Cataldo Louis Cammarata (HF 1977 - 78) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice
graduated in English and American literature before deciding to pursue a legal career. He graduated from Aix-en-Provence law school and joined the French Bar in 1976. While taking the Bar exam, Cataldo decided to apply for post graduate studies at a US university and was admitted to the Harvard Law School. But it was the award of a Harkness Fellowship that allowed his dream to be fulfilled. The Harkness support changed his cultural approach and professional career. Cataldo’s exposure to American culture and high educational standards made him realize his future would be unmistakably different to the one he had imagined. It allowed him to consider a wider, international frontier beyond his previous European ambitions. After travelling throughout the United States following his graduation from Harvard, Cataldo returned to Paris and rejoined the Bar where he is still practicing. He lectured for over ten years at both the Sorbonne and Aix-en-Provence law schools. Although a staunch Anglophile, Cataldo says he would never have made it practicing at international level had he not been awarded a Harkness Fellowship. Currently, he practices in Paris at Squadra Avocats, a law firm he founded in 2004 and which houses a corporate international full-service practice.
Last updated: 5th May 2021
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Koen Lenaerts (HF 1977 - 79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice
was born in 1954 in Mortsel, Belgium. He obtained his law degree in 1977 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium). With the award of a Harkness Fellowship in the same year, he continued his studies at Harvard University where he obtained a Master of Laws in 1978 and a Master in Public Administration in 1979. Returning to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven he became a Doctor of Law in 1982 and started first as a lecturer and then a professor of European law in 1983. He also taught at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium) from 1984 to 1989, and at Harvard Law School as a visiting professor in 1989. Mr Lenaerts’ career at the Court of Justice began when he became legal secretary (law clerk) to Judge René Joliet, a post he occupied from 1984 to 1985, before practising law at the Brussels Bar from 1986 to 1989. He was appointed judge at the Court of First Instance of the European Communities on 25th September 1989, the first day of this newly created court. He served on this Court for more than 14 years before being appointed judge at the Court of Justice in 2003. Mr. Lenaerts was elected by his peers as President of Chamber for two successive mandates from 2006 to 2012 and then as Vice-President of the Court of Justice in 2012. He was elected President of the Court of Justice in 2015, a post he occupies to this day.
Last updated: 5th May 2021
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David Soskin (HF 1977-79) 1970s, All Harkness Stories, Economics, Finance & Business, Law & Criminal Justice
was from an early age interested in a business career. Following a First Class Honours degree in Modern History from Magdalen College, Oxford, and a stint at an American commercial bank, he was awarded a Fellowship to study at the Harvard Business School. In 1984, after several years as management consultant, David was appointed Director of Corporate Planning for Redland PLC, a FTSE 100 company. In 1989, he left to start his first entrepreneurial venture, Asquith Court Schools which became the UK’s largest independent nursery school company. In 2000, David led a management buy-in of Cheapflights, the first travel flight price comparison business website and spent eight years as CEO and another six as a board member during which time Cheapflights purchased Momondo and became one of the world’s largest travel search companies. In 2017, Cheapflights/Momondo was acquired by the Bookings Holdings (Priceline). In 2006 David co-founded HOWZAT Partners, a Venture Capital company which invests in early- stage digital businesses globally. It has a portfolio of sixty companies. David took time out of his commercial career to work for the Prime Minister in the Number 10 Policy Unit where he advised John Major on law and order and welfare policies. David retains his interest in politics and supported the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum. David’s philanthropic activities include his support for City Year, a leading youth and education charity, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the American Civil War Trust where he is a Regimental Color Bearer.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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John Sturrock (HF 1984 – 85) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice, Politics & Public Services
QC stepped out of the legal world in 1984 as a Harkness Fellow to study for a Masters’ Degree in International Law at the University of Pennsylvania. On returning to Scotland, he resumed a career in law at the Scottish Bar but his life had been changed. In the 1990’s, inspired by connections in the US and his knowledge of its legal system, he adapted the leading advocacy skills programme of the National Institute for Trial Advocacy into a Scottish context, establishing an award winning programme for his professional colleagues. Later, he studied negotiation at Harvard under Professor Roger Fisher (of Getting to Yes fame) and, leaving law, embarked on a second career as a mediator and negotiation consultant. He has helped to transform dispute resolution in his home country and elsewhere, and is now a world-recognised figure in the conflict resolution and policy-making field, working with politicians, governments, corporate leaders, Olympic athletes and many others – and mediating in complex disputes in many different contexts, often in the public context. In May 2018, in Edinburgh, John hosted and chaired the annual conference of the International Academy of Mediators, which he regards as a culmination of a journey which started as a Harkness Fellow thirty four years earlier and which gave him the confidence to look outward and across the Atlantic for ideas, learning and friendships.
Last updated: 25th May 2018
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The Rt. Hon. Sir Rabinder Singh (HF1985-86) 1980s, All Harkness Stories, Law & Criminal Justice
is now a Lord Justice of Appeal. Having studied Law at Trinity College, Cambridge, he did a Master of Laws degree at the University of California at Berkeley. He reports that he Ioved the Bay Area and had a wonderful time travelling with a friend all over the USA, from coast to coast and back again. He particularly enjoyed the great national parks of America advising that there is no better way to see them than by camping. On his return to the UK he was a lecturer in Law at the University of Nottingham for two years before qualifying as a barrister in 1989. Rabinder then practised in London until 2011, having become a QC in 2002. He specialised in public law, human rights and employment law, all areas, he comments, in which his studies in the US had been very influential on his thinking. He was appointed to the High Court in 2011 and to the Court of Appeal in 2017.
Last updated: 14th September 2018
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