On the same day panelists discuss the benefits and impacts of fracking at the American Bar Association’s Midyear Meeting in Dallas, the city plan commission there will rehear a contentious proposal that could open the way for gas companies to drill within city limits.

“Fracking is becoming increasingly controversial because the well sites are getting closer and closer to home,” said Terrence (Terry) S. Welch, a lawyer at Brown & Hofmeister, LLP and one of the industry experts on a panel at the Midyear Meeting that will explore the controversial oil and gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Welch, who has represented local governments for more than 30 years and, along with the other panelists is an author of a chapter in the forthcoming book Beyond the Fracking Wars: A Guide for Lawyers, Public Officials, Planners and Citizens, said the regulation of gas drilling has become increasingly political.

“When cities started addressing it, they were all over the place. Here in North Texas, some were supportive of gas drilling and you would find gas drilling 300 feet from a residence, which basically put it across the backyard fence. As the industry developed, more and more in this area of North Texas, there were a lot of concerns about the natural health effects of gas oil drilling,” Welch said.

Fracking has increased around the nation and the law regarding it is increasingly complicated, said Erica Levine Powers, a law professor at the University of Albany.

Powers, who is the moderator for the panel and editor of Beyond the Fracking Wars, said neither the session nor the book — which will be released this spring — is pro- or anti-fracking.  “We will explain, and the book explains, what the technology is, the regulatory background, and the concerns of those who care about the environmental constraints,” said Powers.

Powers explained that parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia sit atop the Marcellus Shale, which is a natural gas deposit that has attracted gas companies that wish to drill.  As Powers further explained, gas companies pump huge amounts of water, which is mixed with chemicals, into the shale at high pressure.  This causes the shale around the well to fracture and the natural gas is then able to flow. “People refer to fracking as a shorthand for everything that happens in the lifecycle of the well,” Powers added.

Because Texas has a long history with the oil industry, it is surprising that the potential for gas drilling did not appear in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area until 15 years ago, Welch said.  “You would think there would be a lot of case law as to how cities can regulate gas drilling, but there was almost [none] in Texas on point at that time,” he said.

The impact on the surrounding environment and on the health of people living near wells are two of the concerns associated with gas drilling.  Other matters include around-the-clock operation, safety, noise, lights and the overall strain on a municipality.

“Sometimes you could have hundreds of 20-year-old men working on gas wells in a community,” Welch said. “In some instances, it creates all kinds of issues from alcohol, prostitution, to there not being enough restaurants, to even criminal activity. This could create a huge strain on resources and it causes a lot of emotions in communities.”

The biggest issue for the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, according to Welch, has centered on the proximity of gas drilling to people’s homes.  Opponents of fracking believe the process contaminates the soil and water, and poses air quality concerns. Some fear the chemicals used in the process can cause cancer.

The Section of State and Local Government Law will host the session, “Beyond the Fracking Wars,” on Thursday, Feb. 7.

CareerLine LIVE!
Thursday, Feb. 7, 5 p.m.

To help new lawyers or other legal professionals looking for work, the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division will debut its CareerLine LIVE! event at the ABA’s Midyear Meeting in Dallas. The program invites participants to ask their questions about résumés, job applications, networking and more via phone or social media from 5 to 7 p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 7.

“One of the greatest needs our young members have is for targeted career advice,” said Chris Rogers, chair of YLD. “We hope CareerLine LIVE! and future YLD events can give those new lawyers a way to feel connected and to get targeted, career-focused advice at a time when they truly need it.”

Although lawyers will take one-on-one calls, CareerLine LIVE! seeks to reach a much broader audience by tapping into young professionals’ online networks, like Facebook and Twitter.

The Twitter hashtag for the event will be #ABACareerLine.

As YLD membership director, Rachel Kopp recognizes that many of the legal profession’s newest members are facing unprecedented challenges in the job market. She said that YLD wanted to provide a “fresh twist” to the traditional résumé review. Participants that sought résumé advice were asked to email a Microsoft Word or PDF version of their résumé to the division after registering. Advisers will review them and be ready to offer specific counsel on how to best approach the job search.  Rogers said participants have already submitted 400 résumés.

“We hope that this unique initiative will allow our members to take advantage of the YLD’s many benefits and tap into its experienced leaders as a significant professional resource, even as they are just beginning their careers,” Kopp said.

