faculty

Georgia Law Associate Dean Cade on US-Mexico migration, enforcement, activism

Two works concerning migration, enforcement, and activism along the Southern border between United States and Mexico have just been published by Jason A. Cade, Associate Dean for Clinical Programs & Experiential Learning and Hosch Associate Professor here at the University of Georgia.

In 2020, the migrant death toll exceeded a ten-year high following a summer of record-setting heat, while at the same time, criminal prosecutions of humanitarian activists reached unprecedented levels. Cade has addressed this situation in:

► “‘Water is Life!’ (and Speech!): Death, Dissent and Democracy in the Borderlands”, an article published at 96 Indiana Law Journal 261 (2020) (SSRN). Cade explored the communicative conduct of activists such as No More Deaths, whose work along the southern border aims not only to save lives but also to convey the message that all lives—including those of unauthorized migrants—are worth saving. Cade argued that the context around this expressive dissent necessitates First Amendment scrutiny of government attempts to suppress or punish it, and he further explained the broader implications for debate about the ethics of border policies.

► “All the Border’s a Stage: Humanitarian Aid as Expressive Dissent”, in 84 Studies in Law, Politics & Society, Special Issue: Law and the Citizen 110 (Austin Sarat ed., 2020). In this related book chapter, Cade examined the conduct of border policy dissenters through the lens of competing narratives, advancing the claim that tolerance of disparate viewpoints—especially those that peacefully challenge the status quo—can be crucial for both the generation of democratic knowledge and coexistence in a diverse society.

Both works comprise part of a larger research project, in which Cade is advancing a framework for more ethical border policies.

Georgia Law Professor Amann on depicting Nuremberg artist Laura Knight for symposium on Carsten Stahn’s new Oxford monograph, “Justice as Message”

In this post Professor Diane Marie Amann, the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, discusses her most recent publication.

Among the more captivating women who worked at the 1st Nuremberg trial – women whose stories I’m now researching – was Dame Laura Knight. Already celebrated as the 1st woman in over 150 years to win election to Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts, Knight, then 68, arrived in January 1946, about a third of the way before the year-long proceedings before the International Military Tribunal. Soon after her departure 4 months later she unveiled a 5-foot by 6-foot oil painting, “The Nuremberg Trial,” at a London exhibition.

That work forms the centerpiece of “What We See When We See Law … Through the Eyes of Dame Laura Knight,” my contribution Monday to an ongoing Opinio Juris symposium on Justice as Message: Expressivist Foundations of International Criminal Justice, a new Oxford University Press book by Carsten Stahn, an international criminal law professor at Leiden Law School and Queen’s University Belfast.

My post began by discussing Stahn’s 2020 book in light of my own 2002 article about expressivist theories and international criminal law. The focus was Nuremberg: not only is it much-discussed in Stahn’s book, but the book’s cover features her 1946 painting, pictured above. Those facts launched my post’s cameo about Knight-as-messenger, available here.

Contributors of other posts in the book series include Marina Aksenova, Mark A. Drumbl, Angela Mudukuti, Darryl Robinson, Priya Urs, and Stahn himself.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Georgia Law Professor MJ Durkee discusses “Interpretive Entrepreneurs” at St. John’s international law colloquium

Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, the Allen Post Professor here at the University of Georgia School of Law, recently presented “Interpretive Entrepreneurs” as part of the annual colloquium at the Center for International and Comparative Law, St. John’s University School of Law, New York.

Durkee’s article on the subject is forthcoming in the Virginia Law Review. 

University of Georgia Professor Jonathan Peters, of Grady College and School of Law, presents on press freedom to court personnel and journalists in Uzbekistan

Pleased today to welcome a contribution from Jonathan Peters, an associate professor who has faculty appointments in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the School of Law here at the University of Georgia. Professor Peters teaches and researches in the area of media law and policy, and his post here discusses his participation December 3 in an online training event hosted in Uzbekistan.

