event

Brexit and international trade expert, Dr. Hanspeter Tschaeni, to speak at Georgia Law

The Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law is pleased to host Dr. Hanspeter Tschaeni for Coffee and Conversation: International Trade and Economic Law this afternoon.

Hanspeter Tschaeni

Dr. Tschaeni is Chief Trade Adviser at Trade Advisers, a consulting firm engaged in activities relating to the British exit from the European Union. He also serves on several World Trade Organization dispute settlement panels.

Previously, Dr. Tschaeni served for more than thirty years in the Swiss Federal Administration, where he was Head of Section on International Economic Law and Deputy Head of Division on Foreign Economic Services, with the rank of ambassador. In that capacity, he participated as legal counsel and headed delegations in negotiations with the European Union and in free-trade agreement negotiations with numerous countries around the globe.

Co-sponsors of the event include Georgia Law’s Business Law Society and the International Law Society.

Details here.

International arbitrators and mediators to speak at Georgia Law

We at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center welcome international practitioners and scholars to campus today for an International Arbitration and Mediation Roundtable.

Panelists include: Dr. Christof Siefarth, Partner at the Cologne, Germany-based law firm GÖRG; Dr. Klaus Peter Berger, Professor of Law at the University of Cologne; and Dr. Beate Berger, Cologne-based attorney and mediator. They will discuss contemporary issues in international arbitration and mediation, as well as career paths and opportunities for interested students.

MediationRoundtable

From left, Christof Siefarth, Klaus Peter Berger, and Beate Berger

Co-sponsoring the event with the Dean Rusk International Law Center is the Alternative Dispute Resolution Society and the International Law Society.

Details here.

Atlanta International Arbitration Society to explore skills and cultures in upcoming conference

atlas-logoThe Dean Rusk International Law Center is delighted to serve as a cooperating entity for the 7th annual conference of the Atlanta International Arbitration Society (AtlAS). Next week’s conference will take place on Monday, November 12, and Tuesday, November 13, and will explore the theme “Skills and Cultures: the Road Ahead for International Arbitration.”

The first day of the conference will feature four Tertulia sessions — or roundtable discussions — that will focus on cultural norms in international arbitrations, and how those norms may be distinct in different parts of the world. These conversation will set the stage for the second day of the conference, which will consist of panels exploring the skills useful in today’s multicultural international arbitration practice.

3 photosSpeakers and participants will come to Atlanta from around the world, as detailed in the full program, and will feature keynote remarks by: Ann Ryan Robertson, International Partner, Locke Lord, Houston; David W. Rivkin, Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton, New  York; and Olufunke Adekoya, Partner, AELEX, Lagos.

The conference is bookmarked by two events aimed at young practitioners. On Monday before the Tertulia sessions begin, the AtlAS Young Practitioners Group will present a panel, “Document and Data Management (and Protection) In International Arbitration.” It will feature experts from Accra, Atlanta, Singapore, and Paris. On Wednesday following the conference, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Young Members Group and the Alliance for Equality in Dispute Resolution will co-host “Re-wiring the Brain: Practical Steps to Address Inclusion and Diversity in International Dispute Resolution.” It will feature speakers from Chicago, London, and Washington, D.C.

Three University of Georgia School of Law students will serve as rapporteurs for the conference; we look forward to posting their reflections on the conference in due course.

 

Center’s Laura Kagel to meet with prospective LLMs in Austria, Croatia, and Germany

LLM cover pageLaw students in Austria, Croatia, and Germany will soon have the opportunity to talk with a Dean Rusk International Law Center staffer about pursuing a degree at here at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Later this month yours truly, Laura Tate Kagel, the Center’s Associate Director of International Professional Education, will give a presentation for students at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and take part in LL.M. fairs in Vienna, Austria, and Zagreb, Croatia. Sponsor of the fairs is EducationUSA, an arm of the U.S. Department of State.

I’ll be on hand personally to discuss the career benefits and special advantages of earning the Master of Law, or LL.M., degree at Georgia Law. (See prior posts about our current LL.M. students, as well as our hundreds of LL.M. alums, here.)

