A Festschrift for Michael Reisman

They’re not calling it that, but on April 24, 2009, Yale Law School is sponsoring a conference, Realistic Idealism in International Law, in honor of international law-giant W. Michael Reisman.  Here’s an excerpt from the conference announcement:

Professor Reisman is the Myres S. McDougal Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, where he has been on the faculty since 1965. He has been a visiting professor in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Berlin, Basel, Paris, and Geneva. He is a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a former member of its Executive Council. From 1992-1995, he served as a member and subsequently chairman of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He is the President of the Arbitration Tribunal of the Bank for International Settlements and has been elected to the Institut de Droit International. In addition to being a world-renowned scholar, Professor Reisman is an active practitioner, serving as an arbitrator in countless public international and investor-state arbitrations and as counsel in other arbitrations and in cases before the International Court of Justice.

Professor Reisman has published widely in the area of international law and jurisprudence. His publications include hundreds of articles and more than twenty books, the most recent of which are Foreign Investment Disputes: Cases, Materials and Commentary (with Bishop and Crawford); and International Law in Contemporary Perspective (with Arsanjani, Wiessner and Westerman). .  . The panel discussions are free and open to the public. For further information about the program, please see the conference agenda . . . .

Scheduled speakers include Yale Law Dean Harold Koh and ICJ President Rosalyn Higgins (who will both deliver keynote addresses) as well as former ECHR President Luzius Wildhaber, Richard Falk, and Jan Paulsson, among others.  The panel topics include jurisprudence, use of force, trade and investment, and human rights.  The conference is being organized by Prof. Jacob Cogan of International Law Reporter fame, Mahnoush H. Arsanjani, Director of the Codification Division in the U.N. Office of Legal Affairs, and Professors Robert D. Sloane and Siegfried Wiessner.  It’s quite a line-up and I, for one, hope it will become an actual festschrift with written contributions to accompany the day’s events.