Date and Time
March 14, 2007
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Availability
RSVP Required

Speaker
Richard Messick - Senior Public Sector Specialist at The World Bank

Richard E. Messick, Senior Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank and co-leader of its Thematic Group on Law and Justice Institutions, advises Bank staff and judges, justice ministry officials and other senior policymakers in developing and transition countries on judicial reform and anticorruption issues. He developed and teaches a three day course for Bank staff, "The Nuts-and-Bolts of Judicial Reform," offered annually in partnership with the Legal Department and has published extensively on topics related to judicial reform and anticorruption policy. He maintains a Web site on the latest developments in these fields: (www.worldbank/publicsector/legal).

Prior to joining the Bank he was a senior consultant to Freedom House, a U.S. based organization that promotes human rights and freedom around the globe, a senior fellow at the Instituto Libertad y Democracia in Lima, Peru, and an advisor to the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, a non-governmental organization located in Kyiv, Ukraine. At the ILD Mr. Messick conducted research on property rights and their role in economic development. For Freedom House he developed a method for rating the level of economic freedom across nations that formed the basis of the organization's World Survey of Economic Freedom, and he advised the UCIPR on the governance and economic issues associated with the transition from a planned economy to a free society.

Mr. Messick began his career as a consultant on oil and gas regulation in the United States, working for the U.S. Senate and later the George Washington Energy Policy Research Project where he co-authored a monograph and several journal articles on competition in the U.S. energy industry. After graduating from law school, he specialized in complex commercial litigation, representing clients in federal and state courts in criminal and civil matters throughout the U.S. He was co-counsel in In re Corrugated Container Antitrust Litigation, the largest price fixing case ever to be tried to a jury, and in 1997 the United States District Court for the District of Columbia recognized him for his work on behalf of indigent plaintiffs in civil litigation.

He served as chief counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the 99th Congress. His writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as well as in such academic journals as the American Political Science Review and Judicature. His "The Origins and Development of Courts," initially written for the World Development Report 2002 has been widely reprinted.