Judith Faucette

Education

Judith graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2006 with an honors Bachelor of Arts degree in History and a minor in creative writing. Her college coursework included Russian, East European, and Balkans history, graduate-level work in oral history, Queer Film & Television, and language courses in French, Russian, and German. She spent a semester abroad in Cork, Ireland, to study traditional Irish music, and also spent a month abroad in Montpellier, France, earning a certificate in Advanced French Studies from the Institut Linguistique d'Adenet. She graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law in 2009 and holds the JD degree. She focused in international law and human rights, and she also studied the Turkish language at the university. Courses include immigration law, foreign policy law, Law in the Muslim World, Russian law, European Union law, human rights law, public international law, national security law, and seminars in human rights law and policy, human trafficking, rethinking international law, and the law of war. She is currently an activist on behalf of LGBT people and women, and plans to pursue the PhD in Women's Studies, as well as an eventual professorship in a women's studies, sexuality studies, or similar department.

Work and Volunteer Experience

Judith was most recently employed by the University of Iowa Center for International Finance and Development. She has written a comprehensive briefing paper on the Russian economy, maintains a regularly-updated PDF document of helpful links and summaries on the global financial crisis, and blogs weekly about finance and development in Eastern Europe. She also served concurrently as a research assistant doing editorial work for a professor focusing on European Union law and global governance.

She previously worked as a research assistant on topics including judicial review in French and German administrative law, judicial independence in French administrative law, and judicial review of administrative action in Iowa. She conducted the majority of her research in the French and German languages. She also was the Medicaid Organizer for the Emma Goldman Clinic, a position which included research, writing, and advocacy.

She has worked in a volunteer capacity for the United Nations Association Iowa, and researched, wrote, and edited for a document on immigration in Iowa. She enjoys volunteering for Justice for Our Neighbors, assisting a local immigration attorney with client intake interviews, and started the Iowa Student Human Rights Initiative to get local high school students excited about human rights.

Extracurricular Activities

Judith is currently a member of First Unitarian Church in Baltimore and will be singing in the choir. Judith was member of the Quire LGBT Mixed Chorus and involved in the Iowa City gay and lesbian community. She was a member of OutLaws, the LGBT law student group, and vice president of the Iowa Campaign for Human Rights. As a member of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, she has traveled to South Dakota to do campaign work and to Cincinnati for a reproductive justice conference. In March, she presented a paper at the Global Arc of Justice Conference at UCLA on non-discrimination based on sexual orientation in international human rights law. She was also a student writer on the Journal for Gender, Race, and Justice and has been involved in planning for the 2009 symposium on Varnum v. Brien and same-sex marriage law. Other extracurricular pursuits include writing novels and poetry, playing music, and studying languages. She has studied French, German, Russian, Turkish, Italian, Occitan, Maori, ASL, Croatian, and Danish in the past and continues self-study whenever possible.

Publications, Awards, and Conferences

In 2009, Judith was awarded the Cain/Love Award for Social Justice and the Erich D. Mathias Award for International Social Justice. She was also runner-up for the Burns Weston Human Rights Essay Prize. Her article entitled "Human Rights in Context: The Lessons of Section 377 Challenges for Western Gay Rights Legal Reformers in the Developing World" will be published in Volume 13 of the Journal for Gender, Race, and Justice, the top-ranked gender law journal in the country. In March 2009, she presented a paper at the Global Arc of Justice Conference at UCLA. In September 2009, she will attend the Women & Power: Connecting Across Generations conference at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY.

Unpublished and Online Work

Judith maintains three blogs, A Lesbian & A Scholar, the bookblog Books Smart, and the vegetarian foodblog Shortcut to Mushrooms. She has written unpublished papers on topics including male homosexuality in Renaissance Venice and Florence, the value of history in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, New Zealand film and literature, the lesbian liberation movement in 1960s America, the evolution of the French presidency, and the problem of orientation-based discrimination in international human rights law. She also has written two novels and several short works of historical fiction.