Human Rights offers newcomers – to the academy, to AALS, to human rights – an opportunity to present their cutting-edge scholarship to what we hope will be an active and responsive audience. Diane Marie Amann of the University of Georgia School of Law will serve as commentator.

Form and length of submission

Presentations at various stages of completion will be considered. A key consideration will be a proposal’s suitability for a 12-to-15-minute presentation (to be determined) and its relationship to other presentations on the panel.

Publication

Papers may have already been accepted for publication but must not be published prior to the Annual Meeting. The section has no plans to publish the papers, so individual presenters should continue to seek their own publishers.

Deadline and submission

The absolute, drop-dead, final deadline to submit a paper is September 4, 2012. Please email submissions, in Word or PDF format, to Bill Dunlap at with AALS in the subject line.

Presentations at various stages of completion will be considered. The selection process has become increasingly competitive over the years, with the number of submissions exceeding what can be accommodated during the program. The Executive Board of the AALS International Human Rights Section will review the submissions and make determinations in late September.

Eligibility

Under AALS rules, only full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school) and adjunct faculty members; graduate students; fellows; and non-law school faculty members are not eligible to submit. Faculty members at fee-paid non-member schools are also ineligible.

Under section rules, the program is a venue for “new voices in human rights.” You are eligible to be a “new voice” if you are submitting a paper in international human rights law and practice for the first time at an AALS conference; you do not necessarily need to be new to academia or new to human rights.

Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Inquiries

Any inquiries about the Call for Papers should be submitted Bill Dunlap at Quinnipiac University, 203-582-3265, .