A member of the Dean Rusk International Law Center’s staff, Global Practice Preparation Assistant Catrina Martin, attended this year’s ninth annual Atlanta International Arbitration Society (AtlAS) lecture, “Rage Against the Machine: Governing the Use of AI in International Arbitration.” AtlAS is one of the Center’s institutional partners, and Georgia Law alumnus Dr. Christof Siefarth (LL.M., ’88) is the newly-elected president. Below are some of Martin’s reflections of the event.
Her lecture discussed the potential copyright concerns in using AI, such as who owns the created data, as well as privacy concerns given that AI generators have the ability to move past firewalls and other security measures. Discussion included a critique of how the increasing use of AI in arbitration, and across the broader legal field, is training students and young lawyers for the profession, and developing the building block skills of research, writing, and cite checking.
Strong advised that in arbitration, both parties agree during preliminary discussions on the use of AI, and that arbitrators proactively raise the issue with their clients.
Martin reflected on the value of this topic for law students in particular:
“[Strong’s] perspective is helpful for students who are interested in best practices in arbitration, and especially those ‘digital natives,’ for whom AI usage feels like a natural extension of technology already ingrained in their legal education, such as LexisNexis case searches. For students who are interested in international arbitration, generative AI use may offer cost and time savings on the front end, but the pitfalls, especially when arbitrating across common- and civil-law countries, outweigh this potential.”
Strong has taught at law schools around the world and has acted as a dual-qualified (England-US) practitioner with major international law firms in the UK and the US. She has also written over 130 books, articles, and other works and has acted as an expert consultant to a variety of governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations. A full biography can be found on Emory University’s website.
In her role at the Center, Torchia assists with integral Center tasks, including: drafting blog posts, conducting research on international programs at a national level, designing social media graphics assisting with event setup and cleanup, and promoting the law school’s international programs at university-wide events, including the fall 2023 Study Abroad Fair, shown above in the top left.
One of her nominators for the award, Sarah Quinn, director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, shared the following:
“Not only does Tiffany conduct all of her responsibilities with exquisite attention to detail and professionalism, but she also takes the initiative to make things better. This comes from a place of deeply understanding and believing in the mission of our Center, and also being a caring, conscientious, and thoughtful person.
As a place on campus that welcomes many international students and visitors, having Tiffany as the face of our Center at the desk in our lobby has been an immeasurable asset. She is helpful, kind, empathetic, and patient with stressed-out students who are thousands of miles away from their homes and are engaged in demanding coursework, and she takes the time to greet and speak with everyone who walks through our Center doors as though she is greeting close friends. No matter if we have a consul general or a prospective student walking through our Center doors, I know that Tiffany’s will greet them AND leave them with a positive impression of our Center and the work that we do.“
Each spring, UGA coordinates a selection process and chooses the Student Employee of the Year to recognize the outstanding contributions and achievements of students. For more information about the annual award, please visit the UGA Career Center’s website.
For over a decade, our international law initiatives have ranked in the top 20 or so among U.S. law schools. In this year’s rankings, our international law curriculum tied with Northwestern University (Pritzker) Law, University of California (Davis) Law, and Vanderbilt University for the No. 20 spot. (The University of Georgia School of Law, as a whole, earned a No. 20 ranking this year for the second year in a row, as is posted here.)
