Since its founding in 2002, the Institute for International Law and Public Policy has set the pace for Temple Law’s rise as a global leader in the study of international law. Under current co-directors Margaret M. deGuzman and Peter J. Spiro, and with the energetic support of a strong core of Affiliated Faculty, the Institute sponsors an ambitious menu of activities. The Institute has been a core element of the rich international programs at Temple Law.
The Institute hosts a broad range of conferences, roundtables, seminars, lectures, and other programs for scholars, policymakers, and students. Participants include international law leaders from top academic institutions and government agencies. The Institute sponsors the International Law Colloquium, in which scholars from other institutions present scholarly works-in-progress on cutting edge issues of international law as part of a for-credit curricular offering. The Institute directors are assisted by student fellows competitively selected for their international law interest and experience.
Institute events are designed to support and enrich an intellectually vibrant community of students and faculty interested in international and comparative law issues at Temple University Beasley School of Law.
Institute Directors
Professor of Law
Co-Director, Institute for International Law and Public Policy
Judge of the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals
Professor Margaret M. deGuzman is James E. Beasley Professor of Law at Temple Law School and and a judge of the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. She specializes in criminal law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and transitional justice. Her scholarship focuses on the role of international criminal law in the global legal order, with a particular emphasis on the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Her recent publications have addressed such issues as how the concept of gravity of crimes affects the legitimacy of international criminal law, the relationship between international criminal law and the responsibility to protect doctrine, proportionate international sentencing, and the selection of cases and situations for ICC investigation and prosecution. She is currently participating in an international expert group studying the proposed addition of criminal jurisdiction to the mandate of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and in a project studying the impact of the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Courts of Senegal on national, regional, and global justice norms.
Before joining the Temple Law faculty, Professor deGuzman clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced law in San Francisco for six years, specializing in criminal defense. Professor deGuzman also served as a legal advisor to the Senegal delegation at the Rome Conference where the ICC was created and as a law clerk in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Darou N’diar, Senegal.
Charles Weiner Professor of Law
Co-Director, Institute for International Law and Public Policy
Peter J. Spiro holds the Charles Weiner Chair in international law. Before joining Temple’s faculty in 2006, Professor Spiro was Rusk Professor of Law at the University of Georgia Law School. A former law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, Spiro specializes in international, immigration, and constitutional law. Spiro is the author of Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization (Oxford University Press 2008), At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship (NYU Press 2016), and Citizenship: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2019).
Spiro has contributed commentary to such publications as Slate, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, and is frequently quoted in the media on international and immigration law issues. In addition to his 1990-91 Supreme Court clerkship, Spiro served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also served as director for democracy on the staff of the National Security Council, as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser and as a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Spiro holds a B.A. from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.