ASIL Programs > International Law Studies > Tillar House Sabbatical Fellowship Program
Tillar House Sabbatical Fellows
The Tillar House Sabbatical Fellowship is intended to provide ASIL members with a Washington, D.C. institutional home during a sabbatical or other leave from their regular positions. Fellows are expected to spend 3 to 12 months engaged in independent research in the field of international law and to contribute periodically to relevant ASIL Tillar House briefings and publications (such as ASIL Insights, International Law in Brief, and International Legal Materials). Fellows are also expected to serve as resident advisors on other ASIL activities within their field(s) of expertise, including with respect to outreach efforts to the media and to Congress.
2010 Tillar House Sabbatical Fellow: Richard Wilson
Richard J. Wilson is Professor of Law and founding director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law, in Washington, D.C, where he has taught since 1989. Professor Wilson was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Republic of Panama from 1966-1968, and a 1972 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law. He began his legal career as a public defender in Illinois, and was director of the Defender Division at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in Washington from 1980-85. He taught at CUNY Law School in New York City from 1985-1989.Professor Wilson has taught in the law school’s summer Human Rights Academy and in the Oxford International Human Rights Law Program. He was the director of the law school’s summer study program in Chile in 1995 and 1996, and director of the law school’s clinics from 1999-2003. He has been a Visiting Lecturer in law at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo, Japan, and at the Catholic University in Lima, Peru. He was a Fulbright Scholar in the Republic of Colombia in 1987, and served as Legal Advisor to the Consulate of the Republic of Colombia in Washington during 1998. During the fall semester of 2009, he was in residence at the Netherlands School for Human Rights Research at Utrecht University’s law school.
He has lived or consulted in several Latin American countries and has lectured or consulted in the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, and Asia. Professor Wilson has presented three cases at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica and authored the friend-of-court briefs for the European Union in the United States Supreme Court successfully arguing that international law prohibits capital punishment for juveniles and for persons with mental retardation. Prof. Wilson serves as President of the Board of Directors of the World Organization for Human Rights, U.S.A., and on the Board of Ensaaf, a human rights NGO with focus on impunity in India, particularly in Punjab. He is a co-editor of textbooks on international human rights law and practice; defense in international criminal law; and international criminal law and procedure. His scholarly interests include the globalization of public interest law, the death penalty and international law, the role of the defense in international war crimes trials, and clinical legal education in developing or transitional countries.
Professor Wilson’s current research focuses on the growth of clinical legal education as method and philosophy around the world, particularly as it relates to the advancement of human rights law, and he will moderate a program on the clinical teaching of international human rights law for the ASIL 2010 Annual Meeting.