Month: April 2023

Georgia Law Professor Bruner presents on national identity and economic development at Princeton University “Post-Colonial Era” symposium

“National Identity and Economic Development in Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions” is the title of the workshop paper that Christopher Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, presented last Friday at Princeton University.

Bruner’s talk was part of a symposium on “Law, Identity, and Economic Development in the Post-Colonial Era: The Case of the Northern Atlantic and Larger Caribbean Regions,” hosted by the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. The university’s Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination co-sponsored the event.

Georgia Law Professor Amann takes part in podcast tribute to last surviving prosecutor at post-WWII Nuremberg trials, Benjamin B. Ferencz (1920-2023)

Among the international law experts featured in a podcast honoring the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor is a Faculty Co-Director of our Center, Professor Diane Marie Amann.

The tribute, entitled “In Memoriam: Benjamin B. Ferencz,” was released recently at Asymmetrical Haircuts: Your International Justice Podcast. In it, the podcast’s co-founders, journalists Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, first provided their own memories of Ferencz, who died on April 7 in Florida, at age 103. They continue with comments not only from Professor Amann, but also from Christopher “Kip” Hale, Adama Dieng, David Donat Cattin, and Ferencz’ son, Don Ferencz.

As a twenty-something lawyer, Ferencz had played a role post-World War II trials at Nuremberg, leading the Einsatzgruppen trial. (His wife, Gertrude Fried Ferencz (1919-2019), likewise worked at the trials, in administrative capacities.) He remained active throughout his life in promoting international criminal law – to quote his own favorite phrase, campaigning for “Law, Not War.”

The comments by Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, drew from a tribute she posted here the day after Ferencz’ passing.

(Depicted in photo montage at podcast website: from top left, Amann interviewing Ferencz at International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, Chautauqua, New York; Ferencz with inter alia his son Don Ferencz, Kip Hale, and then-Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda; prosecutor Ferencz addressing a court at Nuremberg; and Ferencz on a bench dedicated to him at the Peace Palace at The Hague, the Netherlands, in which the phrase “Law Not War” has been carved)

Georgia Law Professor MJ Durkee publishes article on industry groups and international governance in Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is the Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has published “Industry Groups in International Governance: A Framework for Reform” in the bi-annual, peer-reviewed Journal of Human Rights and the Environment.

Here’s the abstract:

“The Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights encourage engaging with businesses as partners in important global governance agendas. Indeed, many international organizations are now partnering with business groups to secure funding and private sector engagement. At the same time, reforms at the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization and others seek to restrain the dangers of mission distortion and capture by business groups. Shareholders at major multinational oil and gas companies also recognize these dangers and seek to rein in lobbying that is at odds with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Despite these tensions, little scholarly attention has been paid to the regulations that govern how industry and trade groups may participate in the work of international organizations. Specifically, little attention has been devoted to how those regulations could best capture the potential benefits of business engagement while restraining the potential harms. This article offers a history of engagement between international organizations and industry and trade associations, reviews arguments for embracing or restraining their participation, and develops a framework for regulations to govern their access.”

A version of this new article also is available at SSRN.

Georgia Law Professor Walter Hellerstein publishes chapter in volume on international tax law developments

A chapter by Walter Hellerstein, Distinguished Research Professor and Shackelford Distinguished Professor in Taxation Law Emeritus here at the University of Georgia School of Law, appears in a new publication that is part of a series of books on international tax law.

Hellerstein’s chapter, entitled “Joint and Several Liability for Collection of Supplies Over Platforms,” appears in CJEU-Recent Developments in Value Added Tax 2021 (Vienna: Linde Verlag, 2023).

The volume features analyses of significant judgments by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU. Editors were a team led by Professor Georg Kofler, of Austria’s Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien / the Vienna University of Economics & Business.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents at Temple Law workshop on Philippe Sands’ Chagos book, “Last Colony”

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann was one of about two dozen experts in international law and policy who participated Tuesday in a daylong writers’ workshop in Philadelphia, centered on a new book, The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy.

Last Colony charts the journey, through many national and international courtrooms, that led to the 2019 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on case related to colonization in the Indian Ocean region: Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965. The book appeared in the United Kingdom in 2022 and will be released in the United States later this year. Its author, University College London Law Professor Philippe Sands KC, counsel for Mauritius in the ICJ proceedings, was among those who took part in Tuesday’s event.

Workshop sponsors were the Institute for International Law & Public Policy and the Laura H. Carnell Chair at Temple University Beasley School of Law; the principal organizer was Temple Law Professor Jeffrey Dunoff, Laura R. Carnell Professor of Law. Papers are set to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Temple Journal of International & Comparative Law.

Amann is is Regents’ Professor of International Law and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. For Tuesday’s workshop, she prepared a paper entitled “What Figures Lurk on Madame’s Path? Reflections on Philippe Sands’ Last Colony.”

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner presents on corporate sustainability at seminar in London

Christopher M. Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, presented his book, The Corporation as Technology: Re-Calibrating Corporate Governance for a Sustainable Future (Oxford University Press 2022) earlier this month in London, United Kingdom.

The seminar was hosted by the University of Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway and co-sponsored by the University College London Centre for Commercial Law.

