Speakers & Moderators

Professor Graeme Austin received B.A., LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from Victoria University in New Zealand and an LL.M. and S.J.D. from Columbia University. He taught and practiced law in New Zealand before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law, where he teaches and writes in the areas of international intellectual property law, trademarks and unfair competition. He is a member of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Raj Bhala received an A.B. from Duke, M. Sc. degrees from the London School of Economics and Oxford, and a J.D. from Harvard. He served as an attorney with the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, and has written and taught in the areas of international trade law, comparative law and international transactions. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Kansas, he was a member of the law faculties at William and Mary and George Washington University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Silvia Fabiana Faerman received her law degree from the University of Buenos Aires. She was an intellectual property lawyer and litigator with Marval, O’Farrell & Mairal and Kearney & MacCulloch in Buenos Aires for seventeen years before joining the Southwestern University School of Law faculty in 2001. She teaches and writes in the areas of comparative law, international and comparative intellectual property law and intellectual property law, and directs the Southwestern University Summer Law Program in Argentina.

Professor David A. Gantz received an A.B. from Harvard and J.D. and J.S.M. degrees from Stanford. He clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, served in a law reform project in Costa Rica, was an attorney with the U.S. State Department and a practitioner in Washington, D.C. before joining the law faculty at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. He writes and teaches in the areas of international trade law, international environmental law, international business transactions and NAFTA. He directs the LL.M. in international trade law program at the Rogers College of Law.

Professor Antonio Gidi received an LL.B. degree from the Federal University of Bahia and LL.M. from PUC University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. He also holds an S.J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. At Detroit Mercy, he teaches and writes in the areas of alternative dispute resolution, civil procedure, class actions and comparative law. He is a member, inter alia, of the American Law Institute and the Ibero-American Institute of Procedural Law.

Professor Sir Roy Goode received his law degree from the University of London. He has been a solicitor and barrister (appointed a Queen’s Counsel in 1990), a professor of law at Queen Mary College, London and at Oxford University. He has chaired numerous United Kingdom and international law reform committees and served as dean of the faculty of laws at Queen Mary College. He has written fourteen books and numerous articles on various aspects of domestic and international commercial law. Sir Roy was awarded the OBE in 1972, the CBE in 1994 and knighthood in 2000.

Professor Laurence Helfer received his B.A. from Yale, M.P.A. from Princeton and J.D. from New York University. He teaches and writes in the areas of copyright, international human rights and international law. He clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced law with Rabinowitz, Boudin, et al., in New York before joining the Loyola (L.A.) faculty, where he taught until 2004.

Professor Rafael Illescas is a chaired professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He is the senior member of the faculty in the area of commercial law, and the director of the Ph.D. program. He teaches, writes and lectures in the areas of commercial law, international commercial law, administrative law and electronic commerce. He is a Spanish delegate to UNCITRAL for international commercial law and a member of UNIDROIT and the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law.

Professor Boris Kozolchyk received a doctorate in Law from the University of Havana, an LL.B. from the University of Miami, and an S.J.D. from the University of Michigan. He was a consultant with the Rand Corporation and directed a U.S.A.I.D. project in Costa Rica before joining the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law faculty. He is the founder of the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade, a research and training institution located in Tucson, Arizona. He teaches and writes extensively in the areas of international commercial and banking law, comparative commercial law and letters of credit.

Sir Nicholas Lyell is a former British Attorney General and Solicitor General (under Margaret Thatcher and John Major). He was educated at the Stowe School and Oxford University. He has been a Barrister (specializing in major commercial cases, medical malpractice and constitutional law) from 1965-1986 and 1997-2004. He also served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1979-2001.

Professor Ana Maria Merico-Stephens received a B.A. from the University of Cincinnati and a J.D. from the University of Michigan. She clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Professor Merico-Stephens teaches and writes in the areas of civil procedure, the federal courts and comparative law. She was born in Argentina. During Fall 2004, she visited and taught in Spain as a Fulbright Scholar.

Professor Pilar Perales received her first law degree at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. She received a doctorate in law from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where she is now professor of commercial law. She has written several books and a number of articles on contracts in the CISG arbitration, international payments, Unidroit principles, standby letters of credit and other commercial law subjects. She serves as a Spanish representative to UNCITRAL. She has lectured, inter alia, at Columbia, the University of Arizona, Universidad Panamericana, and the University of Queensland.

Professor Coenraad Visser is head of the Department of Mercantile Law at the University of South Africa. He received an LL.B. degree from Stell University and an LL.M. degree from Rand Afrikaan University. He teaches, lectures and has published articles and books in the areas of copyright law, patent law, global intellectual property law, the law relating to electronic commerce and anti-discrimination law. Professor Visser is an advisor to the American Law Institute’s project on Jurisdiction and enforcement of Judgments in International Intellectual Property disputes.

Professor Pablo Zapatero received his first law degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and his Ph.D. in law from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid summa cum laude. He also holds an Amsterdam Law Program Certificate in International and Comparative Law. He teaches at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and writes in the areas of international trade law, human rights and corporate responsibility, and on conflicts and coordination of international legal regimes. He is also advisor to the director of the Ph.D. program in law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.