international criminal law

“Technology, Accountability, and Criminality in Transnational and International Conflict” September 18 Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law annual conference

This year’s annual conference of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law will present “Technology, Accountability, and Criminality in Transnational and International Conflict (TACTIC)”. The conference will be offered jointly by the GJICL, the Georgia Criminal Law Review, and the Georgia Journal of Law & Technology.

The daylong conference will take place on Friday, September 18 in the Larry Walker Room of Dean Rusk Hall at the University of Georgia School of Law. CLE credit is available for both in-person and virtual attendance. Registration information can be found here.

Sponsoring along with GJICL, a student-edited journal established more than 50 years ago, is the law school’s Dean Rusk International Law Center. GJICL Editor in Chief, William Stowers (J.D. ’27) and Executive Conference Editor Samantha Northenor (J.D. ’27) worked with Georgia Criminal Law Review Editor in Chief Eli Werbel (J.D. 27) and Georgia Journal of Law & Technology Editor in Chief Cat Wood (J.D. ’27); Professor Joseph S. Miller, Ernest P. Rogers Chair of Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition Law; Center staff Sarah Quinn, Director; Taher S. Benany, Center Associate Director; and Lindsay Weinmann, Center Administrative Specialist; and with the GJICL’s Faculty Advisor, Professor Desirée LeClercq, who is Associate Professor of Law & Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Below is the concept note of the conference:

TACTIC will examine how modern conflict is reshaping the relationships among state power, technological systems, and legal accountability. Analyzing international law, technology law, and criminal law, the symposium will consider how contemporary conflicts expose pressure points in the rules-based international order, the governance of digital platforms and algorithmic systems, and the mechanisms available when states or individual actors violate legal norms. These questions and ideas will be explored throughout three panels: War Crimes: Accountability for Violations of International Law; Sovereignty in the Cloud: Data Jurisdiction, Commercialized Reconnaissance, and Critical Infrastructure; and The Rules-Based Order Under Fire: Sovereignty, Force, and Adaptability from Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan

The day’s events are as follows:

9:05am | Opening Remarks

Usha Rodrigues, Dean, University Professor & M.E. Kilpatrick Chair of Corporate Finance and Securities Law

9:10am | Panel 1: War Crimes: Accountability for Violations of International Law

  • Michael Newton, Professor of the Practice of Law & Director, International Legal Studies Program, Vanderbilt University Law School
  • Rebecca Crootof, Nancy Litchfield Hicks Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law
  • Patrick Keenan, Albert J. Harno Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law
  • Moderator: Jason A. Cade, J. Alton Hosch Professor of Law & Community Health Law Partnership Clinic Director, University of Georgia School of Law

10:20am | Break

10:30am| Panel 2: Sovereignty in the Cloud: Data Jurisdiction, Commercialized Reconnaissance, and Critical Infrastructure

  • Peter Swire, J.Z. Liang Chair, Professor, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • David Sella-Villa, Assistant Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law
  • Bess Hinson-Greenspan, Partner, Holland & Knight LLP
  • Moderator: Forthcoming

11:40am | Lunch

1:20pm | Panel 3: The Rules-Based Order Under Fire: Sovereignty, Force, and Adaptability from Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan

  • Charles Trumbull, Assistant Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law
  • Christopher J. Borgen, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Center for International and Comparative Law, St. John’s University School of Law
  • Mikulas Fabry, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Moderator: Forthcoming

2:30pm | Closing Remarks

William Stowers, Editor in Chief, Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law

Georgia Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann testifies at UK Parliament

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann recently gave evidence in the United Kingdom Parliament, part of the third oral hearing of the Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes. Convened with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Law, Justice and Accountability, the Standing Group is designed

“to create a unified, effective, and enforceable atrocity prediction, prevention and response strategy within the UK Government, aligned with existing international legal obligations. We aim to establish mechanisms for addressing atrocity crimes including the crime of aggression, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity through legislative reform and policy change.”

Amann’s testimony drew upon the written report which she had submitted to the Standing Group last month, entitled “Prevention of and Response to International Crimes against and affecting Children.”

