The Planethood Foundation, a private foundation based in White Plains, New York, has awarded Vanderbilt Law School a grant to support students engaged in international externships focusing on criminal law.
The $7,500 grant for 2008 will help defray expenses incurred by Vanderbilt law students participating in semester or summer externships with the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or the Special Court of Sierra Leone.This is the second consecutive year that the Planethood Foundation has provided a grant to support students who participate in these projects.
"We appreciate the Planethood Foundation’s willingness to continue to support our students’ involvement in these important projects," Laurence R. Helfer, director of Vanderbilt’s International Legal Studies Program, said. “Our students not only provide an important service through their participation in these externships, which are unpaid, but they also learn a great deal about the application of the international rule of law across international borders.”
Professor Michael A. Newton, who develops international externship opportunities for students in the law school’s International Legal Studies Program, will oversee student applications for externships at the international criminal tribunals.
Planethood was established in 1996 to focus on programs relating to international justice, the rule of law, and conflict resolution. Planethood is a member of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, the Peace and Security Foundation, and the Security Funders Group, and the Association of Small Foundationsand based in White Plains, New York. The name Planethood was taken from a book co-authored by Ben Ferencz, one of the surviving prosecutors of the Nuremberg tribunals, and the Planethood Foundation’s philosophy derives from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s statement that "the world no longer has a choice between force and law. If civilization is to survive, it must choose the rule of law."