International law program names associate director

Legal scholar and attorney Sumudu Atapattu has been named associate director of the Global Legal Studies Initiative, a joint program of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School and UW–Madison Division of International Studies.

Heinz Klug, law professor and program director, says her combination of academic, legal, administrative and international experience made Atapattu an outstanding choice.

Klug says Atapattu’s appointment will “amplify the Global Legal Studies Initiative, which will now be engaged both in the expansion of campuswide research into global and comparative legal issues and in the management and further development of our study abroad program.”

Atapattu, an accomplished legal academic and a human rights lawyer from Sri Lanka, is also an “excellent teacher who will help strengthen the international law curricula,” Klug notes.

Atapattu holds an LL.M. in public international law and a Ph.D. in international environmental law from the University of Cambridge. She is also an attorney-at-law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.

She teaches Selected Problems in Environmental Law: International Environmental Law as a UW–Madison Law School lecturer and previously was a visiting scholar at the school’s Institute for Legal Studies.