She is an expert in child rights, particularly as related to situations of armed conflict and similar concerted violence. Amann served from 2012 to 2021 as Special Adviser to International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Children in and affected by Armed Conflict, and is a member, by appointment of the Ukraine Presidency, of the Bring Back Kids UA Task Force. Her publications on these issues may be found here.

Now the Regents’ Professor Emerita and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law Emerita at Georgia Law, Amann served for many years as a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. She is currently is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science Law School and serves on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law.

Buddy Parker presents “Follow the Money: Recovering the Proceeds of International Crime” at Georgia Law

The University of Georgia School of Law’s International Law Society recently hosted former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney Wilmer “Buddy” Parker in an event entitled “Follow the Money: Recovering the Proceeds of International Crime.”

After being introduced by Georgia Law student Andrei Niveaux (LL.M. ’26), Parker reflected on the shifting landscape of global asset recovery throughout his fifty plus years of experience in the field. He talked about his professional background and career trajectory litigating high profile criminal cases for both the United States Department of Justice and as a private defense attorney. Parker’s talk spanned the history of asset recovery and discussed contemporary issues in fraud, money-laundering, and forfeiture matters.

Parker entered Government service in 1978 in Washington, D.C., as a Trial Attorney with the Criminal Section of the Tax Division of the Department of Justice. He participated in investigations and prosecutions of tax and related frauds across the country. In 1983, Parker transferred to the U.S. Attorneys office for the Northern District of Georgia. During his tenure as an Assistant United States Attorney in Atlanta, Parker participated in hundreds of investigations and prosecutions of complex financial activities involving money laundering/fraud and racketeering, and international narcotics trafficking. Parker became a supervising Assistant U.S. Attorney managing cases as well as maintaining his own trial calendar. From his investigations in the Atlanta U.S. Attorneys office, he became one of the pioneers of U.S. money laundering prosecutions with their attendant forfeitures. Through the international aspects of these investigations, he became a recognized expert on money laundering and U.S. forfeiture law, making numerous presentations throughout Europe, North America and the Caribbean.

Since 1997, Parker has primarily represented individuals and corporations in far-reaching criminal investigations and prosecutions throughout the United States and internationally. He has also represented individuals in complex civil litigation. He has represented both public and private corporations, lawyers, accountants, corporate officers, bankers and other professionals in various mail and wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, healthcare fraud, tax fraud, money laundering, immigration, public corruption, commercial bribery, RICO and forfeiture investigations and prosecutions. He has also participated in investigations before the Serious Fraud Office (United Kingdom) and acted as a consultant to European lawyers in international matters.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann recently presented “Athenia, or the Nuremberg Trial at Midpoint” at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Amann focused on events 80 years ago this spring, when the landmark Trial of Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal was at its halfway point. The British prosecution team’s evidence against German naval officers, as well as certain witnesses called by the French and Soviet prosecution teams, were featured.

Lauterpacht Centre Fellow John Barker chaired the lunchtime lecture, which may be viewed on YouTube or listened to via Spotify, Apple, and Captivate podcasts.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor Emerita and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law Emerita at Georgia Law, served for many years as a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. She is writing a book on lawyers and other women professionals at the first Nuremberg trial.

Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center hosts online sessions of working group convened to include recruitment and use of children as standalone offense in proposed U.N. crimes against humanity treaty

We at the University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center were honored to host a recent two-part workshop intended to advance consideration of harms against children in a future crimes against humanity treaty.

U.N. member states took a first step toward negotiating this treaty with the January 19-30, 2026, meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity. Subsequent PrepComm sessions are expected to develop the text of the treaty, based both on the 2019 International Law Commission Draft Articles on Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity and on proposals to amend that draft.

