This month, the University of Georgia School of Law hosted a delegation from Rio de Janeiro State University (“UERJ”) in Brazil. The two-day visit explored a range of opportunities for institutional collaboration, including legal trainings and faculty exchanges. UERJ is a top-ranked public research university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and its law school is one of the oldest in Brazil.
The UERJ delegation included Mr. Henrique Couto da Nóbrega, UERJ’s Chief Legal Officer; Dr. Rose Melo Vencelau Meireles, Adjunct Professor of Civil Law at UERJ; and Ms. Hannah Coutinho, Division Chief and Financial Advisor for Mr. Nóbrega. The meeting was facilitated by Georgia Law alumnus and Rusk Council Advisory member Mr. Alexandre Jorge Fontes Laranjeira (LL.M. ’23). They met with Dean Usha R. Rodrigues, University Professor & M.E. Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance and Securities Law; Center staff Sarah Quinn, Taher Benany, Mandy Dixon, and Lindsay Weinmann; and Lynne Moore Nelson, Executive Director of the Institute of Continuing Judicial Education.
The University of Georgia School of Law’s Foreign and International Law Librarian Anne Burnett received the Hall of Fame Award from the American Association of Law Libraries, honoring her contributions to the profession and her proven track record of excellence in her career as “noteworthy, substantial, and long-standing.”
Burnett is the fourth person associated with the Alexander Campbell King Law Library to win this award. The other winners were previous law library directors Erwin Surrency, Ann Puckett, and Carol A. Watson.
Burnett has been the foreign and international law librarian at the University of Georgia School of Law Alexander Campbell King Law Library since 1996. Burnett serves as the primary provider of reference services for the international, foreign and comparative law collections and is a member of the library’s research team. Burnett also teaches courses in international legal research, advanced legal research and the LL.M. Legal System of the United States course.
Today, we welcome a guest post by William Stowers, a member of the University of Georgia School of Law class of 2027. Stowers is the seventeenth Georgia Law student to participate in a semester-long international externship and the fourth recipient of a grant from the Halle Foundation to support his externship in Germany. The semester-long externships overseas initiative is an extension of the Center’s existing Global Externships Overseas and is offered jointly between the Center and the law school’s Clinical and Experiential Program. Stowers’ post describes his experience as a legal extern with Bodenheimer, a German law firm specializing in international arbitration. Stowers spent time in both Bodenheimer’s Cologne and Berlin offices, where he worked under Georgia Law alumnus Dr. Christof Siefarth (LL.M., ’86). Dr. Siefarth, who is also a member of the Dean Rusk International Law Center’s Advisory Council, is a Partner at Bodenheimer.
“Say yes to everything.” Professor Jessica Heywood gave my classmates and me this advice on the first day of our seminar for our semester-long Global Externships Overseas (GEOs). At the time, I had yet to depart for my semester in Germany or start my externship with Bodenheimer under Dr. Christof Siefarth (LL.M. ’86). Little did I know just what taking that advice would look like over the next three months.
I was greeted on the first day of my externship with flowers, a laptop, and an onboarding list. For those of us who had prior careers and externships, a first day is almost comforting in its regularity. After onboarding came lunch with my “BOB,” BODENHEIMER’s version of a mentor. My BOB was just a couple of doors down, and would be there for me throughout my time in Cologne and at the firm. During our first lunch, the following exchange took place:
“Oh, it’s great that you’ll be here for Karneval.”
“I’m sorry, for what?”
Looking back, this exchange brings a smile to my face. Carnival, or Karneval, is of course the Catholic celebration preceding Lent. I have seen videos of my friends revel in the streets and on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro for this February bacchanal, but I figured that this was an isolated event. As it turns out, Cologne loves Carnival, and it is apparently the second largest celebration for the event in the world. However, before the festivities began, I of course had real work to do.
