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On Belgium World Cup day, 2018 Georgia Law-Leuven Centre Global Governance Summer School begins

LEUVEN – Our 2018 Global Governance School has just begun in this centuries-old university city, where sidewalks cafes are awash in outdoor plasma screens and bedecked with Belgian flags, all in anticipation of the Red Devils’ knockout World Cup match this evening against Japan.

This is the 2d year that our University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center has presented this summer school in partnership with the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies at KU Leuven, one of Europe’s premier research institutions. It continues a 4-decades-old Georgia Law tradition of summer international education in Belgium.

Today, students from Georgia Law and a range of European universities came together for three lectures designed to introduce them to the concept and practice of global governance:

1st, yours truly, Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann (left), Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and one of our Center’s Faculty Co-Directors, presented a classical account of international law. Using the example of the ongoing controversy over the Chagos Islands, I then raised questions of the challenges posed by the state-centric system at the core of that account.

2d, Dr. Leonie Reins (below), an Assistant Professor in Law at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, focused on issues related to climate change as a way to explore challenges of international environment law governance.

3d, Georgia Law Professor Harlan G. Cohen (top), Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and one of our Center’s Faculty Co-Directors, answered the question “Why Global Governance?” Concepts like the tragedy of the commons and game theory informed his presentation.

The week’s coursework resumes tomorrow, when a quartet of American and European experts will deliver lectures on trade and sustainable development.

Professor Bruner publishes chapter on “How Small Jurisdictions Compete in International Financial Services”

Christopher M. Bruner, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has just published “How Small Jurisdictions Compete in International Financial Services.”

This chapter appears in Integration and International Dispute Resolution in Small States, a 2018 Springer volume edited by Petra Butler (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Eva Lein (University of Lausanne, Switzerland), and Salim Rhonson (Open University).

Bruner’s contribution is a revised version of his keynote address at a conference on “International Financial Services and Small States,” held in London in 2017.

Professors Hall and Turner present in Netherlands, at Association for Law, Property and Society annual meeting


Professors Matthew I. Hall and Christian Turner, both members of the University of Georgia School of Law faculty, recently presented at the annual meeting of the annual conference of the Association for Law, Property & Society, held this year at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

Hall (pictured top left) and Turner delivered their presentation, entitled “The Judicial Agenda and Angry Neighbors,” as part of a 5-paper panel on “Designing Optimal Rules, Markets, and Registries in Property Law.”

Known by its acronym ALPS, the Association for Law, Property & Society “brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss their work and to foster dialogue among those working in property law, policy, planning, social scientific field studies, modeling, and theory.”

Professor Bruner compares UK, US business practices in new “Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law”

Christopher M. Bruner, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has just published “Opting Out of Fiduciary Duties and Liabilities in U.S. and U.K. Business Entities.” It appears as a chapter in a 2018 Edward Elgar volume, entitled Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law, and edited by D. Gordon Smith, Dean and Glen L. Farr Professor of Law at Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School,  and Andrew S. Gold, Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law.

Here’s the SSRN abstract for Bruner’s contribution:

This chapter explores the extent of contractual freedom to opt out of fiduciary duties and liabilities in U.S. and U.K. business entities, including the U.S. corporation, general partnership, limited partnership, limited liability partnership, and limited liability company, and the U.K. limited company, general partnership, limited partnership, and limited liability partnership.

Discernible commonalities emerge from this comparative analysis. Notably, corporate law readily permits reducing liability exposure for breaches of duty in each jurisdiction, yet provides only quite limited capacity to carve back at the substance of the duties themselves. Meanwhile, unincorporated entities in each jurisdiction offer substantially greater latitude to limit the duties themselves, in some cases resulting in purely contractual business relationships.

Yet substantial differences are also apparent. U.S. corporate law permits greater insulation from liability exposure, and U.S. unincorporated entities generally provide clearer and more extensive latitude to eliminate default duties of loyalty and care outright (particularly in Delaware). One cannot comprehensively declare that U.S. law universally deviates further from the “fiduciary” governance paradigm, however, because the U.K. limited liability partnership has gone further by providing an entity form in which no such general default duties apply at all.

The analysis raises some complex comparative questions, and the chapter closes with brief reflections on why such trends, commonalities, and divergences may have arisen.

Professor Amann publishes “Bemba and Beyond,” on accountability and command responsibility, at EJIL: Talk!

One week after the International Criminal Court Appeals Chamber acquitted a Congolese politician-warlord whom a Trial Chamber unanimously had convicted of rape, pillage, and other crimes, practitioners and scholars continue to debate the decision’s significance. Indeed, the case, Prosecutor v. Bemba, has been invoked in both the papers so far presented at the 2-day ICC Scholars Forum now under way at Leiden Law School’s Hague campus.

