February Seminar: Consul General of Japan Hiroshi Sato
Japan: Recovery Challenges and Opportunity
Friday, February 24, 2012
6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Belmont United Methodist Church
(Please check the bulletin board on the main floor for room number)
21st Avenue South and Acklen
The event is free and open to the public.
Consul General Hiroshi Sato will speak on Japan’s recovery from last year’s earthquake and tsunami as well as about other major issues facing Japan today.
Mr. Sato has been posted in Nashville since 2008. In this job, he serves Japanese visitors in five southeastern states, including Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee and works with Japanese cultural and business interests in the area.
Consul General Sato has been in the foreign service of Japan since 1973, including a posting in New York in the 1990s as First Secretary to the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations. In addition,he has represented Japan in diplomatic posts in the United States, China, Egypt, the Philippines, New Zealand and Malaysia.
Annual Spring Meeting and Dinner
Keynote Speaker: Vanderbilt Law Professor Michael Newton
International Tribunals: From Eichmann to Gaddafi
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Dinner: 6:00 p.m.
Meeting: 6:30 p.m.
Speaker: 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Community Center
Belmont United Methodist Church
21st Avenue South and Acklen
Reservations required
Details forthcoming
Professor Newton will address the “justice revolution,” tracing the changes in international criminal tribunals from the Nuremberg to today, in the context of the international political scene and the organizational evolution needed to support this revolution.
Biographical Data
Professor Newton is an expert on accountability and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 70 articles and book chapters, as well as opinion pieces for the New York Times, International Herald Tribune and other papers.
Professor Newton negotiated the Elements of Crimes document for the International Criminal Court, and coordinated the interface between the FBI and the ICTY while deploying into Kosovo to do the forensics fieldwork in support of the Milosevic indictment.
As the senior advisor to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department, Professor Newton implemented a wide range of policy positions related to the law of armed conflict, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide.
He was the senior member of the team that taught international law to the first group of Iraqis who began to think about accountability mechanisms and a constitutional structure in November 2000. He subsequently assisted in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal, and served as International Law Advisor to the Iraqi Judicial Chambers in 2006 and 2007. Professor Newton has taught Iraqi jurists on seven other occasions, both inside and outside Iraq and as part of the academic consortium he assists Vanderbilt students in providing substantive advice to the lawyers in Iraq.
He served as the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court, and was also a member of the Special Court academic consortium.
From January 1999 to August 2000, he served in the State Department’s Office of War Crimes Issues.
Professor Newton began his distinguished military career as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor, Fort Carson, Colorado, until his selection for the Judge Advocate General’s Funded Legal Education Program. As an operational military attorney, he served with the U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne), Fort Bragg, North Carolina in support of units participating in Desert Storm. Following duty as the chief of operational law, he served as the group judge advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).
He deployed on Operation Provide Comfort to assist Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq, as well as a number of other exercises and operations. From 1993-95 he was reassigned as the brigade judge advocate for the 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), during which time he organized and led the human rights and rules of engagement education for all Multinational Forces and International Police deploying into Haiti.
He subsequently was appointed as a professor of international and operational law at the Judge Advocate General’s School in Charlottesville, Virginia from 1996-99.
At Vanderbilt, he developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Law and develops externships and other educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues. He has supervised Vanderbilt law students working in support of the Public International Law Policy Group to advise the governments of Afghanistan, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Uganda and other nations.
Professor Newton currently serves on the executive council of the American Society of International Law (ASIL), and has previously served on its Task Force on US Policy Toward the International Criminal Court and on an experts group in support of the Task Force on Genocide Prevention established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
He currently serves as senior editor of the Terrorism International Case Law Reporter series published annually by Oxford University Press.
Books
Enemy of the State: The Trial and Execution of Saddam Hussein, St. Martin’s Press (Winner 2009 Book of the Year Award of the International Association of Penal Law, American National Section)
Terrorism International Case Law Reporter, Oxford University Press (2007-10, updated annually) (senior editor)