Almost immediately, I became involved in my very first international commercial dispute headed to arbitration. When I arrived, the parties were filing their final submissions and the arbitration hearing was scheduled just a few weeks after my first day in Frankfurt. The dispute was a complicated one, as cross-border commercial disputes often are, and I was swimming through information. It was exciting, but not as exciting as observing my first hearing in person. While it was an international, cross-border arbitration, the applicable law was German, most of the lawyers were German-qualified, and the arbitrator was a German lawyer. Unlike American courts, where the parties face the judge, the parties here faced each other. Unlike American courts, where the witness faces the parties and the jury, witnesses here sat in between the parties and faced the arbitral panel. Unlike American trial court proceedings, where judges usually limit their questions to clarifications, the arbitral panel here had multiple substantive questions that they could ask the witnesses. To be sure, I spent most of the hearing just watching. Watching the witnesses, the lawyers, the panel. It was all just different from my own experience in court. The mock trial kid and wannabe litigator in me kept lurching forward at different points to object to hearsay, speculation, and other things. Of course, the Federal Rules of Evidence don’t apply here. And, in all fairness, thank goodness. After the day and a half of hearings concluded, we returned to Cologne.
Pretty soon, the streets became populated with celebrants in colorful costumes and traditional uniforms, and visits to nearby breweries for pints of Kölsch were absolutely mandatory. The Thursday of Carnival, which is sort of the official beginning of the holiday, I was instructed not to wear a necktie lest a female colleague or perhaps a random stranger cut it off below the knot. I was also instructed that my innocent attempt at joining in the celebrations linguistically, by which I mean I wished a colleague “Guten Karneval,” was horribly wrong. The proper greeting was “Kölle Alaaf,” roughly translating to “Cologne above all.” The city was essentially on holiday until the next week. Parades began on that following Sunday, in which one of my friends participated. As a former marching band kid, I’m not sure I have ever seen such colorful and vivacious parades. The celebratory weekend peaks with Rose Monday (Rosenmontag). For not the first time in my life, I missed this main celebration in order to travel to New Delhi for a wedding. Yes, I was going directly from a German festival weekend to an Indian nuptial weekend. I returned over a week later and put myself on bed rest. Well, I intended to. My time in Cologne was quickly coming to an end and I had a few things on my list to do before I moved to Berlin.
“Moving to Berlin?” a friend from home asked, insinuating that the term “moving” was not appropriate. Relocating? Geographically displacing myself? As lawyers in training, words matter. But there’s no need to make things unnecessarily complicated. My move to Berlin came at a perfect time. BODENHEIMER’s Cologne office was packing up and getting ready to set up a new office. The Berlin office, on the other hand, had been packed up and its new space was almost ready. After a couple of days getting settled into my accommodations for the remainder of the semester, which I was subletting from a friend of a friend, the new Berlin office was ready. After a few stops on the S-Bahn (light rail) to the Warschauer Straße station and an incredibly short walk to the banks of the Spree River, I arrived at BODENHEIMER’s new Berlin home. The newly renovated office smelled like it – fresh paint, new floors, and cardboard boxes full of equipment and files. I have to admit I found it poetic and just plain cool to begin this next chapter alongside the firm’s new chapter.
Over the remaining weeks in Berlin, my work continued. I supported the submission of a statement of claim for another transnational contractual dispute, conducted various research tasks, and assisted with contract drafting for our clients. At the same time, I was reconnecting with my friends in Berlin who I had met in the course of my previous travels and made new connections through them and my three flatmates, all of whom were incredibly gracious, kind, and patient. While I had settled into a routine and fallen in love with Cologne, I felt like I was settling into Berlin. After a quick trip to Dublin with a classmate and then a short sojourn to London to align with my mother’s theatre trip to the West End, landing back at the Berlin Airport brought the strangest feeling. For much of my life, landing at Hartsfield-Jackson felt like coming “home.” After college, for several years landing at San Francisco International began to feel like “home.” After just a few weeks, landing back in Berlin started to give me that same feeling.
As my time in Germany and at BODENHEIMER came to an end, the weather began defrosting (did I mention I spent most of my semester in the thirties and forties?). Flowers all along the Spree began to bloom, and I unofficially declared our first team lunch outside alongside one of the canals a proper occasion, where we all ordered Weißer Spargel mit Schnitzel (white asparagus with schnitzel). Poetically, the arbitral panel I had observed a few months before in Frankfurt delivered its award. This award, combined with my prior work on that same arbitration, my support in submitting another claim, and a project involving a pre-litigation contract dispute, represented a personal and professional milestone: I had seen the bulk of an arbitral lifecycle. Just in time for me to return home.
