Full Biography
Janelle M. Diller has practiced international law for 30 years in public and private sectors. She worked as legal counsel to the International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency in Geneva, and as Legal Director of the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington D.C. She recently served as Paul Martin Sr. Professor of International Affairs and Law at the University of Windsor and holds research posts at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva) and the Max Planck Institute of Comparative Public and International Law (Heidelberg). She is Senior Lecturer at the University of Bern’s Institute of Public Law and has taught at Georgetown University, University of Virginia, and other US law schools.
Professor Diller’s Fulbright project explores the State’s role in facilitating inclusive regulatory governance of transnational activities affecting human rights and social justice. Emerging evidence suggests that consensual decision-making by the State in cooperation with representative private actors helps to advance human rights and to connect transnational regulatory action with national and international law and institutions. Professor Diller’s research builds on typologies of transnational regulatory initiatives in which she was closely involved in her work for the ILO, including ranaplaza-arrangement.org. By comparing factors and results at work in different types of arrangements involving the exercise of public and private authority, the project aims to understand the nature of cooperative governance and how it effectively addresses transnational challenges to human rights and social justice.
Professor Diller authored Securing Dignity and Freedom through Human Rights (Brill), recognized by the UN among the world’s leading Research Guides for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Her numerous international law publications focus on human rights, labour, transnational business, and international organizations. She is a member of the California and District of Colombia (US) bars.