Milena Sterio, Assistant Professor

A few years ago, the objects of “piracy” seemed to have shifted from galleons to copyright. Music, software, and other “content” are still being stolen, but so are actual ships, oil, and tanks - not to say hostages. The U.S. Navy, European Union, Russia, China, and India all have warships in the Indian Ocean, seeking to defend maritime traffic against pirates, based mainly in Somalia. There are other hotspots, such as the Straits of Malacca and the coast of Nigeria. The United Nations Security Council has adopted an unusual resolution authorizing force against pirates in Somalia’s territorial waters.

Speaker Bio: Professor Milena Sterio, an expert on international law and war crimes, earned her law degree, magna cum laude, from Cornell Law School in 2002. At Cornell, she was Order of the Coif, general editor of the Cornell International Law Journal and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 2003, she earned a master’s degree, cum laude, in Private International Law from the University Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne; in 2002, she earned a Maitrise en droit franco-americain cum laude, also from the Sorbonne. Her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, in Political Science and French Literature, is from Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Before joining the Cleveland-Marshall faculty, she was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and an Adjunct Law Professor at Cornell, where she taught in the International War Crimes Clinic. She has published in the Connecticut International Law Journal, the Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law, the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, the Florida Journal of International Law, and the UC Davis Journal of International Law and Policy.