On my last weekend in Berlin, my flatmate celebrated his birthday with a friend’s picnic along the Spree across from Schloss Bellevue, the German President’s ceremonial residence. With the soft sunshine, gentle breeze, lofi beats, good snacks and drinks, surrounded by new friends, I realized that I had accomplished everything I wanted to on this journey. I had witnessed firsthand a new legal system, gotten my hands dirty in the nitty-gritty of international arbitration, explored new cities, reconnected with old friends, made new lifelong peers, and above all else, I enjoyed every moment. It is not lost on me, however, that none of this would have been possible without help. My flatmates and friends I made in Germany, my colleagues and mentors at BODENHEIMER, The Halle Foundation, the Dean Rusk International Center, my Georgia Law professors, and my friends and family back home made this semester possible. As I look forward to the rest of my career and the rest of my life, I know that they each made whatever future steps come next possible as well. And for that, I will forever be grateful and forever indebted.
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For more information about semester-long Global Externships Overseas, please email: ruskintlaw@uga.edu
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Laura Phillips-Sawyer participated in the Business History Conference in London, England in March. The theme of the 2026 BHC annual meeting was “Co-Creation.” She received financial support to travel to London from the Dean Rusk International Law Center as a Rusk Scholar-in-Residence, an initiative promoting international opportunities for Georgia Law faculty that advance the mission of the Center.
Phillips-Sawyer presented a new paper: The 21st Century ‘New Economy’: A Legal and Business History of Vertical Disintegration. This paper explores and tests the historical interdependence of two developments. First, it surveys the extent to which American production and distribution systems have shifted away from vertical integration toward being governed, in the 21st century, by a “network of contracts”—a phenomenon visible in high-profile firms such as Dell, Apple, United Fruit, FedEx, and Amazon. Second, it examines how changes in antitrust law legalized the types of business contracts—such as exclusive dealing and exclusive distribution channel agreements—that have facilitated this structural shift.
Phillips-Sawyer also organized a panel discussion for the conference. The panel included Brian Callaci, chief economist at the Open Markets Institute, and Erik Peinert, a political scientist at Boston University who formerly worked at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Phillips-Sawyer is an expert in U.S. antitrust law and policy. Broadly, she is interested in questions of economic regulation, which intersect with legal history, economic thought, business strategy and structure, and political organization. She currently holds the Jane W. Wilson Associate Professorship in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. Before coming to Georgia Law, Phillips-Sawyer taught international political economy at the Harvard Business School.
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Christopher Bruner presented a keynote address at the Inaugural Corporate Securities Regulation Conference hosted by the Department of Commercial Law of the University of Cape Town (South Africa) Faculty of Law in April.
The conference was co-sponsored by Strate, the central securities depository for South Africa. Another keynote address was presented by André Nortjé, Chief Executive Officer of Strate, and following their keynotes Bruner and Nortjé participated in a conversation moderated by Professor Dennis Davis, Chair of the Companies Tribunal of South Africa.
Bruner is the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.
Global Externships Overseas (GEO), 4-12 week placements for rising second- and third-year law students in private-sector and public-sector law placements around the world.
Global Governance Summer School
This year’s Global Governance Summer School will focus on comparative environmental law and sustainability. It is set to begin in mid-May, when students will travel to two cities in Belgium for a week of site visits and lectures led by Georgia Law’s Professor Catherine Clutter, as well as professors from partner university KU Leuven‘s Centre for Global Governance Studies. The first week of this for-credit course also will include professional development briefings at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Commission, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions, the European Council, private law firms, and NGOs.
Then, programming shifts to The Hague, Netherlands, where Clutter will lead briefings at the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and at several embassies and consulates. Center director Sarah Quinn will provide logistical assistance throughout the program.
A total of twelve students will participate in this year’s summer school, including:
Our Center’s Global Externship Overseas initiative, overseen by Center Associate Director Taher Benany, offers Georgia Law students the opportunity to gain practical work experience in a variety of legal settings around the world. This summer, three students have opted to combine the GEO opportunity with their participation in GGSS: David Bekore, Keith Felix, and Margaret Haisty.
A total of nineteen Georgia Law students will pursue GEOs in practice areas such as privacy and technology law, environmental law, international arbitration, EU competition, intellectual property, corporate law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law.
