global governance

Applications now open for UGA Law’s summer 2024 Global Governance Summer School

Applications are now open for the summer 2024 Global Governance Summer School, jointly presented by the University of Georgia School of Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center and KU Leuven’s Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies. Each summer, this short-term study abroad takes UGA Law students to Belgium and the Netherlands to explore global governance: the interaction of state, regional, and international legal regimes, plus individuals, corporations, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, networks, and other non-state actors.

In summer 2023, the first summer GGSS ran since 2019, 17 students traveled to Europe for a week of lectures with KU Leuven professors. The first week of this for-credit course also included professional development briefings in Brussels at the European Parliament, where students were able to watch the final vote of the session cast, and a private law firm specializing in EU competition law. The programming then shifted to The Hague, Netherlands, where students received briefings at the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, and Leiden University.

The students in attendance had a variety of professional and academic motivations for participating in GGSS. For some, the professional connections, international experience, and expanded academic network will continue to benefit them as they pursue employment internationally. Erin Nalley, a current 2L who aims to work in international environmental law, stated how important the experiences of GGSS are for someone interested in an international career:

“The cultural, academic, and international experiences on this program were priceless and once in a lifetime. I made new friendships and professional connections on this trip that I most likely would not have made without GGSS.”

For others focusing their professional pursuits domestically, GGSS served as a unique professional development opportunity that will set them apart in their job search. Megan Jones, a current 2L interested in a business law career, reflected on the value of the knowledge she gained through her participation in GGSS:

“GGSS was a great opportunity for someone who sees themselves practicing domestically early in their legal career but still has an interest or desire to incorporate international aspects into their professional future. They say the best way to learn something is to immerse yourself in it, and that is exactly what GGSS is: an immersive experience that introduces you to the wide array of global opportunities the legal field has to offer.“

In addition to the UGA Law students, several graduate students at UGA in the law school’s Graduate Certificate in International Law participated in GGSS. Jasmine Underwood-Starling, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology, noted that the benefits of GGSS are truly interdisciplinary:

“For any student interested in international, foreign, and comparative law, the GGSS is definitely worthwhile. The ability to go from classroom learning to then seeing the knowledge and practices in action the very next day is an invaluable experience. The program was truly inspiring.”

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Applications for the summer 2024 Global Governance Summer School are now open. Current 1Ls, 2Ls, and graduate students are encouraged to apply. This 12-day, 3-credit summer school will explore global governance through the lens of comparative administrative law led by Kent Barnett, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs & J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law. GGSS will take place from May 20 – June 1, 2024. Students are encouraged to reference this instructional video for step-by-step information regarding how to create and successfully complete an application for GGSS in UGA’s Study Away Portal by the March 1 deadline. For more information, please plan to attend the Center’s International Opportunities Information Session on Tuesday, February 13 at 12pm, or email: ruskintlaw@uga.edu

UGA Law Professor Laura Phillips-Sawyer’s review essay “Revisiting Interwar Global Economic Governance: Technocrats, Sovereignty, and the Perennial Problem of Legitimacy in Global Governance” published online by Cambridge University Press

Laura Phillips-Sawyer, Jane W. Wilson Associate Professor in Business Law, recently had her review essay titled “Revisiting Interwar Global Economic Governance: Technocrats, Sovereignty, and the Perennial Problem of Legitimacy in Global Governance” published online by Cambridge University Press. Phillips-Sawyer is an expert in U.S. antitrust law and policy, and her scholarship is related to questions of economic regulation, which intersect with legal history, economic thought, business strategy and structure, and political organization. 

Her work, “Revisiting Interwar Global Economic Governance: Technocrats, Sovereignty, and the Perennial Problem of Legitimacy in Global Governance,” is a featured book review of two books — one of which is The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (Yale University Press, 2022) by Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder, who keynoted the 2022 Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law conference, “The Law of Global Economic Statecraft.”

Below is an excerpt of the essay.