Georgia Law Professor MJ Durkee publishes “Privatizing International Governance” in ASIL Proceedings

Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, the law school’s Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor, has published “Privatizing International Governance” in the Proceedings of the 116th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

The essay, a version of which is also available at SSRN, introduced a panel that she organized and chaired at the 2022 ASIL Annual Meeting. Other speakers included: Nora Mardirossian, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment; Suzy Nikièma, Lead, Sustainable Investment, International Institute for Sustainable Development; and Nancy Thevenin, United States Council for International Business. (prior posts here and here)

Here’s the extract for Professor Durkee’s essay:

“Public-private partnerships of all kinds are increasingly common in the international system. Since United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s launch of the Global Compact in 2000, the United Nations has increasingly opened up to business entities. Now, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Compact, and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights all encourage engaging with business entities as partners in developing and executing global governance agendas. These partnerships are seen by some as indispensable to sustainable development, international business regulation, climate change mitigation, and other global governance agendas. At the same time, UN climate change bodies have been criticized for cozying up to corporate fossil fuel lobbies, global financial governance institutions are charged with leaning toward the interests of the large banking and financial industry they are meant to regulate, and the pharmaceutical industry has been accused of exerting outsized influence in health-related international standard-setting, sometimes against public health objectives. Reforms seek to restrain the dangers of mission-distortion and capture by business groups. The theme of this panel is ‘Privatizing International Governance,’ and this brief framing essay lays out history, context, and the questions these partnerships present.”

Georgia Law students compete in Vis arbitration moot in Vienna, Austria

Top row, Benjamin Price; front row, l to r, Emily Crowell, Hanna Esserman, Yekaterina Ko, Sandon Fernandes, Savannah Grant

A team of students recently represented the University of Georgia School of Law at the annual Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Vienna, Austria. 

This year’s team comprised 2Ls Hanna Esserman, Sandon Fernandes, Benjamin Price, and Yekaterina Ko. Among those who supported their efforts were numerous coaches: 3Ls Emily Crowell and Savannah Grant, with support from 3Ls Collin Douglas and Ligon Fant, and Georgia Law Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge.  

Fernandes reflected on his Vis experience, which included not only the team’s competition in Vienna but also its third-place finish in the Florida Bar International Law Section Richard DeWitt Memorial Vis Pre-Moot in Miami this past February: 

“The Vis Moot Court competition provides students with the opportunity to collaborate on a challenging international commercial dispute as if it were a real case. Competing against 378 teams from around the world has given me the ability to analyze complex legal issues from a global perspective.”

Georgia Law Professor Bruner presents at University of Macerata in Italy

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Christopher M. Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, spoke at a 2-day conference last week at the University of Macerata in Italy.

“Business Risk, Financial Markets, and Sustainable Companies” was the title of the presentation by Bruner, a scholar of corporate law, corporate governance, comparative law, and sustainability, whose most recent book is The Corporation as Technology: Re-Calibrating Corporate Governance for a Sustainable Future (OUP 2022) (prior posts).

The conference, titled The Prism of Sustainability, was supported by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

Georgia Law professors, alumna, students take part in annual meeting of American Society of International Law

Many members of the University of Georgia School of Law community – professors, alumna, and students – took part in last week’s 117th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, the theme of which was “The Reach and Limits of International Law to Solve Today’s Challenges.”

The annual meeting took place Wednesday-Saturday at several venues in Washington, D.C.

Representatives of Georgia Law, an ASIL Academic Partner, included three scholars affiliated with the law school’s Dean Rusk International Law Center:

→ The Center’s Director, Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is also Associate Dean for International Programs and Allen Post Professor, moderated a panel entitled “How Does International Law Change? Theories and Concepts of Legal Change.” (photo top row left) It was sponsored by ASIL’s International Legal Theory Interest Group, for which Durkee serves as Chair. Panelists were: Benedict Kingsbury, New York University; Nico Krisch, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; and Sivan Shlomo Agon, Bar-Ilan University.

Durkee additionally serves on the ASIL Executive Council and the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, and took part in the meetings of both those groups.

→ Diane Marie Amann, Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and one of our Center’s Faculty Co-Directors (above second from left), took part in a late-breaking panel, “ICC Arrest Warrant Against Putin: Impunity in Check?” (photo above left) Amann, an international child law expert and former Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict, spoke on the significance of the fact that crimes against children form the basis of the international arrest warrant issued March 17 against the President and the Children’s Rights Commissioner of Russia. Additional panel participants were: Javier Eskauriatza, University of Nottingham; Marko Milanovic, University of Reading; Saira Mohamed, University of California-Berkeley; and moderator Katherine Gallagher, Center for Constitutional Rights. Panel video here.

Amann also attended the ASIL Executive Council meeting, completing her term as an ASIL Counsellor.

→ Harlan G. Cohen, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, took the ASIL General Assembly stage: in his capacity as Chair of the 2023 Book Awards Committee, he co-presented those honors to numerous authors. (photo top row right, from left to right: ASIL President Greg Shaffer, honoree Damilola Olawuyi, ASIL Executive Director Michael Cooper, and Cohen; video 27:09)

Like Durkee, Cohen is a member of the AJIL Board of Editors and took part in the journal’s meeting. The annual meeting completed his service as Chair of ASIL’s International Legal Theory Interest Group.

A distinguished Georgia Law graduate also was featured:

→ Tess Davis (JD 2009), who is the Executive Director of the D.C.-based Antiquities Coalition and Dean Rusk International Law Center Council member, served as moderator for a session at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. (photo above right) Entitled “Protecting Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches,” the discussion also included: Patty Gerstenblith, DePaul University; Brooke Cuven, Cerberus Capital Management; Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Institution; and Zaydoon Zaid, American Foundation for Cultural Research.

Rounding out the contingent were four Georgia Law students, who received Louis B. Sohn Professional Development grants to serve as volunteers at the meeting: 2L Hao Chen “Bobby” Dong, 3L Collin Douglas, LLM candidate Alexandra Lampe, and 1L Mahi Patel.