The Legal Group is composed by the following members: 

Beth Stephens - Center for Constitutional Rights.

Carlos López - International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).

Colin Gonsalvez - Human Rights Law Network

David Bilchitz - University of Johannesburg

Eduardo Bernabé Toledo - Université de Paris 1 Panthèon - Sorbonne 

Marcos Orellana - Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

Nicola Jägers - Tilburg University.

Olivier de Schutter - Université Catholique de Luovain.

Robert McCorquodale - British Institute of International and Comparative Law

Surya Deva - City University of Hong Kong.

William David - Indigenous Rights Centre.

Beth Stephens - Center for Constitutional Rights. Professor Stephens has published a variety of articles on the relationship between international and domestic law, focusing on the enforcement of international human rights norms through domestic courts. From 1990-1995, she was in charge of the international human rights docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, where she litigated a series of cases addressing human rights violations in countries around the world, including Bosnia, Guatemala, Haiti, East Timor and Ethiopia. As a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Justice and Accountability, Prof. Stephens continues to litigate human rights cases, including cases filed against U.S.-based corporations alleging responsibility for human rights violations committed in the course of their activities abroad.  Professor Stephens graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, received her J.D. degree from the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, and clerked for Chief Justice Rose Bird of the California Supreme Court. She spent six years studying the changing the legal system in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Carlos López - International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). Carlos joined the ICJ in January 2008 to lead the programme on Business and Human Rights. Carlos worked at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for six years in various capacities and posts, including the Rule of Law and Democracy, Economic and social rights and the right to development. Before, he worked for the ICJ (1998-1999), the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (2000) and for several international human rights organizations as well as national human rights NGOs in his country, Peru. He holds a PhD and Masters in public international law (Graduate Institute of International Studies-Geneva University) and a Diploma on sociology studies. He obtained his law degree at the Catholic University of Peru.

Colin Gonsalvez - Human Rights Law Network. Colin Gonsalves is the Founder of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), India’s leading public interest law group. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mr. Gonsalves started his professional life as a civil engineer but was drawn into the field of law through his work with the unions in Bombay.  He commenced formal legal study in 1979 and litigated his first case, while still in law school, on behalf of 5,000 workers locked out of their jobs. Upon attaining his law degree in 1983, Mr. Gonsalves co-founded the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) and developed it into a national organization that brought together over 200 lawyers and paralegals operating out of 28 offices spread throughout India.  Mr. Gonsalves transitioned his practice from the Labour Courts to the Bombay High Court in 1984 and was designated as Senior Advocate, before moving onto the Supreme Court of India in 2001.

David Bilchitz - University of Johannesburg. Prof David Bilchitz is Professor at the University of Johannesburg and Director of the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law (SAIFAC). Prof Bilchitz is currently Secretary-General of the International Association of Constitutional Law, and was elected to this position at the World Congress of the IACL in Oslo in June 2014 after having served as Acting Secretary-General from April 2013-June 2014. He has a BA (Hons) LLB cum laude from Wits University. He graduated with an MPhil in Philosophy from St John's College, University of Cambridge in 2001 and with a PhD in law (and political philosophy) from the same university in 2004. David worked as law clerk to Chief Justice Langa of the Constitutional Court in 2000 (who was then Deputy Judge-President). From August 2004 until 2006, he worked at Ross Kriel Attorneys, a law firm dealing with public sector law and he is an admitted attorney. Apart from being Director at SAIFAC, he has also been a Senior Research Associate at the University of Pretoria where he has lectured in the LLM programme and has worked in the PhD programme, and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand where he lectured jurisprudence for 5 years 

Eduardo Bernabé Toledo - Université de Paris 1 Panthéon - Sorbonne. Eduardo Toledo is a Legal Adviser specialized in International and european Criminal Law, he worked for the UDAPT (Unión de Afectados por las operaciones de Texaco - Ecuador) and he collaborates with the NGO Xumek (Argentina). Also, he is writing his PhD's dissertation, to be presented in 2016, on the subject 'The attribution of criminal responsibility to a group in the system of the International Criminal Court'. In October 24th 2014, jointly with Pablo Fajardo, he presented a Communication before the International Criminal Court to denounce the situation in Ecuador after the operations of the Texaco Oil Company (today Chevron Corp.) and the actions that its CEO takes today to avoid a due remediation of the pollution in the ground and the rivers of the Oriente Region in the Ecuadorian Amazonia. This document is the first that has been filled to the Tribunal that describes the acts of contamination as a crime within the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Marcos Orellana - Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Marcos A. Orellana is the Director of CIEL's Human Rights and Environment Program. Prior to joining CIEL, Dr. Orellana was a Fellow to the Lauterpacht Research Centre for International Law of the University of Cambridge, UK. He also was a visiting scholar with the Environmental Law Institute in Washington DC. Previously, Dr. Orellana was Instructor Professor of international law at the Universidad de Talca, Chile and a consultant to various international governmental and non-governmental organizations. He also has provided legal counsel to the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs on international environmental issues, and in that capacity has joined official delegations to meetings of select MEAs. In 1997-1998, Dr. Orellana completed the LL.M. program at American University Washington College of Law (WCL), during which time he also was an intern at the World Bank's Inspection Panel. In 2009 Dr. Orellana obtained his S.J.D. doctoral degree from WCL upon successful defense of a thesis entitled: Health, Safety and Environmental Measures in International Economic Law. Since 2002, Dr. Orellana has offered various courses at WCL, including: the International Law of the Sea; International Trade and the Environment; and Investment Arbitration & International Human Rights Law.  