Rogers said the YLD wants to engage the newest members and open the lines of communication.   Additionally, CareerLine LIVE! can “raise awareness among more senior ABA members about the need for experienced lawyers to welcome the newer members of our profession with — at the very least — an open door to offer career advice and suggestions for how to get started in our profession in this challenging environment.”

The event is free to all ABA members. The ABA Young Lawyers Division is the largest young lawyer organization in the world with 130,000 members and 300 affiliated groups. Individual membership is open to ABA members under 36 years old or admitted to practice for five years or less.

Audiences can follow the Feb. 7 event on Facebook and Twitter.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta joined First Lady Michelle Obama at the announcement of a report that aims to remove employment barriers for military spouses. (Dept. of Defense photo by Glenn Fawcett)

When First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled a report that offers suggestions for removing employment barriers for military spouses, she commended the American Bar Association’s efforts in the area.

The ABA House of Delegates, at the association’s Midyear Meeting Feb. 6, passed a resolution that encourages bar admission authorities to accommodate lawyers who must move frequently to other states because of their spouses’ deployments.

“We’re going to urge more national professional associations to follow the lead of the American Bar Association,” Obama said Feb. 15 at a Pentagon event to release the report she spearheaded with Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden.

As noted in a news story by the American Forces Press Service, the report was produced by the Defense and Treasury departments. It provides a “roadmap” states can use to streamline or expedite licensing procedures for spouses of newly deployed servicemembers in professions that require state licensing, such as teaching, nursing and law.

“We’re not asking any state to change their standards,” Obama said. “These state rules are important, and states have every right to set benchmarks…. But it’s also clear that this system poses very unique challenges for our military families.”

The ABA House of Delegates resolution urges bar admission authorities “to adopt rules, regulations and procedures that accommodate the unique needs of military spouse attorneys who move frequently in support of the nation’s defense,” including:

• Enacting “admission by endorsement” for military spouse attorneys;
• Reviewing bar application and admission procedures to ensure that they are not unduly burdensome to military spouse attorneys;
• Encouraging mentorship programs to connect military spouse attorneys with local members of the bar; and
• Offering reduced bar application and membership fees to military spouse attorneys who are new to the jurisdiction or who no longer reside in the jurisdiction but wish to retain bar membership.

“Through the adoption of this Resolution, the ABA articulates its support of military families within the profession by welcoming those attorneys relocating as a result of military orders, while at the same time maintaining a high standard of professionalism and proficiency,” the background report accompanying the new policy states.

Resources:

• ABA Policy 108 (adopted as revised) and background report urging bar admission authorities to accommodate military spouse attorneys who move frequently
• “First Lady, Panetta Unveil Effort to Aid Spouse Employment”
• Prepared remarks by the First Lady and Dr. Biden on military spouse licensing
• Video of Pentagon event on military spouse licensing
• ABA Home Front: Legal Resources for Military Families

The Standing Committee on Law and National Security sponsored the program, “Whither Cyberspace: Security, Privacy Rights, the Law and the Private Sector ,“ to discuss privacy issues and to understand cyber security in the 21^st century in light of recent government and private sector developments in new monitoring and security systems.

Panelists agreed that cyber security is a major challenge because corporations and individuals have not weighed the risks of an actual attack or how a security failure could affect their bottom line.

Baker said it is difficult to know how big the problem of security failures is because corporations generally withhold information about their computer systems being compromised.  Most businesses are either embarrassed or fear other companies will have a competitive advantage.

“Law firms are a prime target for cyber attacks,” added Baker.  A quick poll of the audience at the program revealed that nearly 100 percent of them believed that their law firm computer systems had been attacked.

Harriet P. Pearson, vice president, security counsel and chief privacy officer at IBM Corp., said that everyone needs to recognize there is an issue in securing information.  She suggests three starting points for any individual, firm or corporation:

• Risk Awareness: “Isolate your crown jewels or most sensitive matters and devote resources to protect them.”
• Ask yourself, “Do you have the right approach?  What is your plan if your system has been compromised?”)
• What is your plan of action to respond?

Vincent I. Polley, president of KnowConnect, PLCC, has been exploring security issues for nearly 20 years.  He said security concerns in a corporation have changed from employees making a mistake on the system or an insider threat, to corporations increasingly being vulnerable to advance persistent threats.  These are threats from groups or foreign governments designed to retrieve data for financial gain.

