Diane Marie Amann

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann’s remarks on ICC arrest warrants against Russian officials published in ASIL Annual Meeting proceedings

Remarks which University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann delivered at a plenary panel of the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting have just been published.

Entitled “Children and the ICC Arrest Warrant Against the President and the Children’s Rights Commissioner of Russia,” Amann’s remarks form part of the chapter entitled “Late-Breaking Panel: ICC Arrest Warrants: Impunity in Check?” in 117 American Society of International Law Proceedings 328 (American Society of International Law, 2024).

Amann discussed the significance of the warrants, which had charged Russia’s President and another Presidential official of the war crimes of child deportation, and which were issued just days before the 2023 Annual Meeting. The remarks spurred her to further research on the topic, resulting in her article “Child-Taking,” also published this month, at 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024) (prior post).

Also on the panel were: Professor Saira Mohamed, University of California-Berkeley School of Law; Professor Javier S. Eskauriatza, University of Nottingham Scholl of Law; and Professor Marko Milanović, University of Reading School of Law. Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law, moderated. The panelists’ remarks in full are 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. She served from 2012 to 2021 as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict. This Fall 2024 semester she is at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, serving as a Research Visitor at the Faculty of Law Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and as a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann elected Visiting Fellow at Oxford’s Exeter College

Earlier this month University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann was elected a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford University, for this autumn’s Michaelmas Term.

While in the United Kingdom, she is serving simultaneously as a Research Visitor at the Oxford Faculty of Law Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.

Amann is Regents’ Professor, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law. Her courses include Public International Law, Constitutional Law, Human Rights, and Transnational Criminal Law.

During this research-intensive semester Amann is pursuing her scholarship related to women professionals who played roles in international criminal trials after World War II and also her work on child rights, especially as they relate to armed conflict and similar violence.

Founded in 1314, Exeter College is the fourth-oldest among Oxford’s three dozen colleges. It is located in the city center next to the university’s Bodleian Library.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann discusses child-taking at annual forum International Nuremberg Principles Academy in Germany

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann spoke at last week’s Nuremberg Forum 2024, the annual three-day meeting of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. It was held in the Nuremberg, Germany, courtroom where hundreds of Nazi defendants were tried in the wake of World War II.

The theme of this year’s Forum was “For Every Child: Protecting Children’s Rights in Armed Conflict.” Amann spoke on the closing panel, “Ways Forward: Protecting Future Generations,” pictured above. She is pictured at right along with, l to r: Kristin Hausler; Betty Kaari Murungi; moderator Angar Verma; and Leila Zerrougui.

Amann gave an overview of her new article “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024), with focus on forced residential schooling of Indigenous children. As theorized in the article available here, child-taking occurs when a state or similar powerful entity takes a child and then endeavors to alter, erase, or remake the child’s identity. Though a criminal phenomenon, it may be redressed not only in criminal justice systems, but also through transitional justice mechanisms.

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. She served from 2012 to 2021 as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict. This fall, she is spending a research-intensive semester in the United Kingdom, where she is a Research Visitor at the Oxford Faculty of Law Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann publishes “Child-Taking” in Michigan Journal of International Law

“Child-Taking,” an article by University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, has just been published at 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305-79 (2024).

As theorized in the article, “child-taking” occurs when a state or similar powerful entity takes a child and then endeavors to alter, erase, or remake the child’s identity. It is a criminal phenomenon that has been repeated across decades and centuries. On rare occasion, criminal prosecutions have occurred, as with the Situation in Ukraine before the International Criminal Court. More often redress, if any, must take place in other forums. The article thus considers these other types of transitional justice, with particular attention to the legacies of forced residential schooling imposed upon Indigenous children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere.

Amann presented aspects of this research at numerous venues, including King’s College London, Yale University, the University of Cambridge, University College London, and the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting.

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. She served from 2012 to 2021 as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict.

Here’s the abstract of the “Child-Taking” article, the print version of which is available here:

A ruling group at times takes certain children out of their community and then tries to remake them in its image. It tries to rid the child of undesired differences, in ethnicity or nationality, religion or politics, race or ancestry, culture or class. There are too many examples: the colonialist residential schools that forced settler cultures on Indigenous children; the military juntas that kidnapped dissidents’ children; and today’s reports of abductions amid crises like that in Syria. Too often nothing is done, and the children are lost. But that may be changing, as the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) is seeking to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crimes of unlawfully deporting or transferring children from Ukraine to Russia.

