International faculty visit Notre Dame Law School for 2022 spring semester

Notre Dame Law School is hosting three international law professors this semester.

Visiting Professors Luigi Crema and Francisco J. Urbina, as well as Fulbright Visiting Professor Tamás Ádány, are teaching courses in international and comparative law. 

Luigi Crema is professor of international law at the Law School of the Università degli Studi of Milan. He graduated summa cum laude from the Università degli Studi of Milan and holds a joint Ph.D. in Public International Law from the Universities of Geneva and Milan. He did postdoctoral work as a fellow at the Jean Monnet Center of the New York University School of Law and at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. 

In addition to his seminal book on the interpretation of treaties, Crema has also published many articles in law reviews including the European Journal of International Law and several chapters in books. His work has been cited by the International Law Commission of the United Nations and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and he has presented his ideas in many venues, including the United Nations. He has dedicated himself in recent years to large-scale projects of institution building, establishing and administering two new degree programs — an LL.M. on sustainable development and a Ph.D. on law, ethics, and economics — as well as launching a website on sustainability. 

“From the seriousness of the students to the stimulating discussions of the faculty meetings, and especially the lively collegiality and spontaneous collaboration among colleagues, the chance to be at Notre Dame has been a demanding, rewarding, and inspiring experience,” Crema said. 

Francisco J. Urbina is a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and a concurrent visiting professor at the Law School. His primary areas of work are human rights, constitutional law and jurisprudence, devoting particular attention to regional systems of protection of human rights, legal methods for evaluating limitations of human rights, and to the role of courts and legislatures in promoting human rights. He is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and fellow of the Center for International Studies at the same university.

His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Law Quarterly Review, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. He is the author of A Critique of Proportionality and Balancing (Cambridge University Press 2017) and the co-author of Legislated Rights: Securing Human Rights through Legislation (Cambridge University Press 2018). Between 2019 and 2021 he served as a human rights advisor to the Mission of Chile to the Organization of American States, and has represented the State of Chile in cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He graduated summa cum laude from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in 2007 and earned a M.St. in Legal Studies and a D. Phil. in Law from the University of Oxford in 2013.

“It’s been a wonderful experience to be a part of the vibrant intellectual community of the Law School this term,” Urbina said. “Given Notre Dame’s global leadership in human rights, it is a distinct privilege to be able to teach here in this area.”

Tamás Ádány is the Fulbright visiting professor at Notre Dame Law School for the 2022 spring semester. He teaches International Criminal Law and Human Rights in Europe. He is from the Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary, where he is the head of the Department of International Law. His interest is in general international law — the sources of international obligations, responsibility of states and particularly the position of individuals in international law. He has published extensively on these issues. His current research interest is the potential impact of certain implications of populism on the international legal order.

Previously, he worked for the Hungarian government in various professional capacities, and later he formed and ran a small consulting company on international and European legal matters.

“My image of the University of Notre Dame is best pictured by the ʻEdificeʼ installation at the Duncan Student Center,” Adany said. “Seen from a distance, it is an impressive and intriguing representation of the Dome of the University. You are drawn closer by a sensation that there is more to this image than first meets the eye; and from a close-up look, you are awed to see the faces of some of the actual people building up the real university. For me this reflects the concept of ʻuniversitasʼ, what truly means a community — and I am proud to experience the challenge of being part of it here at Notre Dame.”