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.
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.
Here’s the abstract for Professor Amann’s article:
“Conventional narratives tend to represent the post-World War II international criminal proceedings as a men’s project, thus obscuring the many women who participated, as lawyers, journalists, analysts, interpreters, witnesses, and defendants. Indeed, two women stood trial before Nuremberg Military Tribunals. This article examines the case of the only woman found not-guilty: Inge Viermetz, who had been an administrator at Lebensborn, the Nazi SS adoption and placement agency. The article outlines the prosecution’s child-taking case against Viermetz, as well as her successful gendered self-portrayal as a conventionally feminine caregiver. With references to Professor Megan A. Fairlie, at whose memorial symposium it was presented, the article concludes by considering contemporary implications of this acquittal at Nuremberg.”
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently took part in a New York conference that launched the Children and Crimes Against Humanity Coalition, formed to ensure that child justice is embedded in a treaty to be negotiated at the United Nations.
Professor Amann, who chaired a conference panel entitled “Increasing Visibility of Crimes Affecting Children and New Crimes Against Children,” commented on drafts and is an individual endorser of the Coalition white paper. Here at Georgia Law, she 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. She was Special Adviser to International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict from 2012 to 2021, and has served since 2023 on the Bring Back Kids UA Task Force. Her recent publications in this field include “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024), and “International Child Law and the Settlement of Ukraine‑Russia and Other Conflicts,” 99 International Law Studies 559 (2022).
By U.N. General Assembly resolution, states will conclude the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty – known formally as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity – following diplomatic plenipotentiary conferences in 2028 and 2029. Preparatory meetings will take place in the interim, beginning next January.
The treaty’s text will derive from draft articles adopted in 2019 by the International Law Commission, and from amendments to those articles which U.N. member states may propose during the negotiation process.
Through efforts like the Columbia conference and the just-released white paper, the Children and Crimes Against Humanity Coalition will endeavor to promote states’ proposals to include in child-related provisions in the final treaty text. Its white paper proposes, inter alia: that every person under 18 be defined as a child; that the crime of persecution expressly include age as a prohibited ground; and the enumeration of acts that may constitute crimes against humanity explicitly include recruitment and use of children by armed groups and armed forces, as well as forced marriage. Further provisions relate to national justice and reparations proceedings; among these is the proposal that any child suspected of having committed a crime against humanity will be treated in a country’s child justice system, and not via an adult criminal prosecution.
The white paper’s authors are Véronique Aubert (Save the Children), Zoé Bertrand (Global Survivors Fund), Janine Morna (Amnesty International), and Zama Neff (Human Rights Watch). Those nongovernmental organizations co-sponsored the May 5 conference, along with various units of Columbia University and the U.N. permanent missions of Andorra, Brazil, Malta, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
Her co-panelist was Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, who is Professor of Law at the University of Athens, Greece, and the former President of the European Court of Human Rights. Moderating was Israr Khan, President of the Oxford Union, a 200-year-old debating society which draws much of its membership from the University of Oxford.
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.
University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann recently spoke on “Child-Taking Justice and Forced Residential Schooling of Indigenous Americans” at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
Her presentation was part of a spring semester WashU Law International Law Colloquium organized by Professor MJ Durkee, who is the William Gardiner Hammond Professor of Law and Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. Durkee joined that faculty in 2023, after serving as an Allen Post Professor, Associate Dean for International Programs, and Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law.
The discussant for Amann’s paper was Lecturer Steve Alagna, who is an enrolled citizen of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, and whose WashU Law Appellate Clinic just filed an amicus brief in federal appellate litigation which seeks redress, under the United States’ Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, for survivors of Indigenous children who died and were buried at a former residential school site.
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. The paper she presented at WashU builds upon research that she published as “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024).
The University of Georgia School of Law’s spring 2025 International Law Colloquium welcomed Professor Diane Marie Amann, who presented her working paper, “Child-Taking Justice and Forced Residential Schooling of Indigenous Americans.”
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. Amann served as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict and is a member of the Bring Kids Back UA Task Force.
Her presentation drew upon her recently-published article, “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024). Esra Mirze Santesso, Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia, as Amann’s faculty discussant.
This year, Professor Desirée LeClercq is overseeing the colloquium, which is designed to introduce students to features of international economic law through engagement with scholars in the international legal field. To view the full list of International Law Colloquium speakers, visit our website.
This program is made possible through the Kirbo Trust Endowed Faculty Enhancement Fund and the Talmadge Law Faculty Fund
The University of Georgia School of Law welcomed international lawyer Eva Keïta to campus this week to discuss her experience at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with students in Professor Diane Marie Amann‘s Public International Law course.