► Superb members of the law faculty, including: Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, an international arbitration expert; the Center’s Faculty Co-Directors, Professors Diane Marie Amann, an expert in peace-and-security fields including the laws of war, child rights, and international criminal justice, and Christopher M. Bruner, a comparative corporate governance scholar. Among those supporting their efforts are many other Georgia Law faculty and courtesy faculty members, including: Thomas Burch, who leads the Appellate Clinic that has won clients relief under the Convention Against Torture; Anne Burnett, foreign and international law research librarian; Jason Cade and Clare Norins, who recently led a clinical team in securing federal redress for immigration detainees; Nathan S. Chapman, a scholar of due process and extraterritoriality; Jessica L. Heywood, Director of the Washington, D.C. Semester in Practice; Thomas E. Kadri, whose expertise includes cybercrime and global data privacy; Elizabeth Weeks, a health law specialist; Jonathan Peters, a journalism and law professor expert in international media and free speech; Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an expert in antitrust law and policy; Kalyani Ramnath, a global legal historian who focuses on South Asia; Lori A. Ringhand, a scholar of comparative constitutional law and elections law; Tim Samples, whose scholarship includes global digital platforms agreements; Kent Barnett, Sonja West, and Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, who have presented overseas on administrative law, media law, and civil procedure, respectively; Adam D. Orford, an environmental and energy law scholar; Kristen E. Shepherd, who developed and teaches the Legal Spanish curriculum; Walter Hellerstein, a world-renowned tax specialist; and Michael L. Wells, a European Union scholar.
► Visiting Scholars and Researchers, including, Mine Turhan, an assistant professor of administrative law in the Faculty of Law at the Izmir University of Economics in Türkiye, and Daesun Kim, an attorney practicing law in Vietnam who specializes in cross-border M&A, foreign investment, and public-private partnerships.
► Graduates who excel as partners in international commercial law firms, as heads of nongovernmental organizations and international organizations, as in-house counsel at leading multinational enterprises, and as diplomats and public servants – and who give back through participation in our Dean Rusk International Law Center Council, through mentoring, speaking with students (like Kannan Rajarathinam, Eduardo Conghos, Alexander White, Ellen Clarke, and Clete Johnson), and through other support.
With thanks to all, we look forward to continuing to strengthen our initiatives in international, comparative, transnational, and foreign relations law – not least, in the preparation of Georgia Law students to practice in our globalized legal profession.
Wilson-Wade and Vaughn attended the event with undergraduate and graduate students from across campus, including from the School of Public and International Affairs and from the Washington Semester program. Students were able to hear about Driehaus’ career and ask him questions about the relationship between domestic politics and international development.
Driehaus represented Ohio’s 1st Congressional District from 2008 to 2010. While in the House of Representatives, he focused on issues related to regional development, financial reform, and government accountability. Before serving in the U.S. House, Driehaus spent eight years in the Ohio Statehouse, including time as House Minority whip. He served for three years as Resident Senior Director in Iraq for the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a non-profit NGO that works around the world to safeguard democratic institutions. Driehaus is a founding member of the Good Government Group, a full-service public policy and public relations consulting firm. Additional work experience includes time as the Executive Director of Cincinnati Compass and Country Director for the United States Peace Corps in Morocco and Swaziland.
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.
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.
Professor Diane Marie Amann recently presented her research on “Child-Taking” as a guest lecturer in a course on the Russo-Ukrainian War taught at Yale University this semester. Students from Yale’s law school, management school, and school of global affairs comprise the class, which is taught by Yale Law Professor Eugene R. Fidell and Margaret M. Donovan.
Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Chair in International Law, and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law. She writes and teaches in areas including child and human rights, constitutional law, transnational and international criminal law, and global legal history.
Amann’s online guest lecture drew from her article, “Child-Taking,” soon to be published in the Michigan Journal of International Law. (Preprint draft available at SSRN.) As Amann theorizes it, child-taking occurs when a state or similarly powerful entity abducts children from their community and then endeavors to remake the children in its own image. This conduct, involving children taken from Ukraine, lies at the heart of the International Criminal Court warrants pending against President Vladimir Putin and another top Russian official. The article also examines other examples of the phenomenon, including the Nazis’ kidnappings of non-German children during World War II and the forced placement of Indigenous children into boarding schools in North America, Australia, and elsewhere.
Amann also has presented this scholarship at meetings of the American Society of International Law and at University College London Faculty of Laws and King’s College London Department of War Studies.
