Whether you travel to France on an airplane, purchase clothing made in Cambodia, or place a phone call to someone overseas, you benefit from the workings of international law.
“I’d say virtually every person in the world – certainly every American – takes advantage of international law, though they probably don’t know it,” says William F. Starr Professor of Law Mark Janis, who specializes in international law and human rights law at UConn’s School of Law in Hartford. “Aviation agreements, trade agreements, telephone and postal communications – they’re all regulated by treaties.”
For Janis, teaching his students – most of whom will become practicing lawyers at corporations, law firms, and government agencies – means showing them the diverse approaches that different countries take to address issues regarding international transactions, and giving them insights and skills they will one day need to ask and answer the right questions.
“I view much of the job of international lawyering as being a bridge between two nations – not only between their laws, but their cultures, their politics, their economies,” he says. “If you’re going to be a person who guides a transaction, a company, a government across that bridge, it’s good not only to know what’s on your side of the bridge; you need to know what you’re going to find on the other side. The really effective international lawyers are the people who can guide you across that bridge to successful destinations.”
At the same time, Janis explains, much of international law requires extensive negotiation and compromise. “There are rarely answers that satisfy everyone, but there are answers that prove to be useful for most people most of the time,” he says.
Janis offers his own insights on various aspects of public and private international law as a member of the International Law Association (ILA)’s International Human Rights Committee, a group of representatives from around the world to which he was recently elected. Janis is one of just four American representatives serving on this international committee, which is tasked with examining and discussing the development of human rights law.
“Right now, this committee has as its objective the question about the way in which international human rights law is implemented domestically – that is, when international rules are used or not used within national legal systems,” says Janis, who will travel to The Hague, Netherlands, later this year for the ILA’s 74th biennial conference.
Studying and debating law in such a committee can be a drawn-out process, Janis admits. “It’s fair to say that work goes slowly when you’re talking to so many people coming from so many different national groups, trying to craft an agenda and deciding what you’re going to do to try to make a difference,” he says.
Yet he finds the process anything but discouraging. “There are smaller and larger accomplishments as you go along. As you participate in international relations, you realize how difficult and slow-grinding that process is,” he says. “Things sometimes don’t happen, but that doesn’t make them unimportant. You still have to work at it.”
Janis has authored more than 60 articles as well as several books on international law, including America and the Law of Nations, 1776-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2010), an intellectual history; a treatise entitled International Law (Aspen, fifth edition, 2008); and a casebook, International Law Cases and Commentary (written with co-author John Noyes, West, third edition, 2006). He also served on the editorial board of the Encyclopedia of Human Rights – a major five-volume set, roughly six years in the making – which recently received the prestigious Dartmouth Medal. The award recognizes the single most outstanding and significant reference work of the year.
Over the course of his 26 years at the UConn Law School, Janis has established a multifaceted international law program, which includes a wide range of courses focused on international and foreign law, a foreign exchange program, and a one-year master of laws degree program in U.S. Legal Studies available to international students. He also has set up the law school’s Human Rights and International Law Clinic, which offers students opportunities to conduct real-world legal work affecting the development of human rights and international law.
Such programs provide students at the School of Law with the experiences they need to be effective in the profession, says Janis, who calls himself a “big believer in international education.” Just as it is acceptable in some cultures and not others for one person to shake another’s hand or to call them by their first name, specific legal rules also vary from country to country and culture to culture.
“What you want to do as an international lawyer is make your client feel comfortable in that other culture,” Janis says. “You need to know enough to know what the right questions are.”
