Global Leadership Roles
Texas A&M Law Faculty Take Leadership Positions in Major International Law Associations
Professor Irene Calboli’s election to the International Law Association’s Committee on Participation in Global Cultural Heritage Governance brings the Texas A&M University School of Law faculty another prestigious position in important international law associations.
The
International Law Association (ILA) was founded in 1873 and is one of the world’s oldest organizations dedicated to the study of international law. Its objectives, under its constitution, are "the study, clarification and development of international law, both public and private, and the furtherance of international understanding and respect for international law". The ILA works through a series of national branches in which a number of Texas A&M School of Law faculty are active members including
Peter Yu who also serves in the important position of Co-Director of Studies for the
American Branch of the ILA.
The ILA’s chosen method for meeting its objectives is to form committees made up of members from the national branches to examine particular subjects or issues of international law. The Committee on Participation in Global Cultural Heritage is one such committee.
Professor Charlotte Ku’s election in 2017 to the Board of Directors and designation as vice chair in 2018 of the
Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) marks a return for Professor Ku to the leadership of ACUNS. She served as Chair of the ACUNS Board of Directors from 1998-2000. ACUNS is a global professional association that promotes teaching and dialogue on United Nations, multilateral relations, global governance, and international cooperation.
Professor Ku was
elected to the Board of Directors of the
American Branch of the International Law Association in 2020.
Professor Ku brought to the Texas A&M University School of Law a long record of leadership in international law associations including serving as the Acting Director of the
Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge and a twelve year tenure as the Executive Vice President and Executive Director of the
American Society of International Law.
Professor Gabriel Eckstein currently serves on the Executive Council of the
International Association for Water Law. Known as AIDA (from its Spanish acronym), the Association is a global professional membership association founded in 1967 “to foster the evolution, study, understanding and application of water law, national and international, with a view to raising awareness, and the knowledge and practice, of this field of the law of natural resources’. The Association enjoys consultative status with various international bodies, including the United Nations’ ECOSOC, UNESCO, and UNFAO, as well as with the World Bank.
During 2016-2017, Professor Eckstein served as the
Chair of the XVI World Water Congress, organized by the
International Water Resources Association (IWRA) in Cancun, Mexico, May 26 – June 2, 2017. The triennial event, which has been held at least once on every inhabited continent since 1973, provides a meeting place to share experiences, promote discussion, and to present new knowledge, research results and new developments in the field of water sciences and policy around the world. Over the last 35 years, these Congress have served as both sounding boards and spring boards for major regional and global water-related initiatives. One of the chief outcomes of the XVI Congress was the
Cancun Declaration – A Call for Action to Bridge Science and Water Policy-Making for Sustainable Development.
Professor Eckstein has recently been
elected president of the IWRA; his three-year term starts in 2019. From 2010 – 2015, he served on the Executive Board of IWRA as its treasurer. IWRA is a global professional membership association whose purpose is “to improve and expand the understanding of water issues through education, research and information exchange among countries and across disciplines”. It provides a global, knowledge based forum for bridging disciplines and geographies by connecting professionals, students, individuals, corporations and institutions who are concerned with the sustainable use of the world’s water resources.
In February 2017, while a
delegate to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Seminar on the Human Right to Water, which was held at the Vatican, Professor Eckstein had the distinct honor of meeting Pope Francis. Eckstein was one of two legal experts invited to the event to help place the themes, comments and objectives in a legal framework and work together with the theological, technological, economic, social and other approaches for realizing the human right to water. The seminar concluded with the Pope delivering and the delegates signing the
Rome Declaration on the Human Right to Water, which raises the visibility of water scarcity and water poverty on a global level.
Professor Peter Yu's election as a Vice President of the
American Branch of the International Law Association in 2020 enables him to assume a more active leadership role in a prestigious organization whose board (previously executive committee) he has served on for more than a decade.
He was appointed as the Co-Director of Studies in 2017 and currently co-chairs the Branch's
Committee on International Intellectual Property and remains one of the few U.S. international law professors who has the distinction of co-chairing the annual branch meeting twice—in 2006 and 2016.
At the international level, Professor Yu is one of the four U.S. delegates elected to the
International Law Association’s Committee on Intellectual Property and Private International Law.
He also sits on the executive committee of the
International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP). Elected in June 2013, he will complete his third and final term in 2019.
In March 2017, he was appointed to the external advisory board of the
EIPIN Innovation Society, the European joint doctoral program funded by the European Commission. In addition to Yu, this prestigious five-member advisory board includes a former justice of the Supreme Court of Ireland and three leading intellectual property academics in Europe.