Biography
Professor Davidson teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, international criminal law, and international human rights. Her scholarship explores international and comparative criminal law and human rights, in recent years with a focus on sexual and gender-based violence.
Davidson brings to Willamette extensive international experience. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Chile's Faculty of Law from 2017-2018 where she conducted field research on domestic Chilean prosecutions for dictatorship-era atrocities. Prior to joining Willamette, she worked as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, where she served on the trial teams in two multi-year, multi-defendant trials against military and civilian leaders for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In 2005, Davidson worked on a team of international lawyers assisting with domestic atrocity investigations and prosecutions in the Prosecutor’s Office of the then newly-created State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. During law school, Davidson interned at Human Rights Watch in Brazil. Prior to law school, Davidson worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co. in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Davidson also has experience in criminal defense and civil litigation domestically. She served as an assistant federal public defender in Portland, Oregon, where she represented indigent clients in a variety of federal indictment matters and in federal habeas corpus litigation. She worked as a litigation associate at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin (now Arnold & Porter) in San Francisco.
Davidson clerked for Judge Alfred T. Goodwin of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
She graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was an executive editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. She studied history and romance languages at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
Davidson speaks Spanish and French fluently and is proficient (albeit rusty) in Portuguese, German, and Italian. She is admitted to the state bar of Oregon (active) and California (inactive status).
Selected Publications
- Femicide in International Criminal Law, forthcoming Harv. J. of L. & Gender 2023.
- Speaking Femicide, 71 AM. U. L. R. 377 (2021).
- Of Old Men, Country Clubs, and Atrocities—The Visualities and Externalities of Prosecuting Elderly Human Rights Violators in Chile, forthcoming J. OF INT’L CRIM. J. (2021).
- Strict Construction, Deontics, and International Criminal Law, 35 TEMPLE INT’L & COMPAR. L.J. 69 (2021) (invited).
- Aging Out—Elderly Defendants and International Crimes, 61 VIRG. J. INT’L L. 1 (2020).
- ICL By Analogy—The Use of International Criminal Law in the Chilean Human Rights Prosecutions, 26 U.C. DAVIS J. INT’L L. & POL’Y 1 (2020).
- Nunca Más Meets #NiUnaMenos—The Prosecution of Pinochet-Era Sexual Violence in Chile, 51 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. (2019).
- Rape in Context: Lessons for the United States from the International Criminal Court, 39 CARDOZO L. REV. 1191 (2018).
- How to Read International Criminal Law — Strict Construction and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 91 ST. JOHN’S L. REV. 37 (2017).
- Explaining Inhumanity: The Use of Crime-Definition Experts at International Criminal Courts, 48 VAND. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 359 (2015).
- State Constitutional Protections for Pretrial Detainees, 19 BERKELEY J. CRIM. L. 1 (2014).
- May It Please the Crowd? Public Confidence, Public Order and Public Opinion in Bail for International Criminal Defendants, 43 COLUM. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 349 (2012).
- Book Review of M. Cherif Bassiouni, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: HISTORICAL EVOLUTION AND CONTEMPORARY APPLICATION (Cambridge University Press 2011), 34 HUM. RTS Q. 1193 (2012) (invited).
- No Shortcuts on Human Rights: Bail and the International Criminal Trial, 60 AM. U. L. REV. 1 (2010).
- Tort au canadien: A Proposal for Canadian Tort Legislation on Gross Violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, 38 VAND. J. TRANSNAT’L L. 1403 (2005).
Opinions & Editorials
Now Should We Speak Femicide? Ms.Magazine.com, June 15, 2021.