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| A former director for democracy
at the National Security Council and law clerk to
U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, Peter Spiro
is also recognized for his research on the constitutional
aspects of U.S. foreign relations. |
For an average lawyer, knowledge of international law
is no longer a luxury, it is increasingly becoming a requirement,
according to the School of Law’s newest tenured
faculty member, Peter J. Spiro.
As one might imagine from this statement, Spiro specializes
in international law. However, he makes a compelling case
for this idea—the world is becoming more globalized,
especially in terms of travel and communication; the tradition
of only national leaders conversing about economic, environmental
or human rights issues is disappearing; many corporations
are now multinational; organizations such as Amnesty International
and Greenpeace are acting on the global level without
having to answer to any one country; and sub-national
actors, such as the states of Georgia or California, are
increasingly prominent in their own right as players on
the international stage.
In the midst of these developments, Spiro also makes a
strong case for the eroding of national identities.
Think about it. What does it truly mean to be an American?
It’s not a common birthplace. It’s not a common
language. It’s not a common religion. According
to Spiro, one of the country’s leading authorities
on immigration and nationality law, U.S. citizenship
has traditionally been most easily defined in terms of
a constitutional faith—we were distinguished from
the rest of the world by democracy and our constitutional
values.
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| FACTS |
| PETER J. SPIRO |
Dean and Virginia Rusk Professor
of International Law
School of Law
|
B.A.,
Harvard University
J.D.,
University of Virginia
Joined
UGA faculty: August 2004 |
|
“This no longer distinguishes us in the
same way that it has historically, as much of the rest
of the world also comes to enjoy democratic governance,”
he says. Nor can one readily define “being American”
in terms of a distinctive popular culture, when others
adopt American movies, television shows and other pop
icons as their own. “To the extent that everyone
is an American,” Spiro suggests, “no one is
an American.”
Spiro believes this eroding national identity is not unique
to the United States and is affecting other countries
throughout the world, and that it is not a “reversible
development.” This is main premise of his book currently
under contract with Oxford University Press.
A former director for democracy at the National Security
Council and law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David
H. Souter, Spiro is also recognized for his research on
the constitutional aspects of U.S. foreign relations,
including the division of powers between Congress, the
president and the courts in such areas as the use of force,
treaty making, and the power of the purse.
And, in the wake of 9/11, he says there are “pressing
questions” relating to individual rights in the
context of foreign relations. “For instance,”
he asks, “when can national security trump individual
rights otherwise protected by the Constitution?”
Spiro finds his research and writing very rewarding. A
recent survey of academic citation frequencies ranked
Spiro in the national top 20 of legal scholars entering
the field since 1992. He feels scholarly efforts “inform
one’s approach to the substance of teaching. It
allows me to bring more into the classroom. I can put
more challenging questions on the table and better engage
students on the next set of questions in any given area.”
When he first entered academe a little over a decade ago,
he says, international law was a “marginal field”
of legal study and research.
“This is fast changing,” he says now. “In
order to perform as a lawyer, it is increasingly going
to be the case that one has to have a basic understanding
of international law and the distinctive mechanisms of
international legal systems. This will be true regardless
of the field of practice in which our graduates find themselves.”
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