Dyan Gershman is an established presence in the New York City legal community who leads Gershman Law, PLLC, and has handled diverse matters spanning mergers and acquisitions, commercial contracts and business disputes. With a strong focus on issues that matter, Dyan Gershman is active with legal nonprofits such as the New York City Bar Association’s (NYCBA) Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice.
In 2022 the center announced the creation of a joint committee, in tandem with the Mexican Bar Foundation, that seeks to bolster democratic and judicial institutions across international borders. Mexican attorneys are engaged in a struggle to ensure that the judiciary remains independent under a leader, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was elected to a six-year term in 2018.
President Obrador has taken a strong stance against attorneys who provide international companies with defense services, calling them “traitors” and describing the country’s judicial branch as one that is loyal to private interests. He has taken actions such as appointing ideological supporters to the Mexican Supreme Court and discrediting democratic institutions and its underlying system of checks and balances. With the nation having a lengthy history of authoritarianism, there is a danger of slipping back into a less equitable and transparent form of governance.
The joint committee aims to develop a collaborative network of pro bono support focused on relevant areas such as rule of law, judicial and prosecutorial independence, media freedom, and corruption. Noting that governability breakdowns are also occurring north of the border, the committee will look at related issues in the United States.
