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Dear Members, Wow! This has been a very special month. It began with the news that our membership has surged to more than 18,500. We had been bragging about having reached 16,000 strong in August at the beginning of this ABA year. The new total represents an increase of more than 15% in the first two months alone of the current year. Clearly, our outreach to the next generation of international lawyers is paying real dividends. In 2007, we have sponsored more than 25 Pathways to Employment in International Law programs at law schools across the United States — in addition to our first outside the United States at the London Fall Meeting. To date, these inspirational programs have reached more than 1,500 law students and young lawyers. I encourage you to share your international career experience at a Pathways event near you. For more details, contact the Section's Membership Director, Angela Benson, at bensona@staff.abanet.org. The message also seems finally to be getting out that you do not have to be a U.S. qualified lawyer to be a member or even an officer of our Section. Our other fast growing category of membership — non-U.S. and U.S. qualified lawyers outside the United States — now accounts for more than 20% of our total lawyer membership. Speaking of impressive numbers, our London seasonal meeting earlier this month and the Oxford, Dublin, and Brussels modules that preceded it attracted more than 1,000 lawyers in the aggregate, making that gathering our largest ever Fall Meeting — and our first ever Autumn (as our friends in Europe were wont to call it) Meeting. Special thanks and congratulations to our program co-chairs Adam Farlow, Bart Legum, and the Rt. Hon. Lord David Hacking (London), Ved Nanda (Oxford), Mike Burke (Dublin), and Chair-Elect Aaron Schildhaus (Brussels) and to the steering and planning committees with whom they worked for their tireless efforts over many months and the sensational resulting events, which Section members will be talking about for a very long time. For a collection of Fall Meeting photographs, go here. Having confessed in the previous E-Update to my remorse for missing the Woodstock Festival in the summer of '69, I was delighted to be, this time, at a very right place — ABA International's Fall/Autumn Meeting '07 — a festival of a different sort, full of legal talent and complete with a rock star of its own! Watch this web page for a link that will enable you to view our Council member Jonathan Granoff's stirring dialogue at the Fall Meeting with Bob Geldof KBE on "Celebrity and Social Responsibility" and with special guest and Nobel laureate Mairéad Corrigan-Maguire. We are especially grateful that The Boomtown Rats singer/songwriter and champion in the fight against poverty in Africa chose to spend a large part of his birthday with us. We hope that he enjoyed possibly the largest ever chorus of lawyers singing Happy Birthday! And, last week, it was another 1,000+ audience — on this occasion at multiple sites at law firms and law faculties in Europe, Canada, Latin American, and across the United States (as well as delayed webcasts to Asia and Australia) — when the Section co-hosted with the Securities and Exchange Commission the 8th broadcast of "Live from the SEC", an interactive video conference linking the SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., with practitioners around the world. "Live from the SEC" is now an annual fixture on the SEC's calendar and a principal means for disseminating information to lawyers who appear before the SEC about the Commission's activities relating to international securities law issues. A busy month with a great many lawyers working collectively to achieve what none of us could individually. However, it is not just the number of participants that we should take pride in and celebrate so much as our Section continuing to build on its special reputation for: International Law, World Class. Jeffrey B. Golden, Section Chair
The Section Council met on October 6 in conjunction with the Fall Meeting. Click here to read updates on recent ABA lobbying efforts that the Section Council received.
Section Chair Jeff Golden addressed the Council of the International Association of Young Lawyers (Association Internationale des Jeuenes Avocats, AIJA) at its 45th Annual Congress, which took place in Toronto, Canada, August 21-25. The Section also hosted two sessions, Current Views of NAFTA: Big Deal or Big Bust?, moderated by Peter Ehrenhaft, and Immigration Issues in Transnational Employment of Professionals, Including Legal Service Providers, moderated by Gabrielle Buckley. Section Chair Jeff Golden also represented the Section in meetings in New York on September 25 with a Nordic human rights delegation. The delegation included representatives from the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the Icelandic Human Rights Centre, the Institute for Human Rights in Finland, the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. Past Section Chair Michael Byowitz hosted the meetings, and Penny Wakefield, Co-Chair of the Section's International Human Rights Committee, outlined for the visiting delegation the Section's considerable human rights-related activities. On September 7 the Section welcomed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and his wife to France with a breakfast meeting hosted by the U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton and his wife in the historic reception rooms of the Ambassador's residence in Paris. The Section members in attendance brought with them, at Justice Kennedy's request, younger associates from their firms, giving both Justice Kennedy and the Section the opportunity to reach out to a younger demographic and potential new Section members, and bringing attendance at the breakfast to the registration limit of 40 people. Justice Kennedy spoke for an hour on the subject "Europe and America Seek the Rule of Law," took questions from the attendees, and thanked the Section for being able to organize the meeting with Paris-based members. On October 16, the ABA hosted more than 100 international lawyers for a welcome breakfast at the International Bar Association (IBA) annual meeting in Singapore. The event included a panel presentation on Rule of Law topics, moderated by Past Section Chair Ken Reisenfeld, who serves as the ABA and Section Liaison to the IBA, and featured presentations by ABA President Bill Neukom, IBA President Fernando Pombo, Section Chair Jeff Golden, Past Section Chair Homer Moyer and Secretary/Operations Officer Gabrielle Buckley. 