Johnson discussed how being in law school during 9/11 galvanized his interest in national security law. After graduation, he moved to DC and was able to gain experience in a wide variety of national security and cybersecurity leadership roles. His work in these national security and intelligence communities, in the regulatory arena, and in the Executive Branch now inform his advocacy to improve the efficiency of government-industry collaboration. Johnson stated that we are at an inflection point: incredible breakthroughs in technology and connectivity have the potential to solve the grand challenges of our time, but, as large holders of data, they can pose dangers to our freedoms.
Johnson was most recently the senior adviser for cybersecurity and technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he coordinated the department’s cybersecurity initiatives and support for the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. He was also the department’s representative for National Security Council staff deliberations on cybersecurity, encryption, and other policy issues at the intersection of technology and security. Previously, Johnson was appointed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman as the FCC’s first chief counsel for cybersecurity. In that position, he helped develop the FCC’s cybersecurity mission, focusing on creating new legal mechanisms for government collaboration with private sector stakeholders to improve the security and reliability of communications infrastructure. He was also the primary drafter of the charter for the Cybersecurity Forum for Independent and Executive Branch Regulators, a coordinating body of regulatory agencies presently chaired by the FCC. Prior to his time at the FCC, Johnson was Senator John D. Rockefeller IV’s designated counsel on the Senate Intelligence Committee and counsel for defense, foreign policy, and international trade. In those roles, he was a leading staffer on bipartisan Senate cybersecurity initiatives and the primary staff drafter of the legislation that codified the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s collaborative process to work with industry to develop and update the Cybersecurity Framework.
Before his government service, Johnson worked for a major Washington-based law firm, where he practiced in the areas of international trade, defense, and security. Earlier, he served as a U.S. Army officer in Germany, Korea, and the Balkans. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, where he was editor-in-chief of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, and he received a master of science degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, where he graduated cum laude, cross-enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for service as executive officer of its Army ROTC Paul Revere Battalion.
Earlier this month, the University of Georgia School of Law Master of Laws (LL.M.) class of 2025 traveled to Atlanta for a professional development trip organized by the Dean Rusk International Law Center’s director of international professional education, Dr. Laura Tate Kagel, and Mandy Dixon, international professional education manager.
The group of foreign lawyers then visited the law offices of Arnall Golden Gregory, LLP, where over lunch they heard about a variety of practice areas. Teri Simmons (J.D., ’89), a partner and chair of the firm’s International Immigration & Global Mobility practice and an adjunct professor of law at UGA, and her team members Matt Ohm (LL.M., ’14) and Dorothea Hockel, discussed the role of lawyers in helping foreign businesses bring their operations to the U.S. Glenn Hendrix a partner in AGG’s Healthcare Group, familiarized the visiting foreign lawyers with international arbitration practice and related the origins of Atlanta’s arbitration center, AtlAS. Jeffery Y. Lewis (J.D., ’82), discussed his work as a partner in AGG’s Litigation Practice and contrasted it with international arbitration. And Michael Burke, a partner in the Corporate and Finance Practice, shared his thoughts about issues facing lawyers in the international corporate arena.
Professional development trips are among many opportunities offered to Georgia Law LL.M. students to foster career connections and gain insight into potential career paths.
To read about one of our past professional development trips for LL.M. students, click here (2019).
To learn more about the LL.M. program, click here.
The University of Georgia School of Law has announced the creation of the Community Health Law Partnership Clinic Fund. The Thorpe family, which includes 2014 alumnus Benjamin W. “Ben” Thorpe and his mother Dr. Barbara Williams, has pledged $350,000 to enable the clinic to build on its tradition of interdisciplinary advocacy at the intersection of immigration status and health.
The clinic’s first post-graduate fellow, Thomas Evans, will join the Community HeLP team in July, 2024. Evans is a 2022 magna cum laude graduate of the law school who participated in both the Community HeLP clinic and the Jane Wilson Family Justice Clinic and received the Ellen Jordan Award for Outstanding Public Interest Student. He is currently a staff attorney in the pro se office at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
To learn more about the Community HeLP Clinic and their advocacy work in immigration, click here.
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