“These two extraordinary books, written by historians of international political economy, reject that failure narrative, at least in part. While it is of course true that the League of Nations failed to stem the Great Depression or quell the forces leading to World War II, the League fundamentally changed international law. Most notably, the League represented a turn away from empire and toward international institutions, which have governed global capitalism through “technocratic internationalism” ever since (Mulder, p. 21; Martin, p. 30). Historians have too often overlooked interwar international institution-building and the steady growth of administrative rule-making because of that failure narrative. Nonetheless, recent scholarship has highlighted the novel approaches that interwar international institutions took to managing international public health, migration, drug prohibition, contraband, and colonial supervision (Martin, pp. 8, 269n21). Building on a thriving subfield of “interwar internationalism,” Mulder and Martin both argue that the First World War marked a decisive turning point in global capitalism as new international institutions eroded the power and authority of empires and created a new category of “international economic regulation” (Mulder, p. 10; Martin, p. 8). Mulder focuses on the development of economic sanctions, which were first deployed in peacetime by the League of Nations in the wake of World War I, and explains how they became commonplace despite highly undesirable and unanticipated effects. Martin shows how international institutions intervened in global capital and commodity markets in ways that shaped and limited domestic policies, especially for states with uncertain or partial sovereignty. Both books show how the devices of economic regulation developed first under the auspices of empire were repurposed for the use of international institutions and then deployed first at the periphery and then on the European continent. The bottom line is that these were novel forms of organization and intervention, which rewrote international law and laid the groundwork for post-World War II “second wave” iterations of global governance (Martin, p. 3). The League may have failed, but not for lack of power and it—alongside other international groups—left an indelible mark on global governance.”

Prior posts on Phillips-Sawyer’s scholarship can be found here.

Georgia Law Professor MJ Durkee publishes article on industry groups and international governance in Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is the Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has published “Industry Groups in International Governance: A Framework for Reform” in the bi-annual, peer-reviewed Journal of Human Rights and the Environment.

Here’s the abstract:

“The Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights encourage engaging with businesses as partners in important global governance agendas. Indeed, many international organizations are now partnering with business groups to secure funding and private sector engagement. At the same time, reforms at the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization and others seek to restrain the dangers of mission distortion and capture by business groups. Shareholders at major multinational oil and gas companies also recognize these dangers and seek to rein in lobbying that is at odds with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Despite these tensions, little scholarly attention has been paid to the regulations that govern how industry and trade groups may participate in the work of international organizations. Specifically, little attention has been devoted to how those regulations could best capture the potential benefits of business engagement while restraining the potential harms. This article offers a history of engagement between international organizations and industry and trade associations, reviews arguments for embracing or restraining their participation, and develops a framework for regulations to govern their access.”

A version of this new article also is available at SSRN.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner presents on corporate sustainability disclosure in joint Minnesota-Dublin seminar

Christopher M. Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, recently took part in a seminar session on corporate sustainability disclosures, presented online for students at the University of Minnesota Law School and University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law.

“Sustainability Disclosure Around the World” was the title of the presentation by Bruner, a scholar of corporate law, corporate governance, comparative law, and sustainability, whose most recent book is The Corporation as Technology: Re-Calibrating Corporate Governance for a Sustainable Future (OUP 2022) (prior posts).

Joining Bruner in presenting the seminar were Professor Brett McDonnell, Dorsey & Whitney Chair in Law at Minnesota Law, and Xiaoyu Gu, who is a Managing Director at AB CarVal, a global alternative investment management firm. Professor Claire Hill, who is James L. Krusemark Chair in Law at Minnesota Law, and Professor Joe McGrath, of University College Dublin Law, convened the event.

Welcoming Maisie Hopkins and Daesun Kim, Visiting Scholars at Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center

We at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center are pleased to welcome to two Visiting Research Scholars:

● Maisie Hopkins is a Ph.D. candidate at the Utrecht University School of Governance in the Netherlands. She works jointly at Utrecht and another Dutch university, Leiden, on a project entitled “Complex Global Regulation and Corporate Crime.” Within the overarching frame of how complexity within global governance influences corporate crime and corporate regulatory compliance, Hopkins’ research focuses on how international regime complexity theory applies to specific cases of corporate crime in both the United States and the European Union. Hopkins holds prior law degrees from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and University of Nottingham, England. She worked for a year as a Global Legal Department Intern at Reckitt, a British multinational consumer goods company.

Serving as her Georgia Law faculty sponsor is Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is the law school’s Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor.

