Legal Advisor
International Committee of the Red Cross

Jamie Williamson serves as the Legal Advisor for the Washington Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada. In this capacity, he is responsible for legal support to the ICRC activities in the US and Canada, with particular focus on Guantanamo and military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.   

From 2005 until assuming his present functions, Jamie Williamson was the ICRC Regional Legal Advisor based in Pretoria, South Africa, and assisted Governments and international organisations in the implementation of International Humanitarian Law in Southern & Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.  

Jamie Williamson also has extensive experience in the field of international criminal justice, having worked with the UN ad hoc international criminal tribunals from 1996 in Tanzania and the Netherlands, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. From 2002, Jamie Williamson headed the Chambers legal support section of the ICTR Appeals Chamber based in The Hague. He has published numerous papers on repression of war crimes, and international justice.

Professor of Law
American University Washington College of Law
Co-Director
Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
Faculty Director
The War Crimes Research Office

Robert K. Goldman is Louis C. James Scholar; co-director, Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law; faculty director, the War Crimes Research Office; and professor of law. He holds expertise in international and human rights law; U.S. foreign policy; terrorism; and law of armed conflict. From 1996 to 2004 he was a member of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and its president in 1999. From July 2004 to July 2005, Goldman was the UN Human Rights Commission's Independent Expert on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. In October 2005, the International Commission of Jurists named him one of the eight jurists on the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights. In 2008, Goldman was elected Commissioner and member of the Executive Committee of the International Commission of Jurists. He is author of The Protection of Human Rights: Past, Present and Future (1972); coauthor of Middle East Watch's book, Needless Deaths in the Gulf War, a 1991 publication that assessed civilian casualties during the 39-day air campaign and assigned responsibility for violations of the laws of war; and coauthor of The International Dimension of Human Rights: A Guide For Application in Domestic Law (2001). He is also the author of scores of reports, papers and articles on human rights and humanitarian law related issues.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Relief
Department of Defense

Rosa Brooks serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Rule of Law and International Humanitarian Policy and as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. She is currently on a public service leave from her position as a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she specializes in international law.

Ms. Brooks has had a varied career in government, academia, the media and the NGO world. From 2005 to March 2009, she was a foreign policy columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Ms. Brooks has also served as Special Counsel to the President of the Open Society Institute, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law; Senior Advisor at the US Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, a lecturer at Yale Law School, a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow at the Carr Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Over the years, her work has brought her to more than thirty countries, from Indonesia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Russia to China, India, Iraq and Afghanistan. She has also served on numerous boards and advisory groups, including the Board of Directors of the National Security Network, the steering committee ofthe White Oak Foreign Policy Leaders' Project, the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, the board of directors of Amnesty International USA, and the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.

Brooks has published numerous scholarly articles on international law, state failure, post­ conflict reconstruction and the rule of law, terrorism and the law of armed conflict with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman, she is the co-author of "Can Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions" (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Brooks received her A.B. from Harvard, followed by a master's degree from Oxford (where she was a Marshall Scholar)
and a law degree from Yale.

Partner
Arnold and Porter LLP

John B. Bellinger III is a partner in the international and national security practices of Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, DC.  He advises sovereign governments and companies on a variety of international law and U.S. national security law issues.  He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Bellinger served as The Legal Adviser for the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from April 2005 to January 2009.  He previously managed Secretary Rice’s Senate confirmation and co-directed her State Department transition team.  Mr. Bellinger served from February 2001 to January 2005 as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House, where he was Dr. Rice’s principal lawyer when she was National Security Adviser.  He previously served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department during the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), as Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (1996), and as Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster (1988-1991).  

Mr. Bellinger received his A.B. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1982, his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986 , and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1991.  He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Society of International Law, the American Council on Germany, and the American Law Institute.  He is also one of four U.S. members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague.

International Legal Director
Human Rights First

As the International Legal Director of Human Rights First, Gabor Rona advises Human Rights First programs on questions of international law and coordinates international human rights litigation. He also represents Human Rights First with governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, the media and the public on matters of international human rights and international humanitarian law (the law of armed conflict).

Before coming to Human Rights First, Gabor was a Legal Advisor in the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. At the ICRC he focused on the application of international humanitarian and human rights law in the context of counter-terrorism policies and practices. He represented the ICRC in intergovernmental, nongovernmental, academic and public forums and his articles on the topic have appeared in the Financial Times, the Fletcher Forum on World Affairs and the Chicago Journal of International Law, among other publications. In addition, he represented the ICRC in connection with the establishment of international and other criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court. He has also taught international humanitarian law and international criminal law in several academic settings, including the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France and the University Centre for International Humanitarian Law in Geneva, Switzerland. He presently teaches IHL at Columbia Law School.