Month: April 2024

Georgia Law 2L Cade Pruitt receives Asia-Georgia Internship Connection Scholarship

University of Georgia School of Law student Caden Pruitt, 2L, was selected as a recipient of the UGA Office of Global Engagement’s Asia-Georgia Internship Connection Scholarship to support his upcoming Global Externship Overseas (GEO) at KPMG Law in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Pruitt will be supervised at his externship by Georgia Law alumnus Binh Tran (J.D., ’11), Director at KPMG Law. In addition to the work he will complete as a legal extern, Pruitt will engage in a supervised research project with Professor Christopher M. Bruner, Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law & Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Pruitt’s proposed research project will culminate in a note titled Vietnam: A guide to economic and legal developments, which will involve analyzing risks, opportunities, and the legal environment for foreign direct investors in Vietnam with consideration given to the interests of companies in Vietnam. The note will include three components: an analysis of the motivations for Foreign Direct Investments (“FDI”) in Vietnam, an analysis of the consumer market in Vietnam, and a proposal for contractual approaches to joint-value creation and mitigating risk. It will outline the legal framework for investments under Vietnamese law and will discuss contractual optimization for the resolution of disputes.

This scholarship funds student pursuing credit-bearing internships in southeast Asia for a duration of at least four weeks. Preference is given to students traveling to Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

This will be Pruitt’s second GEO; the summer of his first year at Georgia Law, he externed with Bodenheimer in Cologne, Germany, under the supervision of Georgia Law alumnus and Rusk Council member Dr. Christof Siefarth (LL.M., ’86).

Center director Quinn featured in Global Atlanta article

Dean Rusk International Law Center director Sarah Quinn was recently featured in Global Atlanta regarding her new leadership position at the University of Georgia School of Law. The article titled “New Dean Rusk Center Director: How UGA Prepares Georgia’s Future International Lawyers” was written by Leigh Villegas.

In the article, Quinn discusses the Center’s focus on providing Georgia Law students with opportunities to globalize their legal education. She highlights the Center’s student-facing programming, including Global Governance Summer School, Global Externships Overseas, the NATO Externship, and semester-long exchanges with institutional partner O.P. Jindal Global University’s Jindal Global Law School. Explaining how the Center encourages all J.D. students to consider participating in these programs, Quinn states:

“We underscore to our students just how globalized the practice of law is— even [students] aspiring to work domestically can benefit from taking an international law course or gaining work experience abroad.”

Quinn provides information about the Center’s initiatives for foreign-educated law students and professionals, ranging from the 10-month Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree to the Visiting Researcher initiative. She notes that the Center’s events throughout the academic year, including the annual Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law conference, offer opportunities for participation, particularly from alumni/ae and from interested professionals.

The article can be accessed in its entirety here. Global Atlanta is one of the Center’s institutional partners.

Quinn was named the permanent director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center after leading the unit for seven months on an interim basis. Quinn, who joined the School of Law in 2019, previously served as the associate director for global practice preparation. She was instrumental in developing the school’s partnership with India’s Jindal Global University, establishing the Graduate Certificate in International Law and transitioning the Global Governance Summer School into a credit-bearing program. Prior to joining the law school, Quinn worked with the UGA Office of Global Engagement and the U.S. Peace Corps in addition to serving as a director for the American School Language Institute in Morocco. She earned her B.A., B.F.A. and M.I.P. from UGA and her ED.M. from Harvard University.

Rachel Galloway, British consul general in Atlanta, speaks at Georgia Law

In March, the British consul general in Atlanta, Rachel Galloway, delivered a lecture at the University of Georgia School of Law, “From Alexander the Great to NATO, reflections on four years as the UK’s Ambassador to North Macedonia.”

Galloway spoke with students about her diplomatic career, including her post as the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to North Macedonia. She was joined in conversation by Diane Marie Amann, Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. Galloway’s talk was the most recent installment of the Dean Rusk International Law Center’s ongoing Consular Series, which presents students, staff, and faculty with global perspectives on international trade, cooperation, development, and policy.

Galloway assumed her current post as the British consul general in Atlanta in 2022, replacing former consul general Andrew Staunton. Staunton gave a presentation at Georgia Law in 2019 as part of the Center’s ongoing Consular Series. Galloway has more than 20 years of diplomatic experience; she started her career with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in 2000 and spent three years chairing the Maghreb working group at the European External Action Service. She has also held roles as the U.K. Permanent Representation to Brussels (2012-15), deputy head of the FCO’s International Organisations Department (2008-11) and head of the Darfur section of the Sudan unit in the FCO’s international development department (2007-08). Galloway spent a brief stint on a provincial reconstruction team in Helmand, Afghanistan, in 2006, that same year serving on the counter-terrorism review team in Her Majesty’s Treasury. Her only prior posting in the U.S. prior to her current role was a four-year assignment in Washington as second secretary in the political section at the British Embassy from 2002-06.

LL.M. student N’Guessan Kouame contributes to World Bank report

University of Georgia School of Law LL.M. student, N’guessan “Clément” Kouame, contributed to the most recent World Bank Report for Women, Business, and the Law (WBL) released on March 2. He served as a panelist contributor for Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, reviewing the legal framework and landscape of the country regarding the improvement of women’s rights and women’s empowerment.

Women, Business and the Law (WBL) is a World Bank Group project collecting data on the laws and regulations that affect women’s economic opportunity. Since 2009, WBL has been enhancing the study of gender equality and informing discussions on improving women’s economic opportunities and empowerment. This is the second year in a row that Kouame will contribute to the WBL’s annual report. He provides sources, laws, and regulations to corroborate his answers and make recommendations and comments.

From the report’s overview:

Women, Business and the Law 2024 is the tenth in a series of annual studies measuring the enabling environment for women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies.

This edition of the report updates the Women, Business and the Law 1.0 index of eight indicators, structured around women’s interactions with the law as they begin, progress through, and end their careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension.

Women, Business and the Law 2.0 sets a new frontier for measuring the environment for women’s economic inclusion across three pillars: legal frameworks, measuring laws; supportive frameworks, measuring policy mechanisms to implement laws; expert opinions, shedding light on experts’ perception of women’s outcomes.

Women, Business and the Law 2.0 also introduces two new indicators: Safety, measuring frameworks addressing violence against women, and Childcare, measuring frameworks for the availability, affordability and quality of childcare.

Data in Women, Business and the Law 2024 are current as of October 1, 2023. By examining laws and policy mechanisms affecting the economic decisions women make as they go through different stages of their working lives, as well as the opinions of experts on the legal environment for women’s economic inclusion, Women, Business and the Law makes a contribution to policy discussions about the state of women’s economic opportunities.