● Daesun Kim is undertaking a comparative administrative law research relating to Vietnam, where he has practiced for several years, and the United States. Specifically, he plans to conduct a comparative analysis of changed circumstances in the two countries’ public-private-partnership projects during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Kim’s practice specialties include public-private partnerships, foreign investments, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, with a focus on Southeast Asian countries. Holder of a J.D. degree from Handong Global University and a B.A. degree from Chonnam National University, both in Korea, Kim has practiced in Seoul, Korea, and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, at several prestigious law firms, including Shin & Kim LLC and Yulchon LLC, and also was a legal counsel at a Korean construction and energy company, POSCO E&C.

Serving as Kim’s Georgia Law faculty sponsor will be Professor Kent Barnett, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and J. Alton Professor of Law.

These visits continue our Center’s long tradition of hosting, for brief or extended stays, scholars and researchers whose work touches on issues of international, comparative, or transnational law. Details and an online application to become a visiting scholar here.

KU Leuven Professor Jan Wouters to speak on “European Union as Global Actor” this Thursday at Georgia Law

Professor Jan Wouters, international law scholar and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies at Belgium’s KU Leuven, will give a lecture entitled “The European Union as a Global Actor: Potential and Challenges” at 1 p.m. this Thursday, January 26, in the Sanders Boardroom at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Academic partners since 2015, the Leuven Centre and Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center co-present a Global Governance Summer School, among other collaborations. (prior posts)

Wouters is Full Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair ad personam EU and Global Governance, and founding Director of the Institute for International Law at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, an interdisciplinary research unit that holds the status within its university of both a Jean Monnet and KU Leuven Centre of Excellence. Additionally, Wouters is a visiting professor at Sciences Po and Paris-2 (Panthéon-Assas) in France, LUISS University in Italy, and the College of Europe in Belgium, as well as an adjunct professor of EU and human rights law Columbia University in New York. His most recent publications, all of them 2022 volumes which he co-edited, are: EU Industrial Policy in the Multipolar Economy; The G20, Development and the UN 2030 Agenda; Research Handbook on Global Governance, Business and Human Rights; and The Nexus Between Organized Crime and Terrorism.

Event details here.

Georgia Law Professor Christopher Bruner appointed Research Member of European Corporate Governance Institute

Christopher M. Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has been appointed a Research Member of the prestigious European Corporate Governance Institute, known as ECGI.

As described on its website, the Brussels-based “ECGI is an international scientific non-profit association providing a forum for debate and dialogue between academics, legislators and practitioners, focusing on major corporate governance issues.” Its “global network of practitioner, academic and institutional members” is “appointed on the basis of their significant contribution to the field of corporate governance study.” EGCI’s press release on today’s new appointments is available here.

In addition to fostering research collaboration among its members, ECGI disseminates scholarship, hosts international events, and spearheads initiatives, including its ongoing project on “Responsible Capitalism.”

Bruner (prior posts) is a scholar of corporate law, corporate governance, comparative law, and sustainability. His books include The Corporation as Technology: Re-Calibrating Corporate Governance for a Sustainable Future (OUP 2022), The Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability (co-edited with Beate Sjåfjell) (CUP 2019), Re-Imagining Offshore Finance: Market-Dominant Small Jurisdictions in a Globalizing Financial World (OUP 2016), and Corporate Governance in the Common-Law World: The Political Foundations of Shareholder Power (CUP 2013).

Georgia Law Professor MJ Durkee presents at ComplianceNet 2022, interdisciplinary conference at University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands

Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor here at the University of Georgia School of Law, presented Friday at the 3-day ComplianceNet 2022 conference at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

Durkee’s presentation, entitled “Interpretive Entrepreneurship: How firms use international legal interpretation to modify their compliance obligations,” formed part of a panel on “Legal Interpretation and Ambiguity.” Also on her panel were professors Jennifer Arlen, New York University School of Law, and J.S. Nelson, Harvard Business School.

This was the 3d ComplianceNet conference – an interdisciplinary gathering designed to bring together scholars to study the interaction between rules and human behavior.