“The Sony attack may make it possible for people to understand there are dollars attached to risks,” said Judith Miller, former senior vice president and general counsel at Bechtel Group, Inc.

The Sony PlayStation hack, occurring in April 2011, is estimated at a $1.24 billion loss.

“No company can say ‘I can’t worry about losing money,’” Miller said.  “Because we don’t talk about this and prioritize the problem we have been stuck.”

“I had someone to say to me, ‘When you text, it’s gone.’  What?  You can’t count on communications disappearing,” Miller added.

When assessing an organization’s vulnerability, Baker said a good question to ask is, “Who is our adversary?”

Baker shared a scenario of a group capturing information to give to an opposing oil company in the hopes of outbidding the company on a contract.  Baker said, “There are sophisticated adversaries—you can’t afford that.”  He advised that a company decide what information it can’t afford to have in the hands of its adversary and to take precaution.

Panelists agreed that it may be difficult for small firms to incorporate technologies to ward off adversaries, but said that lawyers need to do all they can to help their corporate clients understand the risks.

Polley shared three tools that lawyers could use to help corporate clients:

• The book, Sailing in Dangerous Waters
• Study Sony’s $1.2 billion loss and the cost of other data breaches at the Ponemon Institute
• Securities and Exchange Commission (new disclosure requirements)

Harvey Rishikof, chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security said ABA President-Elect Laurel Bellows has made cyber security one of her key focus areas.

Heidi Nesbitt, director of Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indians and Alaskan Natives

When the Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indians and Alaska Natives started in 1967, its leaders could only locate 25 Native American attorneys in the country.  “That was out of 560 tribes,” says Heidi Nesbitt, PLSI director and the American Indian Law Center’s assistant director.

Today, the estimates for Native American attorneys are from 2,500 to 3,000 attorneys and nearly 1,000 of them have gone through the summer institute aimed at preparing American Indian and Alaska Native students for the “rigors of law school” by simulating the first semester of law school.

Nesbitt received the 2012 Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Award Feb. 3 during the ABA Midyear Meeting in New Orleans.  She urged lawyers to continue to support programs like PLSI because they are vital to create a more diverse profession reflective of the nation.

Sarah E. Redfield, professor at University of New Hampshire School of Law, receives the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from Michelle Gallardo, chair of the ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline

The award was conferred by the ABA Council for Racial & Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline and presented by the chair, Michelle Gallardo, who described PLSI’s nominating packet as the largest and most intriguing to read. “This program is part of history,” Gallardo said.

The Pre-Law Summer Institute, dubbed “boot camp,” by its former participants immerses undergraduate students in an eight-week program that teaches them how to conduct law school research, analysis, and how to write memorandums and briefs in addition to other case materials. “We teach skills that are required to study law,” Nesbitt added.

As a result, graduates of the program have gone on to graduate from the law schools at Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, among other prestigious institutions.  Alumni of the program include lawyers, judges, professors, deans and tribal chairs.

Click here for a video of Heidi Nesbitt’s comments.

As such, the panelists said, lawyers need to be aware of the concept and scope of ESI in order to represent their clients effectively and ethically.

What exactly is ESI? Anything that is stored in electronic form, including word processing documents, emails, text messages, Facebook pages, electronic photos, web pages, Internet activity and anything else that is produced and stored digitally, said John Simek, a computer forensics technologist from Fairfax, Va. Simek advises lawyers in the area and co-authored several related ABA books, including The Electronic Evidence and Discovery Handbook: Forms, Checklists and Guidelines.

According to course materials, one gigabyte of information (a basic iPad holds 16 gigabytes of storage) constitutes about 75,000 pages, or a full pick-up truck of documents.

So, when faced with a discovery request, lawyers from both sides of a dispute should consult as soon as possible to try to agree on limits of the amount of information to be sought and reviewed, lest the task gets unmanageable, said David Ries, a Pittsburgh lawyer who chairs his firm’s e-discovery and records management group.

David Degnan, a Scottsdale, Ariz., lawyer whose construction, insurance and government investigations practice often involves e-discovery and data management, added that it’s important for counsel to sample a large database to determine what’s truly relevant to the discovery request and, with agreement of the opposing party, narrow down the production accordingly.