If you’d like to schedule to meet with me, please email LLM@uga.edu, and you can register for the fairs via the links below.

Monday, November 12, Mainz: 18:00-20:00, Johannes Gutenberg University, Department of Law and Economics. Email LLM@uga.edu for more details.

Wedne1sday, November 14, Vienna: 16:00 – 18:00, University of Vienna, Juridicum Dachgeschoss, 10-16 Schottenbastei, 1010. Register to attend online.

Friday, November 16, Zagreb: 18:00-20:00 at the Sheraton Hotel, Ul. kneza Borne 2, 10000. Register to attend online.

Hope to see you there!

The Carter Center’s Laura Olson to speak on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Picture1The Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law welcomes Laura Olson, Director of the Human Rights Program at The Carter Center, to campus next Tuesday, November 6. She will give a lecture, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70.”

laura-olson-2

Olson has been with The Carter Center in Atlanta since July 2017. She previously held high ranking positions within the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and the Department of State. Olson has also served as legal advisor to the International Committee of the Red Cross, supporting the ICRC Delegations in Washington DC, Geneva, and Moscow.

Sponsoring her talk with the Dean Rusk International Law Center is the International Law Society, Georgia Law’s chapter of the International Law Students Association.

Details here.

Russian law students & practitioners invited to free webinar on LL.M. study in the United States

1Law students and lawyers in Russia are invited to take part in a free webinar regarding postgraduate legal study in the United States. It’s set for 17:00 (UTC+3, Moscow time) on Wednesday, November 7, and will focus on “Understanding the LL.M. Application Process and the LL.M. experience at U.S. Law Schools.”

Hosted by EducationUSA Russia, the free webinar will feature Laura Tate Kagel, our Center’s Associate Director of International Professional Education. Joining her will be  Valeria Subocheva Smith, who completed her LL.M. degree at Georgia Law in 2018.  Valeria will share her experiences and answer questions from prospective applicants.

No registration is necessary. Details on how to join the webinar, here. Details about Georgia Law’s LL.M. degree here.

Mexican Consul General Javier Díaz de León to speak at Georgia Law, part of Center’s Consular Series

CGRALJDLThe Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law welcomes Consul General Javier Díaz de León to campus on Tuesday, October 30. He will give a lecture, “Mexico’s Relation with Georgia: Connecting Paths.”

Díaz de León is Mexico’s Consul General in Atlanta. A career diplomat, his prior postings have included San Diego, New York, Washington, and Raleigh.

This event is presented as part of the Dean Rusk International Law Center’s Consular Series, which brings to campus perspectives on international trade, development, policy, and cooperation during the 2018-2019 academic year.

The Consular Series is co-sponsored by the International Law Society, Georgia Law’s chapter of the International Law Students Association.

Details here.

Accountability for harms to children during armed conflict discussed at Center-sponsored ILW panel

NEW YORK – Ways to redress offenses against children during armed conflict formed the core of the panel that our University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center sponsored last Friday at International Law Weekend, an annual three-day conference presented by the American Branch of the International Law Association and the International Law Students Association. I was honored to take part.

► Opening our panel was Shaheed Fatima QC (top right), a barrister at Blackstone Chambers in London, who led a panel of researchers for the Inquiry on Protecting Children in Conflict, an initiative chaired by Gordon Brown, former United Kingdom Prime Minister and current UN Special Envoy for Global Education.

As Fatima explained, the Inquiry focused on harms that the UN Security Council has identified as “six grave violations” against children in conflict; specifically, killing and maiming; recruitment or use as soldiers; sexual violence; abduction; attacks against schools or hospitals; and denial of humanitarian access. With regard to each, the Inquiry identified legal frameworks in international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law. It proposed a new means for redress: promulgation of a “single instrument” that would permit individual communications, for an expressed set of violations, to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the treaty body that monitors compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its three optional protocols. These findings and recommendations have just been published as Protecting Children in Armed Conflict (Hart 2018).

► Next, Mara Redlich Revkin (2d from left), a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Yale University and Lead Researcher on Iraq and Syria for the United Nations University Project on Children and Extreme Violence.

