J.S.D. Students and Candidates

Christine Bateup
Australia

Ms. Bateup specializes in comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory, with a particular interest in theories of constitutional dialogue. Her doctoral dissertation explores how a clearly defined form of constitutional dialogue between courts, the political branches of government and the people might be institutionalized if a Bill of Rights is incorporated into Australian law, building on existing forms of institutional interaction that exist in the Australian setting.

Ms. Bateup completed her B.A./LL.B. degrees at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 1997, graduating with first class honors in Law. She subsequently was employed as a legal clerk at the Federal Court of Australia in Melbourne. In 2001, she graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom, receiving an LL.M. degree with Distinction.

Yun-Chien Chang
Taiwan

Mr. Chang received an LL.M. degree at the New York University School of Law in 2006, where he was a Law and Economics Fellow. His current academic interests are in the fields of property law, land use regulation, constitutional law, and administrative law. He is interested in analyzing legal issues from the perspectives of law and society as well as economic analysis of law.

Before coming to NYU, Mr. Chang has earned LL.B. and LL.M. degrees at National Taiwan University and has passed the bar. In the span of seven years of legal studies, he has published a dozen articles in leading academic journals, covering a wide range of legal fields, such as property law, constitutional law, administrative law, contract, torts, insurance law, medical law, copyright law, criminal law, and international trade law. Due to his academic performance, Mr. Chang received the Presidential Awards (1997 and 1998); he was also chosen as Outstanding College Youth (2003). His master's thesis, dealing with food and drug regulations in Taiwan, was awarded the Best Master's Thesis in 2003 by Ministry of Health.

Mr. Chang has had some experiences with prestigious law firms in Taiwan and served as a legal assistant at the International Trade Commission. In addition, Mr. Chang was a co-scriptwriter and co-lyricist of a popular musical Butterfly Lovers, staged at the National Theater Hall in 2003. He was also a pro bono legal consultant for several musicians and performing arts groups.

Olivia Dixon
Australia

Olivia Dixon is a J.S.D. student from Australia, specializing in corporate finance law. Olivia graduated first in her law class from the University of Technology, Sydney, in 2002. In addition, she received a B.Com in Finance and Economics from Bond University in 1997 and an LL.M. (International Legal Studies) from NYU School of Law in 2005. Olivia has extensive experience in corporate finance and securities law, most recently as a corporate finance attorney with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York. Before becoming an attorney in 2003, Olivia worked as an analyst for Ernst & Young Corporate Finance and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Australia's SEC equivalent). She is currently writing her dissertation on the impact of hedge fund activism on corporate governance under the supervision of Professor Stephen Choi.

Adi Gillat
Israel

Ms. Gillat is a J.S.D. candidate at New York University School of Law. Her main area of academic interest is intellectual property law and innovation policy. Her dissertation focuses on international intellectual property law, and specifically examines the possibility and desirability of global regulatory competition in the intellectual property field, proposing a critique of the modern trend towards global substantive harmonization of international intellectual property laws from the perspective of regulatory competition theory.

Ms. Gillat received her LL.M. from NYU School of Law in 2002, and is the recipient of the Flora S. and Jacob L. Newman Award for Distinction in the Trade Regulation Program. Her Paper "Compulsory Licensing to Regulated Licensing: Effects on the
Conflict Between Innovation and Access in the Pharmaceutical Industry," presented originally at the New York University Colloquium on Innovation Policy, won the 2002 Fox-Kiser Annual Writing Competition in Law, Science & Medicine. Ms. Gillat
also holds an LL.B. (1993) from Tel-Aviv University Law School, where she served as a member on the editorial board Iyunai-Mishapt, the Tel-Aviv University Law Review.

