makeitstopalready

The LORs should be from people who know you well and can speak highly of your work, your quality as a human being, and your potential. The ad com will read these letters not for who wrote them, for the most part, but what's in them. That being said, if you have a LOR writer or a contact who knows someone at your dream school, by all means see if they are willing to send an e-mail on your behalf. As others have said, a POI won't have much influence on admissions unless they're on the ad com, but they CAN get you from the big pile into the smaller pile of the committee if they mention you to the committee.

Please don't let the first-years and MA students here be too discouraging. What is more important than picking some narrow specialty at this point is identifying a personal reason for wanting to pursue the PhD, and then allowing that to guide your decisions. Human rights, transitional justice, and all the other things you list are FINE as research interests, and you could go pretty far saying those things. What you have to figure out is what animates your desire to do research, find a place and people that would be supportive of that, and proceed from that point. You can easily narrow down schools that have faculty and facilities that would make that possible. Your legal background will actually be a strength if you were to pursue a PhD in this or a cognate field. You can credibly claim to have experiences that sharpen your interests. And don't listen to the advice to pick up the nearest copy of American Political Science Review, which is in no way, shape, or form the top journal for the kinds of things you're interested in. Pick up a copy of International Organizations or International Studies Quarterly, which are much closer to where you'd be aiming yourself in future in any case. Good luck, and I hope you find the proper path for you.

Syracuse has a small political theory program, but depending on your strain of Marxism, but may be worth considering. Check out the work of Mark Rupert, who is concerned with Marx (and Gramsci) from an IR perspective.