I was delighted recently to deliver two virtual presentations to court personnel and journalists in Uzbekistan, as part of a project facilitated by the United Nations Development Programme and supported by the United States Agency for International Development and the Supreme Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

The purpose of the project, called the “Rule of Law Partnership in Uzbekistan,” is to strengthen public access to the nation’s judicial system as well as public trust in it. One related priority has been to improve citizen knowledge of the courts and to encourage collaboration between court personnel and journalists. This has enabled the local media to tour Uzbekistan’s regional courts and to learn about international practices in court-journalist relations.

To those ends, I delivered presentations to a group of journalists and court personnel, including members of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Uzbekistan, on U.S. rights of access to courts and how American journalists cover legal issues. First, I discussed the tension between the First and Sixth Amendments and the various reasons that U.S. courts have generally protected media rights of access to judicial proceedings and records.

For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has observed repeatedly the historical importance of public trials and has reasoned that openness improves a trial’s functioning, that it has therapeutic value by “providing an outlet for community concern, hostility and emotion,” and that it enhances the public’s acceptance that justice is being done.

Moreover, in significant part, American journalists exercise their First Amendment rights as surrogates of the public when reporting on courts. As Justice Lewis F. Powell put it in Saxbe v. Washington Post Co., in his dissent: “For most citizens, the prospect of personal familiarity with newsworthy events is hopelessly unrealistic. In seeking out the news, the press therefore acts as an agent of the public at large. It is the means by which the people receive the … information and ideas essential to intelligent self-government.”

Then, in my second presentation, on how American journalists cover legal issues, I explored how the rule of law is preserved partly by public knowledge of court decisions and activities, and thus the media is a critical link between the judiciary and the public. So it is democratically important for journalists to explain what courts are doing and why—and to convey the implications (if any) for the public.

That means the journalists must be able to translate legal terms and concepts for a lay audience, and they must be able to distill into a short news story a complex legal action. It is also helpful for them to develop sources in the court system, while appreciating and respecting the ethical limits within which judges, lawyers, and court aides usually work.

After these remarks, the Q&A session opened up conversations among the journalists and court personnel in attendance, allowing us to have a dialogue on some of the issues most pressing for them. I hope the ultimate result is a more open judiciary and a freer press in Uzbekistan.

Georgia Law Professor Cohen presents “Sociology of WTO Precedent” at Leiden “Behavioral Approaches” workshop

Harlan Cohen, the Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, presented on “The Sociology of WTO Precedent” last month at a workshop entitled “Behavioral Approaches to International Law.”

It was sponsored online by the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden Law School in the Netherlands, in partnership with the Institute of Law and Economics at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and iCourts at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Organizers were Leiden Professor Daniel Peat, Copenhagen Professor Veronika Fikfak, and Hamburg Professor Eva van der Zee.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner publishes on AI and corporations in Cambridge Law Journal

Professor Christopher Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has published “Distributed Ledgers, Artificial Intelligence and the Purpose of the Corporation” in 79 Cambridge Law Journal 431 (2020).

Here’s the abstract:

“Distributed ledgers and blockchain technology are widely expected to promote more direct shareholder involvement in corporate governance by reducing costs of voting and trade clearance. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence may shrink the decision-making terrain where corporations rely on human management. This article analyses these technologies and concludes that, while such outcomes are plausible, their potential corporate governance impacts are likely more complex and contingent. Despite the implicit libertarianism that characterises much of the discourse, we in fact have choices to make about how such technologies are developed and deployed – and these policy decisions will have to be grounded in a normative conception of corporate purpose external to the technology itself.”

Bruner presented the work at a conference on “The Future of the Firm” held last year in London.

Professor Ringhand, Center’s Interim Director, takes part in University of Oxford panel on U.S. presidential election

Lori A. Ringhand, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law and Interim Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, took part earlier this month in a University of Oxford panel discussion on the American electoral process.