Ms. Gillat has extensive experience in private practice, serving as an associate with prominent Israeli and United States law-firms, most recently with Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe in Washington D.C., United States, and Fischer Behar Chen & Co., of Tel-Aviv, Israel. Focusing her practice on intellectual property and trade regulation, Ms. Gillat represented and counseled major Israeli and United States companies in a wide range of intellectual property litigation matters as well as diverse corporate work with an emphasis on licensing and collaboration transactions. After graduating from Tel-Aviv University Law School, Ms. Gillat also clerked for Justice Bilha Gilo'or who, at present, is the Chief Justice of the Haifa Circuit Court of Appeals, Israel.

Juan Gonzalez Bertomeu

Mr. Juan Gonzalez Bertomeu is a J.S.D. student from Argentina. He specializes in constitutional theory, with a particular focus on judicial review. He received his first law degree from Universidad Nacional de La Plata (1999), and pursued a master's program in constitutional law at Universidad de Palermo (2000-2002). After finishing his LL.M. studies at NYU (2003), he applied and was admitted to the J.S.D. program, but deferred his admission. He reapplied in 2007.

Since 2004 to August 2007, he worked for Asociacion por los Derechos Civiles (ADC), a leading NGO based in Buenos Aires. Among other activities at ADC, he directed a program devoted to justice reform, which monitored the federal Supreme Court, as well as some local Supreme Courts.

Mr. Gonzalez Bertomeu teaches constitutional law and legal philosophy at Universidad de Palermo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and Universidad de Buenos Aires. He is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Universidad de Palermo's Law Journal.

He is interested in studying judicial review in Argentina.

Kirsty Gover
New Zealand

Ms. Gover received her B.A./ LL.B, with honors, from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and an LL.M. from Columbia University, United States. She is a J.S.D. candidate and IILJ Graduate Scholar and NYU School of Law. She was a Columbia University School of Law Human Rights Fellow and James Kent Scholar, and was the first full-time Institute Fellow at NYU Law School's Institute for International Law and Justice. Prior to coming the U.S., Ms. Gover was a Senior Advisor and then consultant to the New Zealand government on international and domestic policy on indigenous peoples, and taught in this field at the University of Canterbury Law School. Her dissertation addresses the tension between continuity and self-constitution in the transnational law of indigenous governance. She is the author of "Identifying the Maori Treaty Partner" (52 Univ. of Toronto L.J. 39, with Natalie Baird); "He Tirohanga o Kawa ki te Tiriti o Waitangi" (Te Puni Kokiri, 2002, with Frances Hancock); and "Indigenous Groups and the Politics of Recognition in Asia" (11:1-2 International Journal of Minority and Group Rights 1, with Benedict Kingsbury). Her dissertation topic is self-constitution and continuity in indigenous governance.

Colin Grey
Canada

Colin Grey received his LL.B. in 2003 from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, graduating with the silver medal and the Dean's Key for excellence in extracurricular activities of an academic nature. Since graduation, he has worked at a major business law firm in Toronto and clerked at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Last year he completed his LL.M. in General Studies at the NYU School of Law.

Mr. Grey's teaching interests are in administrative law and immigration and refugee law. His J.S.D. thesis explores the requirements of distributive justice in the immigration law domain.

Shelly Grizim
Israel

Ms. Grizim is a J.S.D. Candidate at New York University School of Law. Her main area of academic interest is critical and post- structuralist legal theory, focusing on critical analysis of 'national security' in the legal discourse of democratic societies. Ms. Grizim received an LL.M. degree from NYU School of Law, and an LL.B. degree from Bar-Ilan University School of Law. Following an internship in Israel at the State Attorney’s Office, Ms. Grizim was the legal assistant of the former Deputy President of Israel Supreme Court, The Honorable Menachem Elon, and she served as the personal law clerk to Attorney General, Eliakim Rubinstein.

Eran Lempert
Israel

Mr. Lempert's current research focuses on the taxation of cross-border transactions and on domestic and international tax policy issues. In 2003, Mr. Lempert joined the faculty of NYU School of Law as an acting assistant professor where he taught mainly in the areas of corporate taxation and tax policy. Currently, he is practicing tax law with Skadden, Arps.

