Professorial Lecturer in Law, George Washington University Law School
Theodore C. (Ted) Hirt was an attorney in the Department of Justice's Civil Division from August 1979 to March 2016. He was in its Federal Programs Branch from 1979 to 2008 (trial attorney, senior trial counsel, assistant director), and then in its Office of Immigration Litigation from 2008 to 2016 (trial attorney and senior litigation counsel). Among his responsibilities (September 2001 to March 2016) was being an advisor to the Assistant Attorneys General for the Civil Division, who serve ex officio on the Civil Rules Advisory Committee. Mr. Hirt’s areas of specialization include First Amendment issues, internet and telecommunications law, and electronic discovery. From 1976 to 1979, he was an associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Kampelman. From 1975 to 1976 he was an attorney in the Prehearing Division of the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Gates Corporation
Matthew R. A. Heiman joined the Company in May 2026 and has served as the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary since June 2026. As Chief Legal Officer, Mr. Heiman is responsible for all legal functions for Gates, including securities and corporate governance, M&A, litigation, commercial, regulatory, compliance, patents and trademarks, real estate, employment and labor, sustainability and environmental matters. Prior to joining Gates, Mr. Heiman held senior legal leadership roles at Waystar, where he served as Chief Legal & Administrative Officer from 2023 to 2025 and as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2020 to 2023. Prior to that, he was with Johnson Controls, where he served as Vice President, Corporate Secretary, and Associate General Counsel. Mr. Heiman has been a Senior Fellow for the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law since 2018.
Director, International Legal Studies Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Michael Newton is an expert on terrorism, accountability, transnational justice, and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 90 books, articles, op-eds and book chapters. He has been an expert witness in terrorism related trials and is admitted to the counsel list of the International Criminal Court, where, in 2018, he helped prepare the appeal of Jean-Pierre Bemba and participated in oral arguments in the Appeals Chamber. At Vanderbilt, he developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Lab, which provides expert assistance to judges, lawyers, legislatures, governments, and policy makers around the world. Professor Newton is most recently the editor of The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
An authority on the law of armed conflict, Professor Newton served as the senior adviser to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department from January 1999 to August 2002, during which he implemented a wide range of policy positions, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide. He negotiated the “Elements of Crimes” for the International Criminal Court, and was the senior member of the team teaching international law to the first group of Iraqis who began to think about accountability mechanisms and a constitutional structure in November 2000. He shuttled to Baghdad repeatedly to aid international and Iraqi lawyers and jurists in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal while serving as the International Law Adviser to the Judicial Chambers from 2006 to 2008. He began assisting Iraqi officials, victims and civil society groups on legal issues associated with documentation and investigation of crimes committed by Da’esh on Iraqi soil days after Yazidi victims fled towards Mount Sinjar. He was the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court and a founding member of its academic consortium. He is an elected member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and on the expert roster of Justice Rapid Response. In addition to teaching the Practice Lab, he develops and coordinates externships and educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues, having supervised more than 150 such opportunities.
Professor Newton has served on the executive council of the American Society of International Law and as an invited expert for the Genocide Prevention Task Force established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the ABA International Criminal Court Project.
Professor Newton served in the U.S. Army more than 21 years, beginning with his commission from the U.S. Military Academy in May 1984 as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor at Fort Carson, Colorado. After his selection for the Funded Legal Education Program, Newton served as chief of operational law with the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) during Operation Desert Storm, and as the group judge advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). His deployments include Northern Iraq on Operation Provide Comfort to assist Kurdish civilians, and Haiti with 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), where he organized and led human rights and rules of engagement education for multinational forces, including police. He has taught international and operational law at the Judge Advocate General's School and Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taught international law at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
US Department of State, Ambassador At-Large for Global Criminal Justice
Dr. Beth Van Schaack was sworn in as the Department’s sixth Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (GCJ) on March 17, 2022. In this role, she advises the Secretary of State and other Department leadership on issues related to the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Ambassador Van Schaack served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large in GCJ from 2012 to 2013. Prior to returning to public service in 2022, Ambassador Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Ambassador Van Schaack began her academic career at Santa Clara University School of Law, where, in addition to teaching and writing on international human rights issues, she served as the Academic Adviser to the United States interagency delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Ambassador Van Schaack has published numerous articles and papers on international human rights and justice issues, including her 2020 thesis, Imagining Justice for Syria (Oxford University Press). From 2014 to 2022, she served as Executive Editor for Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of national security, foreign policy, and rights. She is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.
Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Gates Corporation
Matthew R. A. Heiman joined the Company in May 2026 and has served as the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary since June 2026. As Chief Legal Officer, Mr. Heiman is responsible for all legal functions for Gates, including securities and corporate governance, M&A, litigation, commercial, regulatory, compliance, patents and trademarks, real estate, employment and labor, sustainability and environmental matters. Prior to joining Gates, Mr. Heiman held senior legal leadership roles at Waystar, where he served as Chief Legal & Administrative Officer from 2023 to 2025 and as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary from 2020 to 2023. Prior to that, he was with Johnson Controls, where he served as Vice President, Corporate Secretary, and Associate General Counsel. Mr. Heiman has been a Senior Fellow for the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law since 2018.
Director, International Legal Studies Program, Vanderbilt Law School
Michael Newton is an expert on terrorism, accountability, transnational justice, and conduct of hostilities issues. Over the course of his career, he has published more than 90 books, articles, op-eds and book chapters. He has been an expert witness in terrorism related trials and is admitted to the counsel list of the International Criminal Court, where, in 2018, he helped prepare the appeal of Jean-Pierre Bemba and participated in oral arguments in the Appeals Chamber. At Vanderbilt, he developed and teaches the innovative International Law Practice Lab, which provides expert assistance to judges, lawyers, legislatures, governments, and policy makers around the world. Professor Newton is most recently the editor of The United States Department of Defense Law of War Manual: Commentary and Critique, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
An authority on the law of armed conflict, Professor Newton served as the senior adviser to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the U.S. State Department from January 1999 to August 2002, during which he implemented a wide range of policy positions, including U.S. support to accountability mechanisms worldwide. He negotiated the “Elements of Crimes” for the International Criminal Court, and was the senior member of the team teaching international law to the first group of Iraqis who began to think about accountability mechanisms and a constitutional structure in November 2000. He shuttled to Baghdad repeatedly to aid international and Iraqi lawyers and jurists in drafting the Statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal while serving as the International Law Adviser to the Judicial Chambers from 2006 to 2008. He began assisting Iraqi officials, victims and civil society groups on legal issues associated with documentation and investigation of crimes committed by Da’esh on Iraqi soil days after Yazidi victims fled towards Mount Sinjar. He was the U.S. representative on the U.N. Planning Mission for the Sierra Leone Special Court and a founding member of its academic consortium. He is an elected member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and on the expert roster of Justice Rapid Response. In addition to teaching the Practice Lab, he develops and coordinates externships and educational opportunities for students interested in international legal issues, having supervised more than 150 such opportunities.
Professor Newton has served on the executive council of the American Society of International Law and as an invited expert for the Genocide Prevention Task Force established by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is currently on the Advisory Board of the ABA International Criminal Court Project.
Professor Newton served in the U.S. Army more than 21 years, beginning with his commission from the U.S. Military Academy in May 1984 as an armor officer in the 4th Battalion, 68th Armor at Fort Carson, Colorado. After his selection for the Funded Legal Education Program, Newton served as chief of operational law with the Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) during Operation Desert Storm, and as the group judge advocate for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne). His deployments include Northern Iraq on Operation Provide Comfort to assist Kurdish civilians, and Haiti with 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), where he organized and led human rights and rules of engagement education for multinational forces, including police. He has taught international and operational law at the Judge Advocate General's School and Center in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taught international law at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Professor Emeritus of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Professor Emeritus of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was for over two decades a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Professor Rabkin serves on the board of directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Previously he was a board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the board of academic advisors of the American Enterprise Institute.
Professor Rabkin’s books include Law Without Nations? (Princeton University Press, 2005). He authored “If You Need a Friend, Don’t Call a Cosmopolitan,” a chapter in Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship (Sigal R. Ben-Porath & Rogers M. Smith eds., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). His articles have appeared in major law reviews and political science journals and his journalistic contributions in a range of magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
US Department of State, Ambassador At-Large for Global Criminal Justice
Dr. Beth Van Schaack was sworn in as the Department’s sixth Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice (GCJ) on March 17, 2022. In this role, she advises the Secretary of State and other Department leadership on issues related to the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Ambassador Van Schaack served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large in GCJ from 2012 to 2013. Prior to returning to public service in 2022, Ambassador Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Ambassador Van Schaack began her academic career at Santa Clara University School of Law, where, in addition to teaching and writing on international human rights issues, she served as the Academic Adviser to the United States interagency delegation to the International Criminal Court Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Ambassador Van Schaack has published numerous articles and papers on international human rights and justice issues, including her 2020 thesis, Imagining Justice for Syria (Oxford University Press). From 2014 to 2022, she served as Executive Editor for Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of national security, foreign policy, and rights. She is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.
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