Thank you for your interest in Catholic University’s International Human Rights Summer Law Program in Rome, Italy! Susanna F. Fischer, Director, International Human Rights Summer Law Program in Rome, Italy, is looking forward to welcoming another enthusiastic group of students and faculty to the Rome Program in Summer 2026. 

Susanna F. Fischer, Director, International Human Rights Summer Law Program in Rome, Italy, and Director, Comparative and International Law Institute 
fischer@cua.edu

Susanna Frederick Fischer has practiced law on both sides of the Atlantic, as a New York attorney and an English barrister. Her primary areas of practice and her main research interests are copyright law, art law, media law, cyberlaw, and constitutional law, from a comparative law perspective.

Professor Fischer received her legal education at Merton College, University of Oxford, where she received a B.A. in jurisprudence, and the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was awarded the LL.M. degree. She also studied at Princeton University, where she earned an A.B. in history, magna cum laude.

She practiced for five years as a barrister in London, England, at 5 Raymond Buildings (currently headed by Desmond Browne QC and Matthew Nicklin QC). She represented clients before all levels of English courts and tribunals, including the House of Lords. In London, she also worked part-time as a Night Lawyer providing pre-publication legal advice for News International plc, the publishers of The Times, The Sunday Times, and the Sun. She also taught Contracts at London Guildhall University. She later spent three years practicing intellectual property law as an associate at two New York City law firms, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP.

Professor Fischer joined the faculty of Columbus School of Law in 1999, where she teaches or has taught copyright law, art law, entertainment law, introduction to intellectual property law, international intellectual property law, constitutional law, comparative law, comparative constitutional law, and civil procedure. She has taught courses on intellectual property law in Krakow, Poland, for the American Law Program jointly run by the Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America and the Jagiellonian University, as well as for the summer program in International Business and Trade held at the Jagiellonian University. She has also taught a summer course at the University of Lisbon in Portugal.

She served as the native English language consultant for a translation of the Polish Civil Code into English, published by Wolters Kluwer Polska in 2012.

Stacy Brustin is the Director of the Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Clinic of Columbus Community Legal Services, the law school’s on-campus clinical education program. She supervises students engaged in litigation, limited assistance, and policy reform on behalf of immigrants and refugees in D.C. and Virginia. She also has expertise in family law and public benefits matters. She publishes and conducts presentations in the areas of access to justice, immigrant rights, family law, professional responsibility and clinical legal education.

Professor Brustin came to the Columbus School of Law in 1991. While at Catholic University, Professor Brustin served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2006-2009 and as the director of the LL.M program from 2010 - 2017. She also directed the Civil Practice Clinic. Professor Brustin recently taught an Immigration/Human Rights Seminar in the CUA Law School Rome Summer Program and has taught The American Litigation Process at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Professor Brustin was appointed to the D.C. Access to Justice Commission in 2017 and is active in the D.C. legal services advocacy community. She serves on the Board of Advisors of Ayuda.

Professor Brustin received her B.A. from Tufts University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She was awarded a Ferguson Post-Graduate Fellowship from Harvard to study human rights and community legal education in Mexico. Upon her return to the United States, she began working as a staff attorney at Ayuda, Inc., a non-profit legal services agency serving the immigrant and refugee community in Washington D.C. In 1991, she founded the Hermanas Unidas (Sisters United) Community Education Project, a program of Ayuda, Inc., designed to help immigrant survivors of domestic violence advocate for themselves and their families.

Chad Squitieri joined the Catholic Law faculty in 2022 after having practiced law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP as a member of the Appellate and Constitutional Law and Administrative Law and Regulatory practice groups. He previously served as a Special Assistant to former United States Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia, and as a law clerk to then-Chief Judge D. Brooks Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Professor Squitieri’s scholarship addresses administrative law and constitutional law topics. His scholarship has appeared in the Missouri Law Review, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and the Virginia Law Review, among other publications. He also serves as a Fellow within the Project for Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT). Professor Squitieri graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2016, and Florida State University in 2013