ABA INTERNATIONAL CALENDAR For updates on programming and events, visit our Section calendar on-line at www.abanet.org/intlaw/calendar. April 1-5, 2008 August 8-10, 2008 September 24-27, 2008
UIA 51st Paris Congress, October 31 – November 4, 2007 North American Rounds of the International Environmental Moot Court Competition, November 7-8, 2007 Click here for a full list of ABA International Co-Sponsored Programs www.abanet.org/intlaw/calendar/programs_interest.html
ABA International hosts CLE teleconferences every month. We need your suggestions and ideas for future events. For more information about the Section’s CLE teleconference program, please contact Tally White at whitet@staff.abanet.org or by phone at +1 (202) 662-1672. Mark your calendars for these upcoming teleconference programs: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Pathways events bring experienced international lawyers together with law students and young lawyers to share career paths and options. We encourage members to join Pathways panels at their local law schools. November events include:
Contact Membership Director Angela Benson at bensona@staff.abanet.org and learn how to participate in or host a Pathways program. 
Membership in the Section of International Law is at an all time high with over 18,500 members, including lawyers in the U.S., lawyers from other countries, judges, professors, and law students. This year the Section of International Law has taken the step to offer FREE membership in the Section to law students. There is a special student headquarters on the ABA Section of International Law website offering everything from a mentorship program to information about Pathways programs on careers in international law and a way to apply for international internships. Please check the Section's website for upcoming Pathways programs. 
The Addendum to the 2007-2008 Leadership Directory has been added to the Section web site and is available here. Please send future updates for the Addendum to intlaw@staff.abanet.org and provide the following information:
News from the Law of the Sea Committee: Law of the Sea Treaty Developments The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee held two hearings, one for government witnesses and a second of two outside panels, for and against. Unlike the hearings in 2003, when the Committee reported the treaty to the floor unanimously (and then Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist declined to put it on the vote calendar), it appears that this time the Committee vote will not be unanimous. This is a very anodyne statement about one of the most virulent campaigns ever against a treaty with virtually universal bipartisan support. Once again, the longtime support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chiefs of Naval Operations, of all the former Secretaries of State, and of the relevant industries (oil, cable, fishing) and environmental groups seemed unavailing against a campaign of fear that U.S. sovereignty is somehow in jeopardy. ABA President Bill Neukom submitted a statement for the hearing record. While there are likely sufficient votes to ratify the treaty if it comes to a vote, the action will be in various delaying tactics in the Senate. What happens next is unclear. The Foreign Relations Committee has yet to have its business meeting to mark up an advice and consent resolution. New on the horizon are extended Continental Shelf claims in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, beyond 200 miles. Claims of that nature are to be referred to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf of the LOS treaty for approval or review of conflicting claims. The vast mineral resources at stake here may focus the attention of the Senate on the looming importance of being party to this Treaty, and a member of that Commission.
ABA INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE HOME PAGES Check out all of our committee home pages — not only will you find more content, you’ll find updated leadership rosters have already been posted. Recently updated home pages of particular interest include: Islamic Law Forum
ABA International offers no less than 21 substantive newsletters. Links to the most recent edition of several newsletters are set forth below: Newsletter of the International Mergers & Acquisitions Committee: Sept. 2007 If you wish to join a committee, you can do so on-line. To be active and get on the more limited steering group listserve, you will also find the proper coordinates on-line.  International Practitioner's Deskbook Series: Labor and Employment Law in the New EU Member and Candidate States By Anders Etgen Reitz Click here to buy this book online. |