Georgia Law Professor Bruner’s chapter on comparative corporate governance published in new Research Handbook

Christopher M. Bruner, the Stembler Family Distinguished Professor in Business Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, has contributed a chapter, “Methods of Comparative Corporate Governance,” to a just-published academic handbook on the subject.

Bruner’s chapter appears in Research Handbook on Comparative Corporate Governance. Edited by Afra Afsharipour, Professor of Law and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, and Martin Gelter, Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, the volume was issued by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Here’s the abstract for Professor Bruner’s chapter, a version which is available at SSRN:

Methodology has not received sufficient attention in the field of comparative law, and this shortcoming is perhaps even more significant in the specific field of comparative corporate governance, where the general comparative legal literature that does exist on the subject tends to be ignored. While there is assuredly no single, optimal comparative method, it remains critically important for scholars to evaluate whether the approach undertaken is fit for purpose – that is, whether the comparative method adopted is in fact capable of illuminating the subject of inquiry.

This chapter highlights some significant methodological choices and challenges encountered in comparative corporate governance. Part II describes differing comparative postures that one might adopt, emphasizing similarity or difference, respectively – an important threshold consideration, in so far as one often finds what one sets out to find, without recognizing the degree to which such predispositions might cloud the analysis and preclude a fuller account. Part III examines how the law and economics movement, in particular, has affected comparative analysis of corporate governance, critiquing its (implicit) methodology and assessing its impacts. Part IV, then, discusses various choices in research design, emphasizing how the alternatives are impacted by the foregoing dynamics. Part V briefly concludes, calling for methodological self-awareness and candid acknowledgment of the limits of what various comparative approaches to corporate governance can deliver.

“Future of Global Health Governance” topic of Monday’s Georgia Law international journal conference

Global Healthcare Governance Conference Header

“The Future of Global Healthcare Governance” is the topic of the annual Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law daylong symposium, to be held this Monday, January 25.

We at the Dean Rusk International Law Center of the University of Georgia School of Law are cosponsoring this online conference along with GJICL and the law school’s Health Law Society and International Law Society, as well as the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine, School of Public & International Affairs, and School of Social Work.

Taking into account the effects of globalization and climate change on the spread of historically localized pathogens — among them, H1N1, Zika, Ebola, and COVID-19 — the conference will re-examine legal and other frameworks designed to respond to global pandemics. The roles to be played by stated and by international entities like the World Health Organization will be explored. To quote the concept note:

“This conference will address three crucial questions of global health governance. It will consider, first, whether and how the ailing global public health infrastructure might be reinvigorated; second, how the pandemic has threatened and exposed limitations of the social safety net in the United States and other economies around the world; and, finally, the phenomenon of vaccine refusal and what national and international legal institutions might do to curb it.”

Delivering opening remarks will be Georgia Law Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge and Elizabeth Weeks, the University of Georgia Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Charles H. Kirbo Chair in Law. A keynote address, panel presentations, and breakout sessions will follow. These include (all times Eastern):

10:30-11:30 a.m. The Role of International Organizations in Global Health Governance, moderated by Georgia Law Professor Fazal Khan. Speakers: Thomas J. Bollyky, Council on Foreign Relations; Benjamin Mason Meier, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Alexandra Phelan, Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science & Security; Pedro Villarreal, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law; and Alicia Yamin, Harvard Law.

12:45-1:45 p.m. The Role of Federal Governments in Pandemics, moderated by Elizabeth Weeks, the University of Georgia Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Charles H. Kirbo Chair in Law. Speakers: Christina S. Ho, Rutgers Law; Renée M. Landers, Suffolk Law; Gwendolyn Roberts Majette, Cleveland-Marshall Law; and Wendy Parmet, Northeastern Law.

2-3 p.m. The Global Campaign for the Collective Good, moderated by Hillel Y. Levin, Alex W. Smith Professor of Law at Georgia Law and Director of UGA Law in Atlanta. Speakers: Shawn Harmon, Dalhousie University; Glen Nowak, University of Georgia; Saad Omer, Yale School of Medicine; and Dorit Reiss, California-Hastings Law.

3:30-4 p.m. Keynote Address by Marice Ashe, ChangeLab Solutions, and Elsie E. Hayford, Lamèsè.

Papers will be published in a forthcoming GJICL issue. The full program, with registration information, is available here.