Month: August 2016

Georgia Law Professor Milot calls on global drugs regulators to focus on athlete health, not punishment

Milot profileSports doping is much in the news with the start of the Olympics and Paralympics at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Numerous commentators call for stricter regulations; staking out a different position is Georgia Law Professor Lisa Milot, formerly a high-level junior cyclist and now a scholar on law and performance-enhancing drugs. In a Vice Sports article by Patrick Hruby entitled “The Drugs Won: The Case for Ending the Sports War on Doping,” Milot says:

“Athletes are risk-takers. There’s no way to get to the international level of sports without being willing to put your body on the line on a regular basis.”

The article discusses Milot’s position, advanced in her 2014 article “Ignorance, Harm, and the Regulation of Performance-Enhancing Substances,” published in the Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law. She argues that regulators should concentrate on reducing the harm from substances, rather than banning them altogether. She tells Hruby:

“What we should be doing now is gathering information in order to understand how these substances work on healthy bodies. Focusing on that, rather than punishment.”

On punishment, current news indicates that even international organizations charged with regulating global sports appear to disagree:

► The Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency, “established in 1999 as an international independent agency composed and funded equally by the sport movement and governments of the world,” issued a report calling for a blanket ban on Russian athletes at the Olympic Games, which opened Friday and go through August 21.

► The International Olympics Committee, the 122-year-old organization headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, has taken a much more measured approach, banning some but by no means all such athletes.

► The International Paralympic Committee, based in Bonn, Germany, banned Russia’s team en masse from its event, set to begin on September 7, no long after the Olympic Games wrap up.

► Meanwhile, athletes from a host of countries have been cited for positive drug tests, or tarred with suspicion that their achievements have been chemically enhanced.

This tangle makes both Hruby’s article and Milot’s scholarship must-reads.

GJICL publishes “Children and International Criminal Justice” issue

gjicl43_3

Very pleased to announce that papers from a Georgia Law conference “Children & International Criminal Justice” have just been published by our Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law.

The conference was cosponsored by Dean Rusk International Law Center and the Georgia Law Project on Armed Conflict & Children, as well as the university’s African Studies Institute, the Planethood Foundation, and the American Society of International Law-Southeast.

About 2 dozen experts came to Athens, Georgia, from as far as Doha and Kinshasa, to discuss the topic at hand. In so doing, they assisted in the preparation of the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor Policy on Children. As detailed in recent posts, available here and here, the public comment period for the draft of that Policy continues through August 5, 2016, with launch of the final document set for mid-November.

bensouda_me2_28oct14cropA keynote speech by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (at right) highlighted our conference, and the text of her speech headlines the edition. Other writings link the work of the ICC to the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child, examine the experiences of children in armed conflict and similar situations. Student rapporteurs’ accounts of expert breakout sessions additionally treat a range of issues. All these papers contributed significantly to the Policy process.

The edition concludes with students’ notes apart from the conference; one of these, for which I was honored to serve as faculty adviser, examines the issue of child marriage.

Here, in full, is the table of contents for Volume 43, issue 3, with PDF links to each article:

Children and International Criminal Justice Conference

“Convening Experts on Children and International Criminal Justice,” by yours truly, Diane Marie Amann (above, at left), Associate Dean for International Programs & Strategic Initiatives and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and also Prosecutor Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict

“Children and International Criminal Justice,” by Fatou Bensouda (above, at right), Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

malone“Maturing Justice: Integrating the Convention on the Rights of the Child into the Judgments and Processes of the International Criminal Court,” by Linda A. Malone (right), Marshall-Wythe Foundation Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Human Security Law Center, William & Mary Law School

drumblm“Children, Armed Violence and Transition: Challenges for International Law & Policy,” by Mark Drumbl (left), Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director of the Transnational Law Institute at Washington & Lee University School of Law

“Child Protection in Times of Conflict and Children and International Criminal Justice,” by Kerry L. Neal neal(right), Child Protection Specialist, Justice for Children, UNICEF, New York

“Expert Workshop Session: Regulatory Framework,” by Ashley Ferrelli, Eric Heath, Eulen Jang, and Cory Takeuchi (all Georgia Law graduates, who were members of GJICL)

“Expert Workshop Session: Child Witnesses: Testimony, Evidence, and Witness Protection,” by Chelsea Swanson, Elizabeth DeVos, Chloe Ricke, and Andy Shin (now Georgia Law graduates, all then were members of GJICL)

“Expert Workshop Session: The Global Child,” by Haley Chafin, Jena Emory, Meredith Head, and Elizabeth Verner (all Georgia Law graduates, who were members of GJICL)

Student Notes

“Changing the Game: The Effects of the 2012 Revision of the ICC Arbitration Rules on the ICC Model Arbitration Clause for Trust Disputes,” by Colin Connor

“Water, Water Everywhere, But Just How Much is Clean?: Examining Water Quality Restoration Efforts Under the United States Clean Water Act and the United States-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement,” by Jill T. Hauserman

“REACHing for Environmental and Economic Harmony: Can TTIP Negotiations Bridge the U.S.-EU Chemical Regulatory Gap?,” by Ashley Henson

“Child Marriage in Yemen: A Violation of International Law,” by Elizabeth Verner

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)