Panelists pointed out that a crucial component of ESI is metadata, or “data about data.” Metadata—which has been called “the DNA of the electronic world”—is the identifying information that is imbedded in an electronic file such as a document, photo or email that isn’t readily visible but can still be accessed and be relevant to a case.

Ries said that metadata is therefore evidence and generally cannot be removed or altered when a client is facing or expects to face litigation.

Panelists discussed the seminal ruling in the Arizona case of Lake v. City of Phoenix, which held that the city was required to comply with an open records request by producing documents with the metadata intact.

ESI and ethics

While Simek, Ries and Degnan discussed client counseling and litigation aspects of ESI—including the value to organizations of consistent and clear records-retention policies—Muchman primarily covered the ethics aspects of handling ESI. She pointed out that lawyers have been disciplined for actions such as instructing a witness to delete incriminating photos on a client’s Facebook page.

Muchman also pointed out resources of the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center, including a list of state ethics opinions advising on how lawyers should handle metadata and avoid, among other things, violating client confidences by inadvertently releasing files with confidential metadata intact.

For more information about ESI, metadata and e-discovery, panelists recommended the online resources at craigball.com and The Sedona Conference.

With so much attention paid to the technological frontiers and related concerns of ESI, Simek said, lawyers still need to focus on another, old-fashioned form of documents.

“We still have to deal with paper on occasion as well,” he said. “I find a lot of cases where the attorneys get so fixated—everything electronic, everything electronic, that they forget that some things only exist in paper.”

Mark Moreau, co-executive director of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, said that on the heels of previous funding cuts, legal assistance programs nationwide are being forced to lay off at least 10 percent of their attorneys on staff during this fiscal year alone. Moreau further suggested that the forecast for legal aid funding is going to get worse, adding, “Funding is always a problem in public service law.”

“We [legal aid providers] live year to year and that’s unfortunate because the strength of any public interest program is the stability of core staff, and when people have to worry about their jobs, it isn’t good for the system,” he continued.

In addition to warning of the realities in the field of public interest law, panelists shared tips to help prospective public interest attorneys find employment in the new practice environment.

Due to the increased competition for public interest jobs, Margaret Kuklewicz, an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps legal fellow, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, urged law students to get involved with legal aid organizations in their community early on in their education and to stay involved throughout law school.

“I knew from the beginning I needed to get into every public interest program my law school had to offer,” said Kuklewicz. “I knew that people needed to know me in order to get a job.”

Davida Finger, assistant clinical professor, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, echoed Kuklewicz’s call for volunteerism.

“Volunteering at clinics is a meaningful way for law students to connect with public service work,” said Finger, who joined Loyola to work with what was formerly the Hurricane Katrina legal clinic and has worked extensively on disaster-related litigation and policy matters focusing on government accountability in rebuilding matters.

Finger also pointed out that volunteering can help people determine if they’re a right fit for the work.

Among other advice, Moreau suggested that there might be an opportunity for lawyers with a strong background in tax law to practice public interest law. “At a time where over half of legal services clients are working poor, a strong understanding in tax or welfare law is important,” he explained. Moreau, whose legal services program has a tax law project that saves their clients several million every year noted, “the movement has spread throughout legal aid and now more than half of programs in America do tax law.” Moreau elaborated these programs are “so important to so many clients who are working class poor.”

According to panelists, public interest law can be a welcome career change for some attorneys.

Jeff Yungman, director of Crisis Ministries’ Homeless Justice Project in South Carolina, decided to enroll in law school after being unsuccessful at recruiting lawyers to provide pro bono services for the residents of the Ministries. After more than 20 years in social work, he now provides civil legal services to homeless people in South Carolina—serving 483 people last year. “It’s a fun job, I love to do it, and I get satisfaction from helping people who are homeless,” he said.

When concerns were raised about starting salaries in public interest law, which re generally between $45,000 and $55,000, Finger said it is possible to live well and do public interest work. “You’re not going to get rich, but you can have everything you need to have a wonderful life and do what you want to do.”

The roundtable session was sponsored by the ABA Division for Public Services.

The Feb. 3 CLE program, sponsored by the Criminal Justice Section, the Commission on Homelessness and Poverty, and the Center for Racial and Ethnic Diversity, brought together experts from around the country to discuss best practices for diversion programs.