This year’s GEO class includes thirteen private-sector placements:
David Bekore (J.D. ’28): GreeCo SA; Buenos Aires, Argentina
This year, University of Georgia School of Law student N’Guessan (“Clement”) Kouame (LL.M. ’24, J.D. ’26) attended the 120th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, D.C. This year’s ASIL Annual Meeting convened with the theme “Advancing and Defending The Rule of Law.”
Kouame received a Louis B. Sohn Professional Development Fellowship to support his attendance of this conference. Awarded by the law school’s Dean Rusk International Law Center, Sohn Fellowships enable students to attend professional development opportunities related to international law.
Kouame attended numerous panel discussions addressing a range of topics in international law. He met with D.C.-based Georgia Law alumni, including Caroline Bailey (J.D. ’24) and Sandon Fernandes (J.D. ’24), both pictured above with Georgia Law Professor Desirée LeClercq, also in attendance.
Reflecting on the conference, Kouame stated:
My favorite panel discussion was the one titled “The Great AI Race: Whiter Human Rights in the AI Supply Chain.” This topic is timely and critical for the future of humanity, as AI R&D affects all human beings by harming the environment and infringing on human rights. Attending the ASIL Annual Meeting deepened my understanding and perspective on human rights protection and the use of forced and child labor from the global south in multinationals’ supply chains for AI R&D.
To read prior posts about Georgia Law students using Sohn Fellowships to attend professional development opportunities, please click here and here.
Organized by Stephanie Ben-Ishai, Full Professor, York University Distinguished Research Professor, and York Research Chair in Law, Finance and Debt, the panels “…invite[d] Canadian scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to rethink the role of bankruptcy and insolvency law not just as technical legal regimes, but as critical indicators of how modern societies allocate risk, security, and dignity in everyday economic life.”
Foohey joined Georgia Law faculty as a full professor in 2024. She currently holds the Allen Post Professorship and teaches Bankruptcy, Secured Transactions and a Bankruptcy Practice Seminar. Specializing in bankruptcy, commercial law, consumer finance and business law, Foohey’s scholarship primarily involves empirical studies of bankruptcy and related parts of the legal system. She presently is a co-investigator on the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-term research project studying persons who file bankruptcy. Data from this project serve as the basis of her co-authored book Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy (University of California Press, 2025). Her work in business bankruptcy focuses on nonprofit entities, with a particular emphasis on how religious organizations use bankruptcy. Data from this project are included in her forthcoming book Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive(University of Chicago Press, September 2026).
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emeritus Walter Hellerstein served as a visiting professor teaching a three-day mini-course on U.S. state taxation of foreign taxpayers at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Austria during March.
Hellerstein is the Distinguished Research Professor & Francis Shackelford Distinguished Professor in Taxation Law Emeritus. He is a recipient of the National Tax Association’s Daniel M. Holland Medal for outstanding lifetime contributions to the study and practice of public finance, is widely regarded as the nation’s leading academician on state and local taxation. He has authored numerous books, textbooks, and law review articles, and has practiced extensively in the field. Hellerstein is currently a Visiting Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and he remains actively involved in his scholarship, consulting, and, in particular, his work as an academic advisor to the OECD.
Taher Benany, Associate Director of the University of Georgia School of Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center, recently participated in an interdisciplinary panel discussion entitled: “The Iran War: Causes, Costs, & Future.” Organized by UGA’s chapter of The Alexander Hamilton Society (AHS), a non-partisan, student-led organization promoting debate on foreign policy.
Panelists included Jeffrey D. Berejikian, a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia, and Professor in the Department of International Affairs; Tim Samples, Professor of Legal Studies at the Terry College of Business; and Eli Sperling, Israel Institute Teaching Fellow at the School of Public and International Affairs. The panel was moderated by Wells Benjamin, Vice President of AHS. They examined the causes of the war, assessed its consequences both for humans and foreign policy strategy, and explored future directions for the Middle East and the rules-based international order.
Benany joined the Rusk Center in 2025. In this role, among other things, he oversees global international training programs as well as plans and implements international law research initiatives, events, and conferences. He acted as a public international law lecturer at the British University in Egypt and served as a public international law expert for the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation. He also served as a legal fellow for the United Nations Human Rights Council and advised an African state on the Council.
exchange of notes 