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What's New? | Faculty in the News |  News Archive | News Home
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Two Students and Recent Grad Publish Articles Taiwanese Independence, Sudanese Refugees and Seamen’s Arbitration Addressed Oct. 24, 2007 – Recent law review articles by Brooklyn Law School students and a recent graduate address a range of subjects and propose original solutions to vexing legal problems. Jean Wen ’08 explores possible outcomes of the political standoff between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Zona Sharfman ’08 proposes a solution to discrimination against female refugees from Sudan. And Jarred Pinkston ’06 argues that seamen should be exempted from a requirement that employment claims involving international law must be arbitrated. Jean Wen ’08 Addresses China/Taiwan Standoff in Columbia Journal
“While most of the international community officially ‘recognizes’ the PRC’s ‘one-China’ policy, Taiwan is often treated as an independent state,” explains Jean. How should the rest of the world deal with the PRC’s aggression toward Taiwan, a democratic nation that has asserted independence yet is still treated as part of the PRC? In her paper, Jean argues that if Taiwan were to concede to the PRC’s “one-China” policy, it should do so under one condition – that the PRC agree to free and fair elections with the participation of all of the Chinese people, including those in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland. She asserts that Taiwan's current status must be either that of an independent state or a de facto entity/de facto state, entitling it to full international legal status. She discusses the PRC’s current violations of international law against Taiwan and concludes that international armed conflict between the PRC and Taiwan can be avoided through the use of internationally monitored elections. Jean wrote the article for the “Law of War” course taught at Brooklyn Law School by Judge Evan J. Wallach of the U.S. Court of International Trade. She credits him with providing the tools and encouragement to help her “think outside of the box” in analyzing current international legal issues. Philip Sutter ’07, a fellow classmate in Judge Wallach’s course, and Volker Schieck, an econometrician, were also helpful in her research and in the editing process, she says. Raised in Seattle by parents who came from Taiwan, Jean has visited the island many times. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and conversational in German. After earning a B.A. at New York University, she became a freelance columnist for bilingual magazines in Beijing. She lived and studied in Beijing between her junior and senior years of college, and also worked as a paralegal at Miller & Wrubel, P.C. in New York. At Brooklyn Law School, Jean has received a CALI Excellence for the Future Award and a Carswell Scholarship. She interned at the Federal Trade Commission and at Viacom Inc., and is currently a judicial intern for U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis of the Southern District of New York. Zona Sharfman ’08 Spotlights Sudan’s “Lost Girls”
Zona learned about the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” who have been the subjects of many recent films and books, through reading a memoir by three of the Lost Boys, which told the harrowing story of their flight from war-torn villages in Sudan and their trek through Ethiopia to a refugee camp in Kenya. Only about half of the 27,000 boys, many no older than five, who made the journey survived. Over two million Sudanese died in the war, and in 2001, with no peace in sight, the United States granted asylum to 3,800 children, mostly boys. Zona wanted to know why so few of the female refugees were relocated. When she took “Women and the Law,” a course taught by Elizabeth M. Schneider, Zona explored the issue in depth and uncovered de facto gender discrimination by refugee agencies. Professor Schneider provided encouragement and supervision as Zona dug deeper into the history and culture behind the issue and explored possible legal remedies. In her paper, Zona writes that one criterion used by refugee agencies in the selection of children for relocation is that the child be an “unaccompanied minor,” which may work to the disadvantage of girls. In Sudanese culture and tradition, and especially during the upheavals of civil war, orphaned girls as young as 10 may be sold by their relatives into marriage. Then, because they have a spouse, they are counted as “accompanied minors” and excluded from relocation programs. A recent holding in Gao v. Gonzales might help pave the way for some of the “Lost Girls” to make a claim for asylum, according to Zona’s paper. Asylum may be granted if a person can show a well-founded fear of persecution (or past persecution) based on one of five grounds, including membership in a particular social group. The Gao court held that certain Chinese women who were sold into marriage could satisfy the membership in a particular social group requirement – a limited holding that Zona says could help the Sudanese girls. Long interested in international policy and culture, Zona was raised in Beverly, Massachusetts and is fluent in Spanish. Since high school, she has spent time during her studies in Mexico, Chile, Buenos Aires and Madrid. She holds an M.A. in Hispanic literature from New York University and has interned during law school at Eiges & Eiges, a firm that focuses on immigration law. Jarred Pinkston ’06 Explores Arbitration Requirement for Seamen
In law school, Pinkston read a group of court decisions holding that the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards compelled the arbitration of all claims arising from seamen’s employment, including personal injury claims. He found, however, that the original Federal Arbitration Act contained an explicit exemption from arbitration for such claims, which provided a unique protection to seamen. Pinkston read hundreds of court decisions on seamen’s employment arbitration while interning with Judge Delissa Ridgway of the U.S. Court of International Trade in the summer of 2005. “Many decisions didn’t sit right with me,” he says, which led him to conduct further research and discuss his ideas with Judge Ridgway. He also consulted with Professor Claire Kelly, who encouraged him to write a proposal for a paper. As part of the BLS Fall Exchange Program in 2005, he studied at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany, where he further refined his ideas. The result, “New York’s Unwelcoming Harbor: The New York Convention’s Inapplicability to Claims Arising from Seamen’s Employment,” was published in the Spring 2007 issue of the BYU journal. In his article, Pinkston takes issue with the reasoning in cases such as Bautista v. Star Cruises, in which a court compelled arbitration in the Philippines of injury claims by seamen who survived a boiler explosion on a cruise ship docked at the Port of Miami-Dade. The case “leads courts to compel the arbitration of all claims arising from seamen’s employment whenever a foreign element exists to the employee-employer relationship,” writes Pinkston, who argues that Congress did not intend to withdraw the greater judicial protection that has historically been afforded to seamen. Growing up in the small, rural town of Farmington, Missouri, Pinkston became intrigued with international affairs at an early age, in part because his family hosted several foreign exchange students. He studied in Germany and Austria, and earned a B.S. and two B.A. degrees, one in international studies and one in German, from the University of Missouri. At Brooklyn Law School, he interned with several judges, the Austrian Mission to the United Nations, and the Kings County District Attorney’s Office. “Brooklyn Law School offers so many great opportunities for someone with a strong interest in international law,” he says.
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