Pretrial release of a non-violent defendant costs the public about $3 a day, while incarceration costs about $100 a day, according to panelist Robert Weisengoff, director of Maryland Pretrial Release Services.

But cost isn’t the only factor driving the increasing use of pretrial release programs for non-violent defendants.  “People are far more likely to be found guilty if they are incarcerated,” Weisengoff said.  They are also likely to be disqualified from jobs and schools with a felony conviction.

Panelist Graymond F. Martin, the first assistant district attorney for the Orleans Parish in New Orleans, added, “It’s really important that we break a cycle of behavior, and incarceration does not appear to be a meaningful way to do that.”

Panelist Justice Bernette Joshua Johnson of the Louisiana Supreme Court noted several statistics that demonstrate how frequently incarceration is chosen over diversion and other pretrial release programs.

“We have the highest incarceration rate in the country….and for minor, non-violent charges, we jail people at a rate roughly three times the national average,” Johnson said. “The truth is they are going to come back to your community, and we have to think in terms of housing and employment opportunities to assist folks who are returning to the community.”

The Orleans Workforce Development Training and Re-entry Program, a joint effort between Orleans Parish District Court, the Louisiana Deprtment of Public Safety and Corrections, the Louisiana State Penitentiary and the Louisiana Workforce Commission, is a new and innovative model.

Participants receive vocational training in trades including plumbing, carpentry and graphic arts.  They can also receive money management advice, substance abuse counseling and job placement before release.  About 65 people are enrolled in the pilot program, said panelist Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr. of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.

“The more we incarcerate…the higher the crime rate tends to go,” said Martin.  “People have to hope, they have to believe, that if they go through this program their life will be better.”

The panelists discussed several obstacles, including program costs and political will.

“We shouldn’t be bragging about being tough on crime…but how safe we are,” said Martin.

“We have to have the leaders who have the strength and gumption to do the right thing,” Weisengoff agreed.  “Then we will have more time on our dockets and more room in our jails to deal with violent criminals.”

Peter J. Neeson

The American Bar Association Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) will honor Peter J. Neeson of Philadelphia with its James K. Carroll Leadership Award, which honors members who have shown outstanding leadership qualities and service to the section.

The award will be presented to Neeson Feb. 4 during the TIPS Joint Reception with the International Law Section and Judicial Division of the 2012 ABA Midyear Meeting.

“TIPS is honored to present Peter Neeson with its James K. Carroll Leadership Award,” said section chair Randy Aliment of Seattle. “Peter has shown outstanding leadership of and service to the section over many years.  Peter served as chair of the section and developed several unique and top-notch programs for TIPS members including the National Trial Academy and Leadership Academy. These are just a few of the valuable contributions he’s made to TIPS.”

Neeson is a partner with Rawle & Henderson LLP in Philadelphia, where he serves as chair of its Environmental, Toxic and Mass Torts Department. As a practicing trial attorney for 33 years, Neeson has been involved in the defense of numerous toxic tort matters in multi-district and class action cases in both state and federal courts, including formaldehyde, multiple chemical sensitivity, sick building, latex glove, benzene, underground storage tank, orthopedic bone screw, pharmaceutical and asbestos litigation including the defense of over 3,000 such cases against a major manufacturer. He has also participated in the defense of several generators in CERCLA superfund cases.  Neeson has been the national coordinating counsel for a major insurance carrier in the FRT litigation and has had national coordinator responsibilities in the asbestos, latex glove and the PPA pharmaceutical drug litigations.

Neeson has shown longtime support of and leadership within TIPS, having served as chair in 2006, chair-elect in 2005 and vice-chair in 2004. He also served as chair of the section’s Products, General Liability and Consumer Law Committee, served on the section’s council and spearheaded the development of the National Trial Academy in conjunction with the National Judicial College in Reno, Nev., which is widely recognized as the premier forum of its kind in which to train young lawyers how to try jury trials.

Neeson also founded the TIPS Leadership Academy, a diversity program designed to develop and train future community and bar leaders.

In addition to his ABA involvement, Neeson is a member of the Defense Research Institute, the Pennsylvania Defense Institute and a past member of the executive committee of the Philadelphia Association of the Defense Counsel.

Neeson earned his B.S. in Aero Space Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1970 and his J.D. from the University of Miami (cum laude) in 1978.  He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and New York.

