Stephen Sawyer

Northwestern Law School Teaching Responsibilities

As of the 2006-2007 academic year, Sawyer is presenting two courses at the law school: one in the fall entitled Nation Building: International Human Rights in Transitional Societies and one in the spring entitled Comparative Human Rights Law, Differing Perspectives, Europe, the Americas, the U.S. In previous years, Sawyer taught sessions of courses in International Human Rights Law I, (Fall 2004); International Human Rights in Transitional Democracies (Fall 2004); International Criminal Law (Spring 2005); International Human Rights (Fall 2005) and Human Rights in Transitional Democracies (Fall 2005).

Center for International Human Rights Responsibilities

Highlights of Sawyer’s responsibilities at the CIHR include the following: service on an international panel enquiring into allegations of official collusion by the British government in human rights crimes in Northern Ireland in the 1970s; moderator of a panel regarding the “Preventive Use of Force: The Case of Iraq” in an international conference entitled Reforming the United Nations: The Use of Force to Safeguard International Security and Human Rights, presented at the law school in January 2005; service as conference manager and program participant in an international conference entitled The Humanitarian Crises in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, presented at the law school in October 2006.

Other Human Rights Responsibilities

Some of Sawyer’s additional activities on the human rights front include serving as a faculty participant at the Summer Course on Human Rights sponsored by the Catholic University of Leuven, the School of Human Rights Research (Netherlands) and Northwestern University; serving as a panelist in an Amnesty International Community Forum addressing human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad; participating as a panelist at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL on the Geneva Conventions in a program entitled “Rethinking Rights, Liberties and Security”; acting as a speaker at the Newberry Library in Chicago on the topic “The Geneva Conventions are not ‘Quaint’, They are Highly Relevant in Today’s World”; acting as a program panelist on The International Criminal Court in Central Africa at the XIV World Congress of Criminology.

Prior Professional Experience

Prior to coming to Northwestern, Sawyer engaged in a broad practice of law, including service as a prosecutor in the Manhattan (New York) Office of the District Attorney, trying murder and official corruption cases, as deputy to the New York City Deputy Mayor for Criminal Justice, handling budget review and operations planning for NYC criminal justice agencies, and, most recently, as Assistant General Counsel at a large multinational corporation. At the corporation Sawyer was chief litigation counsel, served as the company’s primary liaison with federal and state governmental agencies on competition issues, acted as the company’s antitrust compliance officer and managed labor, employment and environmental issues.