Diane Marie Amann

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann recently presented “Athenia, or the Nuremberg Trial at Midpoint” at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Amann focused on events 80 years ago this spring, when the landmark Trial of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal was at its halfway point. The British prosecution team’s evidence against German naval officers, as well as certain witnesses called by the French and Soviet prosecution teams, were featured.

Lauterpacht Centre Fellow John Barker chaired the lunchtime lecture, which may be viewed on YouTube or listened to via Spotify, Apple, and Captivate podcasts.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor Emerita and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law Emerita at Georgia Law, served for many years as a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. She is writing a book on lawyers and other women professionals at the first Nuremberg trial.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann discusses nonpeaceful dispute settlement at University College London-National University of Singapore conference on “The Future of International Law”

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann recently took part in a panel entitled “(non-)peacefulness of the settlement of international disputes” at “The Future of International Law: Reflections on Challenges New and Old” conference at University College London Faculty of Laws. Cosponsoring along with UCL Laws was the National University of Singapore Centre for International Law.

Also on the panel were King’s College London Law Professor Christian J. Tams, International Law Commission  member Vilawan Mangklatanakul, University of Geneva Law Professor Makane Moïse Mbengue, and University of Reading Law Professor Marko Milanovic. Together they explored current developments in relation to legal norms on the use of force, territorial conquest, decolonization, and economic coercion.

Organizers of the daylong conference with UCL Laws Professor Martins Paparinskis and NUS Law Senior Fellow Nilufer Oral.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor Emerita and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law Emerita at Georgia Law, served for many years as a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. At present she is an Academic Affiliate at University College London Faculty of Laws.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at Mexico City museum conference

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann recently presented “Impressions of Nuremberg 80 Years On – Impresiones de Núremberg 80 años después” as part of “De Núremberg a Buenos Aires: Legados de la justicia penal internacional y el futuro de la rendición de cuentas transnacional,” an international conference at Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City, Mexico.

Amann examined legacies of the year-long war crimes trial which took place soon after World War II in Nuremberg, Germany, before an International Military Tribunal established by Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. After discussing some lesser known aspects, such as the roles of persons not affiliated with one of those four Allied states, Amann considered contemporary legacies of the landmark trial.

The University of Texas at Dallas joined the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in cosponsoring the two-day conference.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor Emerita and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law Emerita at Georgia Law, served for many years as a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. At present she is an Academic Affiliate at University College London Faculty of Laws.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at London’s Middlesex University

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently presented “Nuremberg and Its Legacies” as part of a doctoral students’ seminar at Middlesex University School of Law in London.

Amann provided an overview of the year-long post-World War II war crimes trial held in Nuremberg, Germany, before an International Military Tribunal established by Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. After discussing how the 1945-1946 trial unfolded, she considered the continued impact of the trial with regard to issues like the death penalty, the abolition of government leaders’ immunity from prosecution, and the international law duty to refuse to obey illegal orders.

Leading the two-day seminar were Middlesex Law professors William A. Schabas and Giulia Pecorella.

Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. During her current research-intensive semester, she is an Affiliate Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws. She has published several essays on the Nuremberg era and is writing a book on lawyers and other women professionals at that first trial.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on child-taking at Hague event sponsored by Ukraine and Global Rights Compliance

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann discussed her research on child-taking at a side event occurring during the 24th annual Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court, held in early December at The Hague in The Netherlands.

Entitled “Vanished Voices: The Plight of Missing Children from Ukraine, Syria and Sudan,” the event was co-sponsored by the government of Ukraine and by Global Rights Compliance, a nongovernmental organization.

In addition to Professor Amann, additional panelists included: Hala Turjman, Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic: Alla Perfetska, Voices of Children; and Ikhlass Ahmed Altaher Eisa, Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa. Ukraine’s Ambassador to The Netherlands, Andriy Kostin, provided opening and closing remarks, and Wayne Jordash KC, president of the Global Rights Compliance Foundation, moderated the panel.

Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. During her current research-intensive semester, she is an Affiliate Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws.

From 2012 to 2021 Amann served as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict. Her many publications on international child law include two that analyze the long-standing criminal phenomenon by which a state (or other powerful entity) takes a child and then endeavors to alter, erase or remake the child’s identity. These two articles are  “Child-Taking Justice and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,” 119 American Journal of International Law 629 (2025), and “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024).

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at British Institute of International & Comparative Law

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presented “International Military Tribunal Nuremberg 1945-1946,” an overview of the first post-World War II international criminal trial, at the British Institute of International & Comparative Law in London.

Her talk opened “80 Years On: The Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials for Accountability,” a panel of experts convened to analyze the midtwentieth-century trials project. The panel also looked to contemporary developments in international relations and international criminal justice – not least, to the Nuremberg precedent which permitted international criminal prosecutions of heads of state and other governmental leaders. A full video of the panel can be found here.

Besides Professor Amann (pictured above left), panelists included (l to r): Dan Plesch, Professor of Diplomacy & Strategy at SOAS University of London; Christoph Safferling, Director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy and Professor of Law at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg; as moderator, International Criminal Court Judge Joanna Korner CMG KC; Kirsty Sutherland, international barrister at 9BR Chambers, London; and Sir Howard Morrison KCMG CBE KC, former Judge on the International Criminal Court. (LinkedIn photo credit)

Cosponsoring the panel along with BIICL were the Robert H. Jackson Center and the International Nuremberg Principles Academy.

Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. During her current research-intensive semester, she is an Affiliate Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws. She has published several essays on the Nuremberg era and is writing a book on lawyers and other women professionals at that first trial.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann publishes “Child-Taking Justice and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative” in the American Journal of International Law

“Child-Taking Justice and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,” an article by University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, has just been published in the American Journal of International Law.

Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. During her current research-intensive semester, she is a Visiting Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws.

This new publication continues scholarly research that Amann first explored in her article “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024), and that she has presented at many universities and other learned societies in the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Here’s an abstract for the new work:

The focus of this article is the 2022–2024 Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative undertaken the U.S. Executive Branch. The article chronicles this three-year process, which included sessions with survivors and their descendants, and which resulted in a two-volume report, in an apology by President Joe Biden, and in designation of a national memorial at one of the most notorious school sites. This article examines the initiative as an example of “child-taking justice”; that is, as a process of what is called “transitional justice”, done in an effort to redress the takings of children from their community, followed by efforts to alter, erase, or remake the children’s identities. The initiative shed glaring light on the past history and present effects of a centuries-old practice by which the United States took Indigenous children from their families and forced them to attend residential schools where they were compelled to submit to Westernized and Christianized notions of “civilization.”

Unfolding within the internal constitutional framework of the United States, the U.S. initiative benefited from meaningful engagement with affected communities. This article nonetheless argues for a framing that also addresses external frameworks; to be specific, one that engages fully with applicable international law and lessons learned elsewhere. The argument runs counter to the United States’ longstanding practice of holding international human rights law at arm’s length, while pressing other countries to conform to that law’s strictures. Efforts of a U.S. human-rights-at-home movement have not reversed that trend. Thus the U.S. initiative made only a hesitant overture to international issues and to three countries, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with which it claimed kinship. The 2025 inauguration of a President hostile to rights-based justice pointed to limitations of this approach.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann publishes “Nuremberg Women” chapter in Oxford Handbook on Women and International Law

“Absented at the Creation: Nuremberg Women and International Criminal Justice,” a chapter by University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, has just been published in a new Oxford University Press essay collection.

Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. During her current research-intensive semester, she is an Affiliate Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws.

Her chapter appears in The Oxford Handbook on Women and International Law, co-edited by Professors J. Jarpa Dawuni (Howard University), Nienke Grossman (University of Baltimore), Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Temple University), and Hélène Ruiz Fabri (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). The thirty-five-chapter volume spans many topics – topics that its four dozen authors explore through a variety of methods, including substantive legal analysis, legal history, and global critical race feminism.

Amann’s chapter draws from research that she had presented online as part of “In/ex-clusiveness of the Legal Construction of Justice,” a panel of the 17th Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law, held in 2022 at Utrecht University in The Netherlands.

Here’s the abstract for Amann’s chapter:

Women seldom surface in conventional accounts of the many war crimes trials that took place after World War II. Yet as this chapter shows, hundreds of women lawyers and other professionals were present, thus helping to lay the foundations of an international criminal justice project that continues to this day. Combining methodologies of narrative with theories sounding in global legal history and feminist scholarship and discussing what it reveals as dances of absence-presence, visible-invisible, and inclusion-exclusion, this chapter first examines how and why women were absented and then surfaces their contributions. It concludes with a look at contemporary international legal practice.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann publishes on command responsibility in book on International Criminal Court

“Weakening Command Responsibility Doctrine? The Bemba Appeals Judgment,” a chapter by University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, has just been published in The International Criminal Court: Legal, Policy, and Political Challenges.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law, is a Visiting Academic this semester at University College London Faculty of Laws.

Her commentary on Prosecutor v. Bemba, a 2018 judgment of acquittal by the ICC Appeals Chamber, first appeared as “In Bemba, Command Responsibility Doctrine Ordered to Stand Down.” It then was included in this 2025 Brill Publishers collection, edited by UCLA Law Professor Richard H. Steinberg. Also contributing to the book’s section on the Bemba judgment were attorney Nadia Carine Fornel Poutou and law professors Miles Jackson (Oxford), Michael Newton (Vanderbilt), and Leila Nadya Sadat (Washington University).

Here’s the abstract for Professor Amann’s essay:

“The acceptance of commander’s responsibility is, in effect, acceptance of authority over persons permitted to kill. With that acceptance comes a heavy burden, grown out of practical and moral concerns and reflected in longstanding legal doctrine. At odds with this burden was the judgment of acquittal that the International Criminal Court Appeals Chamber entered in Bemba in 2018. Originally appearing in an online forum, this commentary argues for a statutory construction that better would serve the purposes of the ICC and the command responsibility doctrine.”

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents “Child-Taking Justice and Forced Residential Schooling of Indigenous Americans” at American Society of International Law workshop

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently gave an online lecture entitled “Justice for Child-Taking and Other Crimes against and affecting Children” as part of “International Criminal Law, Conflict Resolution and Transitional Justice,” the week-long 24th Specialization Course in International Criminal Law for Young Penalists, held in Sicily, at the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, Italy.

Amann is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law. Her Siracusa lecture drew upon her expertise on children, violence, conflict, and justice. Her most recent publication in this field is “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024); all her related publications are available here.