2/13/06—Boston College Law School student Andrew Dennington (class of 2006) has been invited to present his paper, "We Are The World? Justifying The U.S. Supreme Court's Use Of Contemporary Foreign Legal Practice In Atkins, Lawrence, And Roper" at the Yale Journal of International Law Young Scholars Conference on March 4, 2006 at the Yale Law School in New Haven, CT.

Dennington’s will be one of 18 student papers presented at the conference. Of the 17 other students selected to present their papers at the conference, attendees will come from the law schools of Columbia, Cornell, University of Denver, Duke (3), Emory, Georgetown, Harvard, Indiana, Santa Clara, Southern Methodist, and Yale (4).

In a recent email to Dennington, YJIL Development Editor Intisar Rabb says that “the [student paper] competition was fierce,” and that Dennington’s paper “was amongst the very best.”

The keynote speaker for this year's conference will be William H. Taft, IV, former U.S. permanent representative to NATO, General-Counsel to the Department of Defense, and legal advisor to the U.S. Department of State. In addition, Harold Koh, Dean of the Yale Law School and Smith Professor of International Law will be opening the conference. All of the panels will be moderated by international law scholars.

Dennington’s essay, which originally appeared in BC Law’s International & Comparative Law Review, reviews the U.S. Supreme Court's recent use of foreign law to interpret the Bill of the Rights and considers when and why contemporary foreign legal materials may be relevant to a principled, objective mode of interpreting the U.S. Constitution.