Neeson has been rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell and was individually honored when he was selected by his peers in an extensive nomination and polling process conducted by Law & Politics as one of Pennsylvania’s Super Lawyers from 2004 through 2011.

He has also authored/edited various publications including his efforts as the editor and co-author of a 1995 ABA-TIPS book entitled the Reference Handbook on the Comprehensive General Liability Policy.

Neeson has served in other various leadership roles including vice chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee for Eastern Pennsylvania, current member of the board of directors of the Philadelphia Sports Congress, the city’s civic/business facilitator for the promotion and development of sporting events in the city, past president of the Philadelphia Amateur Sports Corporation, general counsel and a member of the Executive Committee for Philadelphia Women’s Basketball 2000, the local organizing committee for the NCAA Women’s Final Four basketball tournament and an Executive Committee Member for the 2003 U.S.G.A. Women’s Amateur Golf Championship held in Philadelphia.

More recently, he has been asked to serve as general counsel and chair of the board of the Biotech Foundation, an innovator of new vaccine and biofuels technology and as general counsel and a member of the board of trustees of Philadelphia 2016, Philadelphia’s effort to bid for the summer 2016 Olympics.

The ABA Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section unites plaintiff, defense, insurance, and corporate counsel to advance the civil justice system.  TIPS is a national source of expertise in tort, trial and insurance practice and brings lawyers together to share information and speak out on issues of importance.  The section has about 25,000 members and 32 general committees that focus on substantive and procedural matters in areas across the broad spectrum of civil law and practice.  For more information about the Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section visit the TIPS website, www.americanbar.org/tips.

With nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the world’s largest voluntary professional membership organization. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

Lawyer and documentary filmmaker Guy Jacobson spoke to Center for Human Rights members at the Midyear Meeting in Atlanta. Jacobson showed clips from his latest film -- which follows the plight of several current and former child sex slaves trying to regain entry into Cambodian society -- and discussed what lawyers can do to combat and defeat child exploitation and trafficking.

A worldwide network of countries and organizations could be the latest tool to improve prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities, according to the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights.

The Center’s co-chair, Walter White, explains the urgency of the Center’s work toward a mass atrocity prevention network, and why they must keep moving toward that goal.

“Days make a difference,” says White. “It could be thousands of lives lost every day. If [nation] states sit around for months to determine whether there is a problem – think of the cost.”

CHR director Michael Pates says that while the term “genocide” was established after the Holocaust to identify the worst possible kind of crime, the word’s definition in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide often has been used by governments “to explain why mass violence in their countries or others is not genocide,” and thereby avoid taking action to stop them.

White and Pates were recently in Paris for an international conference that brought together stakeholders in the human rights arena, for the purpose of developing a mass atrocity prevention network.  The Center for Human Rights, celebrating its 10^th anniversary this year, will help move this project forward from one stage to the next.

White said that one of the goals of this kind of network would be quick response. He noted that there are “…challenges that make it awkward for member states of the United Nations to develop rapid response in places where the fundamental indicators of potential genocide are beginning to display themselves.”

Among those challenges are perceptions of “meddling” in another country’s internal affairs in violation of its national sovereignty, explains Pates.  Some of the elements of a rapid response program would include:

1. How to identify and generate a response from non-government organizations, or pressure the local governments in a region, so that the identified potential mass atrocity does not proceed to the next level.
2. How to make the global community aware of what is happening in the identified region in question.
3. How to coordinate a response among the various organizations involved in the response network.
4. How to educate persons acting on behalf of various governmental bodies.

Pates believes that a prevention and rapid response network holds real promise.

“Ultimately, tyrants want to stay in power.  If there is a credible consequence to their use of mass violence, they will be less likely to use it,” said Pates.

CHR members are now working with various NGOs, state actors, the United Nations and both international and domestic bar associations to identify and coordinate strengths and skills that will best serve the prevention/response network.

In particular, CHR co-chair Michael Greco stressed the role that lawyers can play.

“We realized after the sacking of the judges in Pakistan [in 2007]…that the legal profession is not a separate profession in each country.  It’s a worldwide profession – a linked network of defenders of the justice system,” said Greco.

When it comes to human rights, he said, we are similarly “connected through humanity.  When one is harmed somewhere, we are all harmed.”