LEX LATA, LEX FERENDA
The law as it is, the law as it should be
Welcome to Lex lata, lex ferenda, the Harris Institute’s blog! It features commentary on issues of foreign affairs and international and comparative law, and serve as a resource to Washington University, St. Louis, and the larger regional, national and global community.
Our contributors are primarily Washington University School of Law faculty, students, alumni and staff. We also welcome postings and comments from our entire readership. Entries will be moderated by Harris Institute Director, Professor Leila Nadya Sadat, and Harris Institute Fellow, Madaline George.
You can subscribe to our blog here or simply add our site sites.law.wustl.edu/WashULaw/harris-lexlata/ to your “favorites” in your web browser.
We look forward to the opportunity to connect with you through this blog and read your comments and postings.
Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute
Founded in 2000, the Harris Institute is a center for instruction and research in international and comparative law at Washington University School of Law, a top law school at one of the finest research universities in the world. By drawing on a vast pool of international and national expertise, the Harris Institute fosters collaboration, continuous dialogue and exchange among scholars and practitioners engaged in international or comparative work.
In 2008, the Institute launched the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a rule of law project to study the need for a new global treaty on crimes against humanity and draft and promote such a convention. In 2011, the Initiative published the Proposed International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity which is now available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. For the text of the convention and other recent developments, click here.
Whitney R. Harris (1912 – 2010)
The namesake of the Institute, Whitney R. Harris served as Chief Trial Counsel to Justice Robert Jackson prosecuting the major German war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Mr. Harris kept the Nuremberg dream alive through his writings and his advocacy, and later through his philanthropic generosity. In 2001, he endowed the Institute for Global Legal Studies at the Washington University School of Law. In 2008 he and his wife Anna Harris endowed the Institute’s World Peace Through Law Award at a ceremony during which the Harris Institute’s name was changed to the “Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute,” the name it bears today. More