Doreen Lustig
Israel

Doreen Lustig is a J.S.D. student and IILJ Graduate Scholar. Her dissertation traces the role of the business enterprise in the history of international law. Her work is supervised by Professor Benedict Kingsbury. Ms. Lustig completed her L.L.M. in International Legal Studies as a Hauser scholar at NYU in 2006. Her thesis, The Modern Temples of India: International Law and Development Induced Displacement, was written under the supervision of Professor Benedict Kingsbury.She received both her LL.B., magna cum laude and a Bachelor's degree, Magna Cum Laude, in Sociology and Anthropology, from Tel Aviv University. Ms. Lustig served as an Associate Editor of the Tel Aviv University Law Review (Iyuney Mishpat). Subsequent to her Bachelor's studies she was employed as a legal clerk for Justice Eliezer Rivlin at the Israeli Supreme Court. During the summer of 2006, Ms. Lustig served as an IILJ intern at the UN International Law Commission in Geneva. She is the co-author of 'Displacement and Relocation from Protected Areas: International Law Perspectives on Rights, Risks and Resistance', Conservation and Society 4 (2006), 404-418 (with Benedict Kingsbury).

Arianne Renan Barzilay
Israel

Arianne Renan Barzilay is a third-year J.S.D. candidate at NYU School of Law. Her scholarly interests include: law and society, feminist legal theory, regulation of labor and the family, and constitutional and administrative law. Her dissertation focuses on the role of women reformers in the rise of the American regulatory state, and in particular in the regulation and administration of women in the marketplace and in the family.

Prior to receiving an LL.M. from NYU School of Law, she graduated
magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University (LL.B.), clerked for Israel's Supreme Court Justice, T. Or, and worked as a litigation associate at a prominent Israeli law firm. She has been a research and teaching assistant both at Tel Aviv University and at NYU School of Law. She is fluent in Hebrew, English, French and Romanian.

Galia Rivlin

Galia Rivlin is a third year J.S.D. candidate. Her doctorate research concerns the question of extraterritorial application of constitutional safeguards. Her work is supervised by Professor David Golove. Ms. Rivlin completed her LLM as a Grotius scholar at NYU in 2007.  She received her LL.B., magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2006. Ms. Rivlin was cited on the Hebrew University Faculty of Law Dean's List for outstanding academic achievements in each year of law school. In 2005 Ms. Rivlin also received the Faculty of Law Award for Outstanding Academic Achievements and the Faculty of Law Jonathan Greenwald Award for excellence in family law. During her second and third year of law school Ms. Rivlin was a member of the editorial board of Mishpatim, the Hebrew University Law Review. Ms. Rivlin served as a research assistant and teaching assistant to Dean Eyal Zamir in contract law and as a research assistant to Professor Israel Gilead in tort law. Upon graduation, Ms. Rivlin worked for a year as a law clerk at the Supreme Court Division: Constitutional and Administrative Affairs of the Israeli State Attorney Office in Jerusalem. As a law clerk, Ms. Rivlin conducted legal research and wrote drafts in response to petitions in the areas of constitutional law, administrative law and public international law. After the conclusion of her clerkship, Ms. Rivlin was admitted on June 2006 to the Israeli Bar.

Eran Shamir-Borer
Israel

Mr. Shamir-Borer received his LL.B. degree, cum laude, in 1998 from Tel Aviv University, Israel, where he served as an Associate Editor of the Israel Journal of Criminal Justice ('Plilim'). In 2004 he received his LL.M. degree, cum laude, from the same institution. He also holds an LL.M. degree in International Legal Studies from NYU School of Law.

From 1998 to 2004 Mr. Shamir-Borer served as an officer (presently at the rank of a Major) in the International Law Department of the Military Advocate General Corps in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In this capacity, he provided legal counseling to IDF headquarters and government offices on matters relating to international law and participated in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In his last position, Mr. Shamir-Borer was Head of Foreign Relations and Special Projects Section, in which capacity he negotiated agreements with foreign militaries and was in charge of the legal liaison between IDF and international organizations. In 2003 Mr. Shamir-Borer was a delegate to the 28th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent and a member of the Drafting Committee.

