Produced by: Office of Marketing and Communications
February 4, 2013
Margaret McGuinness, J.D., is professor and co-director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at St. John’s School of Law. Before coming to St. John’s in 2010, Prof. McGuinness taught at the University of Missouri School of Law, and she has been a visiting scholar at the University of Georgia and Temple University law schools as well as the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She entered academia after practicing law in the public and private sectors. Prof. McGuinness began her professional life as a foreign service officer.
As an attorney and a legal scholar, what has influenced your interest in international human rights?
I came into the field with the intention of focusing on international law, international dispute resolution and human rights. I lived in Great Britain as a child, so I was exposed to travel and foreign cultures from an early age. I attended junior high and high school in Ridgewood, NJ. Growing up during the Cold War, in the post-Vietnam era, I found geo-politics endlessly fascinating.
In the early ’90s, I was a foreign service officer at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, with responsibility for the human-rights portfolio. I met with human-rights activists, judges and members of the police in various cities to better understand how the rule of law did or didn’t work there. I also wrote the first draft of the Embassy’s human-rights report. It was one of the comprehensive Country Reports on Human Rights Practices that the State Department produces for every nation in the world. The experience remained with me when I returned to the States.
What is your current research project?
I’m examining the impact the State Department’s Country Reports have had on international human-rights jurisprudence. Congress passed legislation in the 1970s requiring the State Department to monitor and report on human-rights practices around the world. The annual report was intended as a way to constrain the president’s ability to carry out diplomacy with regimes that were rights violators.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s, there was criticism that the reports themselves were not accurate depictions of human-rights practices, that they soft-pedaled human-rights abuses by allies while harshly criticizing others who were not allies. Yet the reports have had staying power. They started appearing in legal opinions and within the NGO (non-governmental organizations) community to support factual claims of rights abuses. Advocates who bring asylum claims to U.S. courts, for example, use the reports to support their arguments concerning human-rights conditions in other countries, while the U.S. government uses them to refute those assertions in cases where it is looking to deny asylum. My research has found that the Country Reports are used in other nations' immigration cases as well.
Has the cause of international human rights lost or gained ground during the course of your career?
Oh, it’s absolutely gained ground. In the ’70s, there was a robust debate among professional diplomats, members of Congress and others about the role of human-rights in U.S. foreign policy. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger embodied the view that diplomacy is not about human rights; it’s about geo-strategic interests. Since then, there’s been a definite shift toward an understanding that observing human rights is valuable to us all. It makes the world a more peaceful place, because the rule of law is preferable to the rule of the gun.
I’ve also seen through my research that ideas change behavior. Today, you would never hear foreign service officers object to supporting human rights in the way the State Department objected to congressional oversight of human-rights policy in the early ’70s. It’s become normalized for them that U.S. foreign policy places human rights at the top of the agenda. At the same time, the international human-rights system itself has matured. You could say we are witnessing a shift from the infancy of the human-rights system to its coming of age.
How would you like your research to contribute to these developments?
I’d like to contribute to a more measured understanding of the role of human rights in foreign policy. U.S human-rights policy appears somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, the U.S. acts as an outsider to the international human-rights system, which some scholars attribute to American “exceptionalism” on human rights. Yet the U.S. government constantly measures the behavior of nation states according to international human-rights standards. For example, the State Department Country Reports don’t evaluate the behavior and actions of states against the measure of the U.S. Constitution; they reflect international standards taken from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international human-rights instruments.
How does your research impact your teaching at St. John’s School of Law?
My interests inform a great deal of my teaching at St. John’s. The legal field is constantly evolving, and globalization will present challenges to my students when they graduate and begin their careers as practicing attorneys. They’ll be facing intense competition from around the world. They’re going to have to be nimble, entrepreneurial and acquire expertise in international as well as local law. Preparing students for this evolving climate is one purpose of the St. John’s Center for International and Comparative Law (CICL), which I co-direct with Chris Borgen [Christopher J. Borgen, J.D., Associate Dean for International Studies and Professor of Law].
We connect the study and the practice of international law in a variety of ways that benefit our students—not just through courses, but internships, study abroad offerings and opportunities to present papers. We want to ensure that St. John’s students are globally oriented as they enter the profession of law.
I’ve also engaged several of my law students to work as research assistants for me, to read and analyze U.S. and foreign case law and reports by United Nations human-rights agencies as well as NGO documents, to better understand how the Country Reports on human rights are used by claimants, governments, judges and advocates around the world.
What brought you to St. John’s School of Law?
I was interested in returning to the New York area, and I was excited by the plans Dean Simons [Michael A. Simons, J.D., Dean and John V. Brennan Professor of Law and Ethics] and Chris Borgen—whom I have known professionally for many years—had put in place for expanding global programs. My expectations have only been exceeded in the two years I have been here.
What do you like best about teaching here?
That’s easy—my students and colleagues, who make the experience exciting and meaningful.