My own initial thoughts – concerned not about the decision’s fact-based details but rather to its refashioning of the legal doctrine of command responsibility – have been published at EJIL: Talk!, the blog of the European Journal of International Law. My post, entitled “In Bemba and Beyond,” discusses command responsibility as “a time-honored doctrine with roots in military justice and international humanitarian law.” Placing this appeals judgment in the context of other decisions, the post warns:

“Together, such rulings suggest a turn away from the goal of assigning responsibility at high levels, and toward a jurisprudence which acknowledges (with regret) the commission of crimes, yet holds no cognizable legal person responsible.”

Full post here.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Georgia Law Professor Harlan Cohen presents “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle” in visit at University College London

Harlan Grant 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, spent the last two weeks as a visitor of University College London (UCL) Faculty of Laws newly renovated building, Bentham House.

As part of Cohen’s visit, UCL’s Global Governance Institute invited him to give a public keynote lecture on “Multilateralism’s Life Cycle.” As previously posted, that is the topic of his forthcoming article for the American Journal of International Law.

Cohen is a member of AJIL’s Board of Editors, and serves as Editor of the journal’s International Decisions section.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents “A New History of the Nuremberg Trials” at Oxford University’s Bonavero Institute of Human Rights

We’re pleased today to cross-post this report from Professor Diane Marie Amann, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director here at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, who undertook research-intensive semester this spring:

OXFORD – A capstone of my Hilary-Trinity Term visit here took place yesterday, when I presented “A New History of the Nuremberg Trials: Figuring Women and Others into the Narrative” to law students and faculty who gathered at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, located at Oxford University’s Mansfield College. The Oxford Transitional Justice Research network cosponsored.

Professor Kate O’Regan, director of the institute and a former judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, opened my Research Visitor Seminar. Then came my  presentation of my research on the roles women played at Nuremberg – not only the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, but also the 12 subsequent American trials before what are known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Next, Dapo Akande, Professor of Public International Law at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, offered discussant’s remarks before opening the floor for a stimulating round of Q&A.

I’m grateful to all at the Institute for this event and the hospitality I’ve enjoyed during my stay at a Bonavero Research Visitor and Mansfield College Visiting Fellow. Grateful, too, for the opportunities I’ve had to present this work elsewhere in Europe, at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway, University of Stockholm, University of Göttingen, and Max Planck Institute Luxembourg.

Georgia Law Professor Chapman presents “Due Process of War” at Oxford University Faculty of Law

OXFORD – University of Georgia School of Law Professor Nathan S. Chapman recently visited Oxford University to deliver a paper entitled “Due Process of War.” He spoke at Oxford’s Trinity College, on the invitation of the Programme for the Foundations of Law and Constitutional Government, a project within the auspices of the Oxford Faculty of Law.

In his presentation, Chapman set forth an historical account of how thinkers in America’s founding era understood the interplay of war and due process. He then linked these understandings to much more recent events, such as the United States’ 2011 targeted killing by drone strike of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.

The paper follows from Chapman’s other works in this area, including “Due Process Abroad,” published in 2017 in the Northwestern University Law Review.

Associate Dean Lori Ringhand wins Fulbright Distinguished Chair at University of Aberdeen in Scotland

Delighted to announce that Lori A. Ringhand, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the the University of Georgia School of Law, has been awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair for Spring 2019, when she will be in residence at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. While overseas, she also will present a Fulbright Gresham College Lecture.

A scholar whose expertise includes comparative constitutional law, Ringhand earned a B.C.L. in European and Comparative Law from Oxford University in England, and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She plans to spend the semester researching U.S. and British approaches to campaign finance regulation.

Professor Bruner’s book wins praise from two law journal reviewers

Winning accolades in two law journal book reviews is Re-Imagining Offshore Finance: Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions in a Globalizing Financial World , a 2016 Oxford University Press volume by Christopher M. Bruner, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law:

► In a 19-page analysis entitled “Tax Havens as Producers of Corporate Law” and published in the Michigan Law Review, author William J. Moon, Acting Assistant Professor at New York University School of Law, describes Bruner’s book as

“a significant contribution to the literature that should become required reading for both consumers and producers of knowledge concerning the regulation of global financial transactions.”

► Beginning at page 312 of the “Book Annotations” section of a recent issue of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics is a review by student Zachary S. Freeman. He describes Bruner’s work as “compelling,” and credits it for explaining

“a fundamental question of international finance: how are small jurisdictions able to compete with global powers?”