She drew from her fieldwork to provide a thick description of children’s experiences in regions controlled by the Islamic State, an armed group devoted to state-building – “rebel governance,” as Revkin termed it. Because the IS sees children as its future, she said, it makes population growth a priority, and exercises its control over schools and other “sites for the weaponization of children.” Children who manage to free themselves from the group encounter new problems on account of states’ responses, responses that Revkin has found often to be at odds with public opinion. These range from the  harsh punishment of every child once associated with IS, without considering the extent of that association, to the rejection of IS-issued birth certificates, thus rendering a child stateless.

► Then came yours truly, Diane Marie Amann (left), Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law and our Center’s Faculty Co-Director. I served as a member of the Inquiry’s Advisory Board.

Discussing my service as the Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Children in and affected by Armed Conflict, I focused on the preparation and contents of the 2016 ICC OTP Policy on Children, available here in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Swahili. The Policy pinpoints the crimes against and affecting children that may be punished pursuant to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and it further delineates a “child-sensitive approach” to OTP work at all stages, including investigation, charging, prosecution, and witness protection.

► Summing up the conversation was Harold Hongju Koh (2d from right), Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School and former Legal Adviser to the U.S. Department of State, who served as a consultant to the Inquiry.

Together, he said, the presentations comprised “5 I’s: Inquiry, Iraq and Syria, the ICC, and” – evoking the theme of the conference – “international law and why it matters.” Koh lauded the Inquiry’s report as “agenda-setting,” and its proposal for a means to civil redress as a “panda’s thumb” response that bears serious consideration. Koh envisaged that in some future administration the United States – the only country in the world not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child – might come to ratify the proposed new  protocol, as it has the optional protocols relating to children in armed conflict and the sale of children.

The panel thus trained attention on the harms children experience amid conflict and called for redoubled efforts to secure accountability and compensation for such harms.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

LLM alums to meet prospective students in Brazil, Argentina

map_LLM fair_editLaw students, lawyers, and legal academics in Brazil and Argentina will soon have the opportunity to speak with graduates of the University of Georgia School of Law Master of Laws degree.

Two of our alums will attend university fairs in Curitiba and Buenos Aires sponsored by Education USA, an arm of the U.S. Department of State. They will be on hand personally to discuss the career benefits and special advantages of earning the Master of Law, or LL.M., degree at Georgia Law. (See prior posts about our current LLM students, as well as our hundreds of LLM alums, here.)

1

EducationUSA is the US Department of State’s global network of educational advising centers that promotes the more than 4,700 accredited U.S. colleges and universities. Find the nearest advising center.

Wednesday, October 17 in Curitiba, Brazil: our alumnus Felipe Forte Cobo (LLM 2013), a magistrate judge, will participate in the fair. Join him from 17:00-20:00 at the Hotel Four Points by Sheraton, 4211, Av. Sete de Setembro, Agua Verde, PR.

Monday, October 22 in Buenos Aires, Argentina: our alumna Martina Lourdes Rojo (LLM 2004), a professor of law, will participate in the fair. Join her from 18:00-21:00 at the Sheraton Buenos Aires Hotel & Convention Center, San Martin 1225/1275, Buenos Aires.

Interested persons are invited to register and attend. And feel free to e-mail LLM[at]uga.edu in order to assure one-to-one meeting – or to correspond, in the event you’re unable to attend one of the fairs.

Hope to see you there!

Transitional justice expert David Tolbert to speak on future of human rights

DT_BarcelonaWe at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center will welcome human rights attorney David Tolbert to campus next Tuesday, October 2. His presentation, “Quo Vadis? Where Does the Human Rights Movement Go from Here?” will start at 12 noon in Classroom B, located on the 1st Floor of the law school’s Hirsch Hall. Lunch will be served.

Tolbert is a Visiting Scholar at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the immediate past President of the International Center for Transitional Justice, a New York-based nongovernmental organization. He has held multiple positions at international criminal tribunals including as Registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, as special expert to the UN Secretary-General on the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, and as Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Sponsoring his talk with the Dean Rusk International Law Center is the International Law Society, Georgia Law’s chapter of the International Law Students Association.

Details here.