Nicola Jägers - Triburg University. Over the past ten years Nicola Jägers has worked on the transformations that have occurred in international (human rights) law relating to changes in the relationships between states and markets and changes in the regulatory roles and capacities of NGOs and transnational business corporations. In 2002, Jägers published one of the earlier books on the issue of corporate responsibility for human rights violations Corporate Human Rights Obligations: in search of accountability. Ever since, the consequences at the national and international level of the two dominant faces of globalisation: the expansion of trade beyond borders and the universalising effects of the human rights movement have remained Jägers? core research interest resulting in (participation in) various research projects and multiple publications on the issue. More recently, she has begun to consider the ways in which regulatory approaches might be useful for the enforcement, socialisation and protection of human rights. 

Olivier de Schutter - Université Catholique de Luovain. Olivier De Schutter (LL.M., Harvard University ; Ph.D., University of Louvain (UCL)), the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food since May 2008, is a Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain and at the College of Europe (Natolin). He is also a Member of the Global Law School Faculty at New York University and is Visiting Professor at Columbia University. In 2002-2006, he chaired the EU Network of Independent Experts on Fundamental Rights, a high-level group of experts which advised the European Union institutions on fundamental rights issues. He has acted on a number of occasions as expert for the Council of Europe and for the European Union. Since 2004, and until his appointment as the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, he has been the General Secretary of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) on the issue of globalization and human rights. His publications are in the area of international human rights and fundamental rights in the EU, with a particular emphasis on economic and social rights and on the relationship between human rights and governance. His most recent book is International Human Rights Law (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).

Robert McCorquodale - British Institute of International and Comparative Law. Robert McCorquodale graduated in both economics and law from the University of Sydney, Australia. After working for a number of years as a lawyer with leading firms in Sydney and London, and after completing his LLM, he became a Fellow, Lecturer and Director of Studies in Law at St. John's College, University of Cambridge in 1988. He then became Associate Professor in International and Human Rights Law, and Head of School, at the Australian National University, before being appointed Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Nottingham in 2000. He was Head of the School of Law from January 2004 to December 2007 and is currently on secondment for five years as the Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. Robert's teaching and research interests are in the areas of international law, human rights law and constitutional law, with his primary research interests being in international human rights law. He has provided advice and training to governments (in both developed and developing countries), corporations, organisations and peoples, concerning international law and human rights issues, including advising on the drafting of new constitutions. He is co-author of one of the leading texts in international law: Cases and Materials on International Law (4th ed., 2003); and is on the editorial board of a number of respected academic journals. 

Surya Deva - City University of Hong Kong. Surya Deva is an Associate Professor at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong.  Professor Deva’s primary research interests lie in Business and Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility, Indo-Chinese Constitutional Law, International Human Rights, and Sustainable Development.  He has published extensively in these areas.  His books include Socio-Economic Rights in Emerging Free Markets: Comparative Insights from India and China (editor) (Routledge, forthcoming in 2015); Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? (co-edited with David Bilchitz) (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Confronting Capital Punishment in Asia: Human Rights, Politics, Public Opinion and Practices (co-edited with Roger Hood) (Oxford University Press, 2013); and Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations: Humanizing Business (Routledge, 2012).  Professor Deva has also prepared two major reports on Access to Justice: Human Rights Abuses Involving Corporations (concerning India and China) for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Geneva.  He is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal (Cambridge University Press), and sits on the Editorial Board of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights and the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law. In 2014, Professor Deva was elected a Member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law. 

William David - Indigenous Rights Centre. William (Mohawks of Akwesasne) is currently a Senior Advisor with the Assembly of First Nations and Founder and Executive Director of the Indigenous Rights Centre.  Previously, he has held positions with the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Indian Law Resource Centre, the Department of Justice and served as a Director of MiningWatch Canada. His areas of expertise include community-driven research, environmental policy, and law reform to advance indigenous rights.  He is currently focused on the obligations of corporate and government actors with respect to extractives developments in indigenous territories, including the impacts of international trade agreements on indigenous rights. He holds a SB in environmental engineering science from MIT, an LLB from the University of Ottawa and a graduate certificate in Mining Law from Osgoode.