Month: June 2018

Law in Practice International Interns from Sheffield Hallam University visit the Dean Rusk International Law Center for training

Group Photo RuskLast week, the Dean Rusk International Law Center was pleased to co-present a training with Sheffield Hallam University on criminal law and human rights for eight law students from the United Kingdom. Organized by Dr. Laura Kagel, Associate Director for International Professional Education at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Michael Edwards (J.D. ’93), Senior Lecturer in Law and Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University, the four-day training was designed to prepare the students for summer internships they will undertake in the United States.

Faculty from both universities lectured on relevant topics. These included Georgia Law professors: Anne Burnett on legal research methods; Andrea Dennis on evidence; and Russel Gabriel on criminal procedure. From Sheffield Hallam University Michael Edwards lectured on international human rights and civil rights law, and Christopher Riley presented an introduction to the student internships.

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In addition to coursework, while in Athens, the students observed court proceedings and met with local prosecutors and court officials to hear about treatment and accountability courts. Organized by Assistant District Attorney Paige Otwell (J.D. ‘88), this discussion was particularly engaging, as England currently only has one court of this type. Students also spent a day learning more about advocacy and civil rights in Atlanta. The students prepared and presented mock oral arguments at the Supreme Court of Georgia, toured the State Capitol, and visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Site. They also visited the Southern Center for Human Rights, where Tiffany Williams Roberts, Community Engagement and Movement Building Counsel, discussed the work of the non-profit law firm.

The Sheffield students are now off to begin their internships; we wish them an enriching summer!

Professor Bruner publishes chapter on “How Small Jurisdictions Compete in International Financial Services”

Christopher M. Bruner, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has just published “How Small Jurisdictions Compete in International Financial Services.”

This chapter appears in Integration and International Dispute Resolution in Small States, a 2018 Springer volume edited by Petra Butler (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Eva Lein (University of Lausanne, Switzerland), and Salim Rhonson (Open University).

Bruner’s contribution is a revised version of his keynote address at a conference on “International Financial Services and Small States,” held in London in 2017.

Professors Hall and Turner present in Netherlands, at Association for Law, Property and Society annual meeting


Professors Matthew I. Hall and Christian Turner, both members of the University of Georgia School of Law faculty, recently presented at the annual meeting of the annual conference of the Association for Law, Property & Society, held this year at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

Hall (pictured top left) and Turner delivered their presentation, entitled “The Judicial Agenda and Angry Neighbors,” as part of a 5-paper panel on “Designing Optimal Rules, Markets, and Registries in Property Law.”

Known by its acronym ALPS, the Association for Law, Property & Society “brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss their work and to foster dialogue among those working in property law, policy, planning, social scientific field studies, modeling, and theory.”

Professor Bruner compares UK, US business practices in new “Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law”

Christopher M. Bruner, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has just published “Opting Out of Fiduciary Duties and Liabilities in U.S. and U.K. Business Entities.” It appears as a chapter in a 2018 Edward Elgar volume, entitled Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law, and edited by D. Gordon Smith, Dean and Glen L. Farr Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School,  and Andrew S. Gold, Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law.

Here’s the SSRN abstract for Bruner’s contribution:

This chapter explores the extent of contractual freedom to opt out of fiduciary duties and liabilities in U.S. and U.K. business entities, including the U.S. corporation, general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability partnership, and limited liability company, and the U.K. limited company, general partnership, limited partnership, and limited liability partnership.

Discernible commonalities emerge from this comparative analysis. Notably, corporate law readily permits reducing liability exposure for breaches of duty in each jurisdiction, yet provides only quite limited capacity to carve back at the substance of the duties themselves. Meanwhile, unincorporated entities in each jurisdiction offer substantially greater latitude to limit the duties themselves, in some cases resulting in purely contractual business relationships.

Yet substantial differences are also apparent. U.S. corporate law permits greater insulation from liability exposure, and U.S. unincorporated entities generally provide clearer and more extensive latitude to eliminate default duties of loyalty and care outright (particularly in Delaware). One cannot comprehensively declare that U.S. law universally deviates further from the “fiduciary” governance paradigm, however, because the U.K. limited liability partnership has gone further by providing an entity form in which no such general default duties apply at all.