The panel, entitled “‘Our Character is on the Ballot’: Reflections on the US Presidential Election 2020,” was hosted by Jesus College at Oxford. Ringhand, an Election Law scholar and recent US-UK Fulbright Distinguished Chair, earned her B.C.L. degree at Oxford. (prior posts)

Georgia Law clinics join to assist in litigation by immigrant women alleging abuse, retaliation while in ICE detention

Two clinics here at the University of Georgia School of Law have joined forces on behalf of women who allege they endured abusive gynecological and other medical treatments, as well as inhumane conditions and retaliation, while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), at a privately run facility in south Georgia.

Georgia Law Professor Amann’s “Glimpses of Women at the Tokyo Tribunal” in just-published book

Professor Diane Marie Amann, holder of the Emily & Ernest Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has published an essay entitled “Glimpses of Women at the Tokyo Tribunal.”

It appears in a new book, The Tokyo Tribunal: Perspectives on Law, History and Memory, produced by four editors: Professor Kerstin von Lingen, Universität Wien, Austria; Professor Philipp Osten, Keio University, Japan; and Dr. Viviane E. Dittrich and Jolana Makraiová, both of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, Germany. 

These four took part last week in a launch discussion, archived at YouTube, along with two others among the book’s contributors: Professor Gerry Simpson, London School of Economics and Political Science, England; and Professor Yuma Totani, University of Hawai’i, United States.

Further contributing essays to The Tokyo Tribunal were, besides Amann, David M. Crowe, Diane Orentlicher, Kayoko Takeda, Robert Cribb, Donald M. Ferencz, Marina Aksenova, David Cohen, Narrelle Morris, Beatrice Trefalt, Sandra Wilson, Franziska Seraphim, Kuniko Ozaki, and Christoph Safferling.

Here’s the abstract for Amann’s contribution (prior post):

Compared to its Nuremberg counterpart, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East has scarcely been visible in the seven decades since both tribunals’ inception. Recently the situation has changed, as publications of IMTFE documents have occurred alongside divers legal and historical writings, as well as two films and a miniseries. These new accounts give new visibility to the Tokyo Trial – or at least to the roles that men played at those trials. This essay identifies several of the women at Tokyo and explores roles they played there, with emphasis on lawyers and analysts for the prosecution and the defense. As was the case with my 2010 essay, “Portraits of Women at Nuremberg,” the discussion is preliminary, offering glimpses of the Tokyo women in an effort to encourage further research.

The Tokyo Tribunal volume, which was published by the Brussels-based Torkel Opsahl Academic Epublisher, may be downloaded as an e-book, or ordered in hard copy, here. It is also available at outlets such as Amazon.

It is the third book in the “Nuremberg Academy Series” produced by the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, located at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. It was in Courtroom 400 of that building that a conference took place which launched this just-published volume.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Georgia Law Professors Durkee, Cohen, and Amann present at annual ASIL Midyear Meeting and Research Forum

Last weekend marked the annual Midyear Meeting and Research Forum of the American Society of International Law, held online because of the ongoing pandemic. This year as in the past, University of Georgia School of Law faculty played key roles. They are:

► Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, the Allen Post Professor at Georgia Law. She participated in meetings of two key ASIL entities; that is, the Executive Council, on which she is serving a 3-year term, and the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, at whose meeting she presented on behalf of the publication’s online platform, AJIL Unbound, for which she serves as Supervising Editor. Additionally, during the Midyear Meeting’s Research Forum, Durkee gave a presentation on the topic of “Interpretive Entrepreneurs,” at a panel entitled “International Law in Theory.”

► Harlan G. Cohen, the Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. Also a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, Cohen gave a report at that board’s meeting on “International Decisions,” the AJIL section for which he has served as Editor. He also helped organize a keynote panel on “Multilateralism & International Institutions,” part of ASIL’s International Law and the 2020 Election Series.

► Diane Marie Amann, the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and our Center’s other Faculty Co-Director. She continued a second term as an ASIL Counsellor. As part of a Research Forum panel entitled “Historic Roots of International Law,” Amann presented her work in progress, “Intersectional Sovereignties: Dr. Aline Chalufour, Woman at Nuremberg – and at Paris, Ottawa, and Dalat.”

Georgia Law is an Academic Partner of ASIL, for more than a century the United States’ premier learned society in international law.