Immigrants, Refugees and Women: International Obligations and the United States

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 33 No. 4
• Publication year: 2019
• topic: Constitutional Law,Immigration Law

Immigrants, Refugees and Women: International Obligations and the United States

Rosemary Barkett

DAVID J. BEDERMAN LECTURE

IMMIGRANTS, REFUGEES AND WOMEN: INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS AND THE UNITED STATES

Judge Rosemary Barkett^*

PROFESSOR ABDULLAHI AN-NA'IM: Hello. My name is Abdullahi An-Na'im. I teach here at Emory Law School. I am responsible for a center called Center for International and Comparative Law. It is set in the [indiscernible] place in the corner where nobody seems to go. But please, we are delighted that you are here. This is really the highlight of our annual activities. Our friend, David Bederman, in whose name and honor this lecture has been named, and there is a fellowship, too. Some of you may be aware of that. So, the next fellows are already here in the room with us. So, the idea is to present international speakers because David himself was really a master of international—private and public—law, as well as admiralty and many other things. He was brilliant, and we are really sad to lose him so early in his life. But, at the same time, we are grateful for the heritage and the legacy that he left behind, including a daughter who is now an Emory scholar as well.

Our speaker for today is Judge Rosemary Barkett who is, since 2013, a member of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. And incidentally, David Bederman himself was at that same institution at the beginning of his academic career. So that is one connection that you could see with our speaker today. Judge Barkett was elected Honorary President of the American Society of International Law. In 2015, the President of the United States appointed Judge Barkett to the Panel of Conciliators for the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

Prior to her appointment to the Tribunal, Judge Barkett was a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for approximately twelve years. Prior to her service in the United States federal courts, she was the first woman Justice on the Florida Supreme Court and was chosen by her

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colleagues as the Chief Justice of Florida. It's remarkable really to see so many brilliant careers realized here and thoughtfully merging in one person's lifetime.

She has received seven honorary degrees from institutions of higher education. She also earned many prestigious awards. In 2017, she was awarded the Prominent Woman in International Law Award at the American Society of International Law. I could go on and on, there are so many other distinctions that I could mention, but I think probably the best gift that Judge Barkett has given us is an extremely topical and controversial subject for her talk today. And she really promised and in fact volunteered to say that she'd be delighted to take any questions whatsoever on the subject.

To that end, we have two mics on two sides of the podium where we would request please if you can come and line up behind the mic so that we don't waste time trying to get the mic from one person to the next.

With all pleasure, please join me and welcome her to the podium.

JUDGE ROSEMARY BARKETT: Thank you very much. Thank you for that introduction and thank you to Emory and the Bederman family for inviting me and having me here.

This lecture has been given for several years, and there are, I am sure, at each of those lectures people that lauded David Bederman, and I want to convey to his parents—who are unfortunately a little ill and weren't able to come today, and his wife—who is here, and his daughter, my own appreciation for his contributions, both personally and on behalf of my Tribunal and many others in The Hague, where he is still remembered extremely warmly.

When learning that I was here for this event, Judge Joan Donahue, the United States Judge on the International Court of Justice, sent me an email right away saying, it's great that you are giving a lecture in honor of Professor Bederman, a prolific and energetic scholar whose life was far too short.

I do not, by the way, intend to address the workings of the Tribunal upon which he and I have served in my main topic, but I am happy to do so and answer any questions that might occur to you after the lecture.

As I said, I didn't know David Bederman personally, but clearly one of the most remarkable measures of his impact is inspiring members of this great law school to stop for a few minutes every year and think about human rights domestically and globally. Today, I want to focus those few minutes on the topic of immigrants, refugees and women—topics that are significant to me both

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personally and professionally. Personally, because obviously I am a woman, which is not to say that all women automatically care equally about those rights, and not so obviously, perhaps, because I am also a Syrian-Mexican immigrant. I was born in Mexico of Syrian parents who left Syria in the 1920's en route to the United States and had to remain in Mexico for approximately twenty years because of the national origins quota system in effect at that time.

My family came to Miami when I was six, and I grew up in a time and a place where immigrants were proud to be immigrants, and extremely proud to have become Americans. Professionally, I have spent over forty years studying, enforcing, and extolling the virtues of the American vision of a government that was built by immigrants. That American vision was expressed in our founding documents when we specifically stated that we were created for the express purpose of, "establishing justice and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,"¹ and that posterity includes those seeking refuge from persecution and torture in other countries.

From the time of our revolution in 1776 to the present, well, the almost present, we have continuously and publicly recognized that we were a land of immigrants and refugees dedicated to welcoming those from different nations, different creeds, different cultures, and protecting all of their rights to life, liberty, justice, and equality.

As early as 1776, George Washington said, "the bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable Stranger."² I was going to say from Norway but I'm not...