Expanding that draft to include children’s concerns – specifically, by enumerating the recruitment and use of children as a standalone crime against humanity – was the aim of the Working Group on a Standalone Crime of Recruitment & Use of Children under the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty which our Center hosted. As explained by a briefing paper circulated before the first workshop:

Estimates indicate that a staggering 473 million children (or 18.9% of the global child population) live in conflict-affected areas and are at heightened risk of being recruited by State and non-State actors alike. The physical and developmental harms resulting from child recruitment and use can be severe and often long-lasting. Children may suffer death, physical injuries, or permanent disabilities because of combat, and many experience serious psychological trauma from being forced to commit or witness acts of violence. Even those not directly involved in combat are also at risk of attack due to their perceived association with armed actors. Recruited girls and boys are also frequently subjected to rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, and other forms of sexual violence. For most children, recruitment also interrupts or ends their schooling, limiting future opportunities for sustainable livelihoods and civic participation. The harms experienced by recruited children are comparable in nature and gravity to other crimes against humanity enumerated in the Draft Articles.

Diane Marie Amann, who is Regents Professor Emerita, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a former Center Faculty Co-Director at Georgia Law, was a co-convenor of the Working Group, along with Zama Neff, Executive Director of the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, Laura Perez, Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of International & Public Affairs, and Janine Morna, Researcher on Children at the Amnesty International Crisis Response Programme.

Other experts in the Working Group included: Kelly Adams, Legal Action Worldwide; Cécile Aptel and Miles Hastie; Jo Becker and Katherine La Puente, Human Rights Watch; Alec Wargo and Claire Bertouille, Office of the Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict; Michelle Jarvis, International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism; Christopher Lentz, University of Chicago; Mikiko Otani, Child Rights Connect; and Rachel Sloth-Nielsen, University of Oxford. (Affiliations for identifying purposes only.)

Once published, the proposed text for the crime of recruitment and use will join other proposals related to children and the crimes against humanity treaty. These include two to which various Working Group members also contributed: “Justice for Children in the Future Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity,” launched at a May 2025 conference at Columbia University; and “Children,” published in January 2026 by the American Branch of the International Law Association Study Group on Crimes Against Humanity.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at Mexico City museum conference

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Emerita Diane Marie Amann recently presented “Impressions of Nuremberg 80 Years On – Impresiones de Núremberg 80 años después” as part of “De Núremberg a Buenos Aires: Legados de la justicia penal internacional y el futuro de la rendición de cuentas transnacional,” an international conference at Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City, Mexico.

Amann examined legacies of the year-long war crimes trial which took place soon after World War II in Nuremberg, Germany, before an International Military Tribunal established by Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. After discussing some lesser known aspects, such as the roles of persons not affiliated with one of those four Allied states, Amann considered contemporary legacies of the landmark trial.

The University of Texas at Dallas joined the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in cosponsoring the two-day conference.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor Emerita and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law Emerita at Georgia Law, served for many years as a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center. At present she is an Academic Affiliate at University College London Faculty of Laws.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on child-taking at Hague event sponsored by Ukraine and Global Rights Compliance

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann discussed her research on child-taking at a side event occurring during the 24th annual Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court, held in early December at The Hague in The Netherlands.

Entitled “Vanished Voices: The Plight of Missing Children from Ukraine, Syria and Sudan,” the event was co-sponsored by the government of Ukraine and by Global Rights Compliance, a nongovernmental organization.

In addition to Professor Amann, additional panelists included: Hala Turjman, Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic: Alla Perfetska, Voices of Children; and Ikhlass Ahmed Altaher Eisa, Strategic Initiatives for Women in the Horn of Africa. Ukraine’s Ambassador to The Netherlands, Andriy Kostin, provided opening and closing remarks, and Wayne Jordash KC, president of the Global Rights Compliance Foundation, moderated the panel.

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. During her current research-intensive semester, she is an Affiliate Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws.

From 2012 to 2021 Amann served as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict. Her many publications on international child law include two that analyze the long-standing criminal phenomenon by which a state (or other powerful entity) takes a child and then endeavors to alter, erase or remake the child’s identity. These two articles are  “Child-Taking Justice and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,” 119 American Journal of International Law 629 (2025), and “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024).

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presents on Nuremberg trial at British Institute of International & Comparative Law

University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann presented “International Military Tribunal Nuremberg 1945-1946,” an overview of the first post-World War II international criminal trial, at the British Institute of International & Comparative Law in London.

