James Cavallaro

James Cavallaro is a Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and the President of the University Network for Human Rights. He has been a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School (2011-2019), where he directed the International Human Rights Clinic and the Stanford Human Rights Center. He has focused his scholarly research and his legal practice on human rights. After clerking for Dolores Sloviter, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (1992-1993), he opened and directed a joint office for Human Rights Watch and the Center for Justice and International Law in Rio de Janeiro. In 1999, he founded the Global Justice Center, a leading Brazilian human rights NGO. Cavallaro served as a Clinical Professor of Law and as Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program (2002-2011). In 2013, he was elected to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; in 2016-2017, he served as its president. He has worked in human rights in more than two dozen countries and serves on the board of several leading rights organizations based in Brazil, Ireland, the United States and Geneva.

Cavallaro has authored or co-authored dozens of books, reports, and articles on human rights including Doctrine, Practice, and Advocacy in the Inter-American Human Rights System (Oxford University Press, 2019); “Positively Complementary: How the International Criminal Court Can Prevent Atrocity and Advance Accountability by Emulating Regional Human Rights Institutions” (forthcoming, Yale Journal of International Law, 2019); No Nos Toman en Cuenta: Pueblos Indígenas y Consulta Previa en Las Pisciculturas de la Araucanía (2013); Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from U.S. Drone Practices in Pakistan (2012); and “Reevaluating Regional Human Rights Litigation in the Twenty-First Century: the Case of the Inter-American Court,” American Journal of International Law (2008).