Courses Offered:

Constitutional Law II
Torts

Representative Publications:

• From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies in The Sword and the Scales: The United States and International Courts and Tribunals, ed. C. Romano (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
  
• Rethinking the "Less as More" Thesis: Supranational Litigation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Americas, 39 NYU J. Int'l L. & Pol. 171 (2006).
  
• Counter-Rejoinder. Justice vs. Justiciability? Normative Neutrality and Technical Precision, The Role of the Lawyer in Supranational Social Rights Litigation, 39 NYU J. Int'l L. & Pol. 385 (2006).
  
• The U.N. Disability Convention: Historic Process, Strong Prospects and Why the U.S. Should Ratify, 14(2) Human Rights Brief 1 (2007).
  
• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Beyond Progressivity in Social Rights Jurisprudence: Emerging Trends in Comparative and International Law, ed. M. Langford (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
  
• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Defending Social Rights through Case-based Petitions in Social Rights Jurisprudence: Emerging Trends in Comparative and International Law, ed. M. Langford (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
  
• Protecting Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Inter-American Human Rights System: A Manual on Presenting Claims (Yale Law School & CDES, 2002) (peer-reviewed in 25 Human Rights Quarterly 1154 (2003)).
  
• Human Rights to Food in Guatemala: From Rhetoric to Reality (Wayland Press, 1998).

Professional Biographical Information:

Tara J. Melish joined Georgia Law for the spring of 2008 as a visiting assistant professor teaching constitutional law and torts. She has taught courses in constitutional law, criminal law, human rights and international litigation as a visiting faculty member at the University of Virginia and St. Thomas University and has served as visiting scholar at the George Washington University School of Law.

A specialist in using international procedures to effect domestic rights protections, Melish has served as staff attorney and legal advisor to the Center for Justice and International Law, as associate social affairs officer in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and as Mental Disability Rights International's U.N. representative in the drafting negotiations of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol. Professor Melish additionally serves as consultant or adviser to a range of domestic and international organizations, publishes and lectures widely on human rights issues and has served as law clerk to the Honorable James R. Browning of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit as well as the South African Land Claims Court.

Active in reporting procedures and litigation initiatives before UN and OAS bodies, her research interests include comparative rights adjudication, justiciability standards, use of balancing tests across jurisdictions, and the scope and adjudicable dimensions of treaty-based human rights obligations. Professor Melish has degrees from Brown University and the Yale Law School and has been the recipient of professional research awards from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Yale Law School.