Mr. Shamir-Borer is the recipient of several awards and scholarships, among them the Tel Aviv University Outstanding Students Scholarship, the E. David Fischman Scholarship, the Henri Glassberg Award for Volunteering Students, and the IDF Military Advocate General's Award for Excellence.

Mr. Shamir-Borer is currently studying for the degree of J.S.D. at NYU School of Law. His research addresses administrative legal aspects of international law, a topic which he has begun developing in his International Law Thesis for LL.M. in International Legal Studies at NYU, entitled "Taming of the Military Decision-Maker?: Administrative Legal Norms in the Laws of Armed Conflict."

Ming-Hsi Sung
Taiwan

Mr. Sung is a Taiwanese government-sponsored student doing research on criminal law enforcement. He is a member of the Goldstock Criminal Lunch Seminar and the Hoffinger Criminal Law Colloquium at NYU. He is interested in comparative law, law and culture, East Asian law, indigenous law, and international law and politics.

Mr. Sung graduated from the Department of Law at National Taiwan University with an LL.B in 1992, and the National Cheng-Chi University Graduate Institute of Law with an LL.M. in 1994. From 1994 to 1996, he served his mandatory enlistment, with the rank of Second Lieutenant, as a Clerk in the Court Martial of Army, Central Regiment in Taichung, Taiwan. Before joining NYU in 2000, he served at Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunication in Taipei, Taiwan.

Jean Thomas

Jean is a candidate in the J.S.D. program. Her main academic interest is in the area of legal philosophy, and in rights theory in particular. Her doctoral dissertation explores the possibility of human rights enforcement in private litigation, and the relationship between human rights and private obligations. She is being supervised by Professor Jeremy Waldron. Jean completed her LL.M. at NYU, where she was awarded the John Bruce Moore Award in Law and Philosophy.

Jean received her J.D. at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto, where she received the Blake's Scholars Award and the Tibor Prince Integrity Award. She was also awarded the Tory Fellowship from the Faculty of Law Review. Jean served as a research assistant for Professor Denise Reaume, working in the area of the duty to accommodate under the human rights codes. She also assisted Professor Sophia Moreau, working on a project concerning the theory of discrimination. While in Toronto, Jean also gained experience working in a full-service law firm. Jean was a student in the Faculty of Law's Capstone Academic Program, through which she completed an independent research project in the area of equality rights and tort theory. As part of that project, Jean assisted the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). She was also a member of a LEAF subcommittee in its preparation to make arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada in a case concerning retroactive child support. She recently presented the paper she wrote as a Capstone scholar, "Relations of Dependency: Tort Law and Social Inequality," as part of the Critical Tort Panel at the Canadian Association of Law Teachers' annual conference.

Prior to law school, Jean received a Master of Arts degree in English literature from the University of Toronto, where she was awarded the Mara Roebuck Memorial Graduate Prize in English. Jean received an Honors Bachelor of Arts degree, awarded with distinction, from the University of Toronto. She completed a specialist program in English literature, and was awarded the Regents' Scholarship.

Nourit Zimerman
Israel

Nourit Zimerman received a Bachelor Degree in Law and the Humanities, magna cum laude, from the Hebrew University, Israel, in 2003. While attending the Hebrew University, Ms. Zimerman was involved in human rights activities in several NGOs, including the Association for Civil Rights. She worked in the Tel Aviv University Center of Clinical Studies, as a program manager for the Street Law program in which law students teach law to at-risk youth.

After graduating she became a clerk for Justice Ayala Procaccia of the Israeli Supreme Court. After her admission to the Israeli Bar, she continued working in the Supreme Court as Justice Procaccia's legal assistant, until she joined the NYU School of Law LL.M. program. Currently, Ms. Zimerman is a J.S.D. candidate. Her research areas include procedural theory, lawyering theory and law and society. Her dissertation will address the role of the litigant in the civil procedure. Ms. Zimerman is a Fulbright Scholar.