About This Journal
For nearly fifty years, the Denver Journal of International Law & Policy has served to advance our understanding of the rights of humans, animals, and the environment.
The Denver Journal of International Law & Policy was founded by Professor Ved Nanda in 1971. The impact of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s, globalization, and the proliferation of international organizations and treaties necessitated new ways of thinking about international law and policies. Questions about how human rights intersected with national sovereignty and global markets propelled international law into an increasingly significant area of legal study and research. Professor Nanda launched the Journal to provide a forum for scholars to explore developments in international law and in our way of thinking about the world.
Forty years later, as the Arab Spring spread across North Africa and the Middle East, Professor Nanda and the Journal staff founded the Denver Journal of International Law & Policy Online Forum (then known as The View From Above). The first Online Forum empowered real-time conversations about how the protests for human rights protections and reactions to the unrest by each nation implicated our assumptions about the function and utility of traditional international policies in our fast-paced, global society. Through the Forum, scholarly discussions on how to advance human rights were made available to anyone with an internet connection and enabled experts in international law to advance immediately practical interventions and strategies.
Ved Nanda served as the faculty advisor to the Journal for 46 years. During that time, Professor Nanda served on innumerable panels of experts, as a rapporteur for the United Nations, and helped draft national constitutions and international conventions, including the Convention Against Torture, embedding into each his respect for individuals and human rights as a legacy for decades to come. With the founding of the Ved Nanda Center of International & Comparative Law in 2006, Professor Nanda continues his vision to further our understanding of how public and private international law interests intersect in the world of practical legal application.
Professor Annecoos Wiersema became the Journal’s faculty advisor in 2018. In addition to her position as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law, Professor Wiersema is a leading expert in international law and international environmental law. Her work on the conservation of wildlife has reached every continent, and with her recent TEDxMileHigh talk, Tiger Penis & Rhino Horn: The World of Illegal Wildlife Trade, which draws on her academic writing in the last few years, her expertise on international wildlife law now spans the globe. With Professor Wiersema’s leadership and support, the Journal redesigned the Online Forum to offer scholars and practitioners a more functional interface to both the print Journal and our online publications.
Today, both the Denver Journal of International Law & Policy and the Online Forum bring scholars, students, practitioners, and the public together to explore and define the ever-changing field of international law. In keeping with the original intent of the Journal, both publications maintain a focus on exploring the intersection of international law and the rights of people, animals, and the environment.