“This article examines the criminal phenomenon that it names ‘child-taking.’ By its definition, the crime occurs when a state or similar powerful entity, first, takes a child, and second, endeavors, whether successfully or not, to alter, erase, or remake the child’s identity. Using the ICC case as a springboard, this article relies on historical and legal events to produce an original account of child-taking. Newly available trial transcripts help bring to life a bereft mother and five teenaged survivors, plus the lone woman defendant, who testified at a little-known child-kidnapping trial before a postwar Nuremberg tribunal. Their stories, viewed in the context of the evolution of international child law, inform this article’s definition. These sources further reveal child-taking to be what the law calls a matter of international concern. At its most serious, child-taking may constitute genocide or another crime within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Yet even if circumstances preclude punishment in that permanent criminal court, child-taking remains a grave offense warranting prosecution or other forms of local and global transitional justice. This is as true for the Indigenous children of residential schools in North America, Australia, and elsewhere, and for children in Syria and many other places in the world, as it is for the children of Ukraine.

Georgia Law Professor Amann a Research Visitor at Oxford’s Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann is in the United Kingdom during this Fall 2024 semester, serving as a Research Visitor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford University Faculty of Law.

The faculty sponsor for Amann’s visit is Professor Dapo Akande. Oxford’s Chichele Professor of Public International Law and a member of the U.N. International Law Commission, he has just been nominated as the UK candidate for election to the International Court of Justice.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, held the same Oxford post during another research-intensive semester, Spring 2018.

She plans to pursue her scholarship related to women professionals who played roles in international criminal trials after World War II and also her work on child rights, especially as they relate to armed conflict and similar violence.

As a Research Visitor, she also will have the opportunity to take part in Bonavero Institute activities, and will benefit from Oxford’s libraries, seminars and lectures, and other offerings.

The Bonavero Institute was founded in 2016 as a unit of the Oxford Faculty of Law, under the direction of Professor Kate O’Regan, a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Georgia Law Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge elected to prestigious Council on Foreign Relations

University of Georgia School of Law Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge was recently elected to the Council on Foreign Relations. The council is an independent, nonpartisan organization and think tank that is composed of the most prominent foreign policy leaders, including top government officials, renowned scholars, business executives, acclaimed journalists, prominent lawyers and distinguished nonprofit professionals.

Founded in 1921, the CFR is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. To that end, it supports independent research and task forces, and convenes meetings at its headquarters in New York and Washington, D.C., as well as other locations throughout the country. It also publishes Foreign Affairs, one of the preeminent journals of international affairs and U.S. foreign policy.

Rutledge is the second faculty member from the law school to be elected to the Council on Foreign Relations in the last three years. Professor 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, was elected to the Council in 2021.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann quoted on proposed aggression tribunal in Portuguese paper

Professor Diane Marie Amann recently was featured in Expresso, a newspaper based in Lisbon, Portugal, regarding efforts to hold Russian officials accountable for the war in Ukraine.

The May 10 article entitled “Conselho da Europa quer julgar agressão russa num tribunal especial: é desta que Moscovo vai pagar a fatura da guerra?” – in English, “The Council of Europe Wants to Judge Russian Aggression in a Special Court: Is this How Moscow Will Pay the Bill for the War?” – was written by Mara Tribuna.

Reviewing various obstacles to these efforts, Tribuna quoted Amann as follows (in translation):

“One question, obviously, is whether this court will be able to arrest the accused leaders,” acknowledges Diane Marie Amann. Still, she points out, “this is a challenge in all criminal cases, and the magnitude of the challenge should not impede the effort to ensure justice.”

Recalling the March 17, 2023, arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova (about which Amann has written here), Tribuna wrote:

Although neither has been detained – which highlights the challenge that any legal system faces when trying to guarantee justice while the conflict is ongoing – the decision had effects, considers Amann. “It raised public awareness about the criminal allegations and encouraged states and civil society actors to call for the return of children.”

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 transnational and international criminal law, child and human rights, constitutional law, and global legal history.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents “Child-Taking” at Forced Separation Workshop in London

Professor Diane Marie Amann recently presented her research on “Child-Taking” during a Forced Separation Workshop at King’s College London, which cosponsored the event along with Queen’s University Belfast School of Law and the UK Gender, Justice and Security Hub.

Organizers of the workshop – Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Dr. Rebekka Friedman, and Dr. Diana Florez – brought together a global array of participants who engaged in a multidisciplinary exploration of instances and consequences of separating families. Studied were contemporary and historical contexts across the globe. They included: armed conflict and similar violence; security, carceral, and migration detention; coerced schooling; enslavement; and illegal adoptions.

Amann’s talk 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 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.   

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents at Eleventh Circuit Judicial Conference

Professor Diane Marie Amann recently presented “Human Trafficking Law” to judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit as part of the circuit’s 2024 Judicial Conference.

Amann situated the crime of human trafficking within efforts to combat illicit flows of myriad goods, ranging from armaments to endangered animal species. She then considered the interplay of multilateral treaties and national statutes by comparing U.S. and British precedents on whether diplomatic immunity applies in cases alleging domestic servitude.

The talk furthered outreach efforts by the American Society of International Law, on whose Judicial Education Committee Amann serves.

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 transnational and international criminal law, child and human rights, constitutional law, and global legal history.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents “Child-Taking” at Yale University

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.