Her talk opened “80 Years On: The Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials for Accountability,” a panel of experts convened to analyze the midtwentieth-century trials project. The panel also looked to contemporary developments in international relations and international criminal justice – not least, to the Nuremberg precedent which permitted international criminal prosecutions of heads of state and other governmental leaders. A full video of the panel can be found here.

Besides Professor Amann (pictured above left), panelists included (l to r): Dan Plesch, Professor of Diplomacy & Strategy at SOAS University of London; Christoph Safferling, Director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy and Professor of Law at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg; as moderator, International Criminal Court Judge Joanna Korner CMG KC; Kirsty Sutherland, international barrister at 9BR Chambers, London; and Sir Howard Morrison KCMG CBE KC, former Judge on the International Criminal Court. (LinkedIn photo credit)

Cosponsoring the panel along with BIICL were the Robert H. Jackson Center and the International Nuremberg Principles Academy.

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. During her current research-intensive semester, she is an Affiliate Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws. She has published several essays on the Nuremberg era and is writing a book on lawyers and other women professionals at that first trial.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann publishes “Child-Taking Justice and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative” in the American Journal of International Law

“Child-Taking Justice and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,” an article by University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, has just been published in the American Journal of International Law.

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. During her current research-intensive semester, she is a Visiting Academic at University College London Faculty of Laws.

This new publication continues scholarly research that Amann first explored in her article “Child-Taking,” 45 Michigan Journal of International Law 305 (2024), and that she has presented at many universities and other learned societies in the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Here’s an abstract for the new work:

The focus of this article is the 2022–2024 Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative undertaken the U.S. Executive Branch. The article chronicles this three-year process, which included sessions with survivors and their descendants, and which resulted in a two-volume report, in an apology by President Joe Biden, and in designation of a national memorial at one of the most notorious school sites. This article examines the initiative as an example of “child-taking justice”; that is, as a process of what is called “transitional justice”, done in an effort to redress the takings of children from their community, followed by efforts to alter, erase, or remake the children’s identities. The initiative shed glaring light on the past history and present effects of a centuries-old practice by which the United States took Indigenous children from their families and forced them to attend residential schools where they were compelled to submit to Westernized and Christianized notions of “civilization.”

Unfolding within the internal constitutional framework of the United States, the U.S. initiative benefited from meaningful engagement with affected communities. This article nonetheless argues for a framing that also addresses external frameworks; to be specific, one that engages fully with applicable international law and lessons learned elsewhere. The argument runs counter to the United States’ longstanding practice of holding international human rights law at arm’s length, while pressing other countries to conform to that law’s strictures. Efforts of a U.S. human-rights-at-home movement have not reversed that trend. Thus the U.S. initiative made only a hesitant overture to international issues and to three countries, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with which it claimed kinship. The 2025 inauguration of a President hostile to rights-based justice pointed to limitations of this approach.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann publishes on command responsibility in book on International Criminal Court

“Weakening Command Responsibility Doctrine? The Bemba Appeals Judgment,” a chapter by University of Georgia School of Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, has just been published in The International Criminal Court: Legal, Policy, and Political Challenges.

Amann, who 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, is a Visiting Academic this semester at University College London Faculty of Laws.

Her commentary on Prosecutor v. Bemba, a 2018 judgment of acquittal by the ICC Appeals Chamber, first appeared as “In Bemba, Command Responsibility Doctrine Ordered to Stand Down.” It then was included in this 2025 Brill Publishers collection, edited by UCLA Law Professor Richard H. Steinberg. Also contributing to the book’s section on the Bemba judgment were attorney Nadia Carine Fornel Poutou and law professors Miles Jackson (Oxford), Michael Newton (Vanderbilt), and Leila Nadya Sadat (Washington University).

Here’s the abstract for Professor Amann’s essay:

“The acceptance of commander’s responsibility is, in effect, acceptance of authority over persons permitted to kill. With that acceptance comes a heavy burden, grown out of practical and moral concerns and reflected in longstanding legal doctrine. At odds with this burden was the judgment of acquittal that the International Criminal Court Appeals Chamber entered in Bemba in 2018. Originally appearing in an online forum, this commentary argues for a statutory construction that better would serve the purposes of the ICC and the command responsibility doctrine.”