(L to R) Prof. Slomanson; Mrs. Oluyede; Ms. Turchi; Judge Hasani; Prof. Dr. Detter de Frankopan

On October 13, 2011, Robert J. Gaudet, Jr. and Ingrid Detter de Frankopan moderated panel discussions at the American Bar Association Section of International Law conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Prof. Detter de Frankopan moderated a panel on State Secession.  She played the role of UN Secretary General in seeking the advice of the other panelists on a hypothetical situation involving the secession of the southern Confederist States of the United States from the rest of the Union due to human rights violations including the banning of traditional Southern food, clothing, and customs.  The panelists engaged in a lively discussion of the issues of State Secession which are controversial topics that touch upon Kosovo, Taiwan, the Basque area of Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Chechnya, and other flash-points in the world.

The speakers from the State Secession panel included Prof. William Slomanson of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law; Dr. Enver Hasani, Judge of  the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kosovo; and Prof. Dr. Ingrid Detter de Frankopan.  The panel was organized by the American Bar Association SIL International Human Rights Committee, Co-Chaired by Mrs. Olufunmi Oluyede.  Mrs. Turchi in the photo above is Vice-Chair of the Committee and attended the State Secession panel.

Mr. Gaudet, who previously served as Co-Chair of the American Bar Association SIL International Human Rights Committee from 2009 to 2011, moderated a panel discussion titled “Gypsy Justice: the Plight of Roma, Irish Travellers, and Nomads.” The panelists included an actual Irish Traveller named Martin Collins who is associate director of Pavee Point Traveller’s Centre in Dublin; Prof. Anastasia Crickley of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, who is also a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; Idaver Memedov, a lawyer of Roma ethnicity who works on impact litigation at the European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest, Hungary; Siobhan Cummiskey, a lawyer at the Irish Traveller Movement Independent Law Centre who works on impact litigation in Ireland; and Marc Willers, an English Barrister who is a leading lawyer who represents the Roma and Irish Travellers and who was designated by the Council of Europe to speak on their behalf on the panel.

In the panel discussion, Mr. Gaudet role played as a Roma man from the Balkans who suffered from police brutality and then moved with his family to the Czech Republic where his children were put into segregated schools.  The facts of his role play were taken from real cases in national courts and the European Court of Human Rights.  In his role play, Mr. Gaudet asked the panelists to describe his legal rights and the situation of Roma and Irish Travellers.

Mr. Collins described his own experience, as an Irish Traveller, with unlawful arrest and police brutality.  Ms. Cummiskey described her legal advocacy on behalf of Irish Travellers who are evicted from the camp sites where they live on a temporary basis.  Mr. Willers described the Dale Farms case in the United Kingdom, where he serves as lead counsel on a case that is well-known on the streets of the U.K. and Ireland.