Keïta provided students with an overview of the ICJ, where she was an Associate Legal officer and a Judicial Fellow assisting a judge on various public international law matters. She spoke about the makeup of the ICJ, the role of members on each of the Judges’ teams, and how students can make themselves more competitive for open positions. Keïta then took questions from students, detailing her own professional journey as an international dispute settlement lawyer and providing advice for those interested in pursuing international legal careers.
Before her time at the ICJ, Keïta honed her expertise in international arbitration and litigation and handled complex international disputes at two international law firms in Paris. Keïta also has significant experience handling pro bono and international human rights matters. She provided legal representation to an inmate serving a life sentence under California’s Three Strikes Law in post-conviction proceedings, assisted human trafficking victims in compensation proceedings in front of French courts, and volunteered for four months in Togo, providing legal assistance to inmates through a local NGO.
Prior to her legal career, Keïta pursued a bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science, specializing in international relations, from the Sorbonne. In addition, Keïta holds a LL.M. in international economic law, business & policy from Stanford Law School and her first law degree from Sciences Po in Paris.
The University of Georgia School of Law’s spring 2025 International Law Colloquium began last week with Professor Harlan Cohen of Fordham University School of Law. For more than a decade, the International Law Colloquium Series has brought leading scholars to Georgia Law, where they have presented works in progress and invited discussion and comments from students as well as faculty discussants.
This year, Professor Desirée LeClercq is overseeing the colloquium, which is designed to introduce students to features of international economic law through engagement with scholars in the international legal field. The course broadly defines “international economic law,” to include traditional approaches (trade and investment agreements) as well as non-traditional, emerging approaches (examining the effects of international economic law on marginalized communities and considering re-distributional policies).
Cohen presented his working paper titled, “The International Order, International Law, and the Definition of Security.” Cohen, who previously served as the Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and Faculty co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, specializes in international trade, international law, international legal theory, global governance, and U.S. foreign relations law.
As economic security has seemingly moved to the center of American and European foreign policy, both the United States and the European Union have broadened their interpretation of international law rules governing security, coercion, and intervention. These broadened interpretations have supported a bevy of new sanctions, trade restrictions, investment controls, and industrial policies that have turned the global economy into an increasingly weaponized space. But these interpretations are not exactly new, echoing developing state interpretations of international law that developed states had long ago seemingly rejected. How are these once moribund interpretations of security, force, and coercion being brought back to life?
This essay argues that these interpretative shifts highlight the role of the international order as an interpretative mechanism within international law. Borrowing from the work of Robert Cover, it explains the ways that the international order acts as a jurispathic agent within the system, judging which interpretations live on and which are cast aside. As global power shifts, the international order shifts with it, potentially reopening interpretative fights over international law. Today’s fights over the meaning of security, force, and coercion thus reflect both the realities of a changing order and the battle to shape the one to come.
To view the full list of International Law Colloquium speakers, visit our website.
This program is made possible through the Kirbo Trust Endowed Faculty Enhancement Fund and the Talmadge Law Faculty Fund.
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.
The “What Figures” article is her contribution to the journal’s symposium issue based on a book about the Chagos Islands and the International Court of Justice advisory opinion, written by University College London Law Professor Philippe Sands, who was a barrister in those proceedings.
The issue also includes a foreword by Sands and a co-authored dialogue between Diane F. Orentlicher and Morton H. Halperin, as well as articles by Dan Bodansky, Christopher J. Borgen, Jorge Contesse, Peter G. Danchin, Jeffrey Dunoff, Margaret M. deGuzman, Mark A. Drumbl, Jean Galbraith, Rachel López, Jonathan H. Marks, Elizabeth Nwarueze, Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Ayodeji Kamau Perrin, and Sebastian von Massow.
Here’s the abstract for Amann’s article, which is available here:
“One person’s life forms the core around which Philippe Sands’ The Last Colony explores the events leading up to the advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965. That person is Liseby Bertrand Elysé, who was born in 1953 in Chagos, then forcibly removed to Mauritius in 1973. Her efforts to return home eventually brought her to a 2018 hearing at The Hague, where she spoke to the International Court of Justice bench by means of a subtitled video. This essay, which appears in a symposium issue on Sands’ book, investigates the ethics, the effectiveness, and the emancipatory potential of the author’s telling of the story of the Chagossian woman he most often calls ‘Madame Elysé.’”
Presented her work in progress, “Child-Taking Justice and Forced Residential Schooling of Indigenous Peoples,” as part of the Bonavero Perspectives workshop series at the Oxford Faculty of Law Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. Moderating was another Bonavero Research Visitor, Professor Eva Marie Belser of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
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, where she teaches Public International Law, Constitutional Law, and various upper-division courses exploring interrelations between national and international legal frameworks.
exchange of notes 