The analysis raises some complex comparative questions, and the chapter closes with brief reflections on why such trends, commonalities, and divergences may have arisen.

Register now for inaugural Women’s Leadership in Academia Conference, to be held July 19-20 at Georgia Law

Women law professors, librarians, and clinicians in, or interested in, leadership positions are invited to take part in the inaugural Women’s Leadership in Academia Conference, to be held July 19-20, 2018, here the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, about 65 miles northeast of Atlanta.

Keynote speakers will be Kellye Testy, former Dean of the University of Washington School of Law, who serves as President and CEO of the Law School Admission Council (LSAC is a conference sponsor), and Professor Libby V. Morris, Director of the Institute of Higher Education and Zell B. Miller Distinguished Professor of Higher Education, as well as a former interim provost, at the University of Georgia.

Session speakers will include Hari M. Osofsky, Dean at Penn State Law; Sonja West and Emma Hetherington, Georgia Law; RonNell Anderson Jones, Utah Law; Dahlia Lithwick, Slate; Mary-Rose Papandrea, North Carolina Law; Lisa Radtke Bliss,  Andrea A. Curcio, and Jessica Gabel Cino, Georgia State Law; Raye Rawls, University of Georgia J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development; Claire Robinson May, Cleveland State Law; KerryAnn O’Meara, University of Maryland College of Education;  Tim McFeeley, Isaacson, Miller; Lucy A. Leske, Witt/Kieffer; Laura Rosenbury, Dean at Florida Law; Hillary Sale, Washington University-St. Louis Law; and Melanie Wilson, Paula Schaefer, and Joy Radice,  Tennessee Law.

The conference will focus “on building skills and providing tools and information that are directly applicable to women in legal education looking to be leaders within the academy.” As detailed in the full conference program, session topics will include:

  • #MeToo and the Legal Academy
  • Exploring the Value of Female Mentoring Relationships to Cultivate Law School Leadership
  • Strategies for Conflict Management and Dialogue
  • Engendering Equality Within Your Institution: Establishing a Women’s Committee to Achieve Meaningful Change
  • Addressing Gender Disparities in Institutional Service Workloads
  • Academic Search Process Panel
  • Negotiation Strategies
  • Leadership Challenges and Solutions over the Course of a Career
  • Deans Panel

For registration and other details, see here. And act now: the hotel bloc will close in a few days.

Professor Amann publishes “Bemba and Beyond,” on accountability and command responsibility, at EJIL: Talk!

One week after the International Criminal Court Appeals Chamber acquitted a Congolese politician-warlord whom a Trial Chamber unanimously had convicted of rape, pillage, and other crimes, practitioners and scholars continue to debate the decision’s significance. Indeed, the case, Prosecutor v. Bemba, has been invoked in both the papers so far presented at the 2-day ICC Scholars Forum now under way at Leiden Law School’s Hague campus.

My own initial thoughts – concerned not about the decision’s fact-based details but rather to its refashioning of the legal doctrine of command responsibility – have been published at EJIL: Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law. My post, entitled “In Bemba and Beyond,” discusses command responsibility as “a time-honored doctrine with roots in military justice and international humanitarian law.” Placing this appeals judgment in the context of other decisions, the post warns:

“Together, such rulings suggest a turn away from the goal of assigning responsibility at high levels, and toward a jurisprudence which acknowledges (with regret) the commission of crimes, yet holds no cognizable legal person responsible.”

Full post here.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Georgia Law Professor Harlan Cohen presents “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle” in visit at University College London

Harlan Grant Cohen, the Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, spent the last two weeks as a visitor of University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws newly renovated building, Bentham House.

As part of Cohen’s visit, UCL’s Global Governance Institute invited him to give a public keynote lecture on “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle.” As previously posted, that is the topic of his forthcoming article for the American Journal of International Law.

Cohen is a member of AJIL’s Board of Editors, and serves as Editor of the journal’s International Decisions section.