international law

Georgia Law Professor MJ Durkee presents on inclusion and exclusion in international organization rulemaking at OECD-Leuven Centre roundtable

Professor 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 yesterday in an online roundtable forum co-sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies at KU Leuven, a premier university in Belgium.

Durkee spoke on “Inclusion and Exclusion of For-Profit Stakeholders in IO Rulemaking: Considerations and Pathways” in the roundtable, the overall theme of which was “Improving Inclusiveness of International Organization Rule-Making.” Other presenters included academics and practitioners based not only in the United States and Belgium, but also Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

The forum took place in preparation for an edited volume to be published by the Secretariat of the OECD, a Paris-based international organization to which nearly forty countries, including the United States, belong.

The Leuven Centre and Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center are partners in an annual Global Governance Summer School in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Scholarly achievements, vibrant initiatives highlighted in newsletter of Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law

For a recap of the year’s research and global practice accomplishments, have a look at the newly published newsletter of the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law. Features include:

► Scholarly achievements of our Center Director, Melissa J. Durkee, and our many other globally minded faculty, including Diane Marie Amann and Harlan G. Cohen, our Center’s Faculty Co-Directors, as well as Zohra Ahmed, Christopher Bruner, Jason Cade, Nathan Chapman, Walter Hellerstein, Thomas Kadri, Jonathan Peters, Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, Tim Samples, and Laura Phillips-Sawyer.

► The exceptional performance of the Georgia Law students who competed in the 2022 Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, placing second in the United States, competing through octofinals internationally, and tying for best overall oralist through the International Advanced Rounds.

► Our International Law Colloquium in Spring 2022, a course featuring works-in-progress conversations with international law scholars based in Latin America and Europe as well as the United States.

► Recent events, including our day-long conference on “The Law of Global Economic Statecraft” cosponsored with the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law and other University of Georgia entities, our Consular Series of talks with diplomats, presentations by distinguished lawyers on issues including the Ukraine-Russia war, and participation in panels at meetings of the American Branch of the International Law Association, the American Society of International Law, and other global entities.

► Initiatives aimed at preparing our J.D. and LL.M. students for global legal practice, including our NATO Externship, our Global Externships, and the Global Governance Summer School we host in partnership with the Leuven Centre for Global Governance at Belgium’s University of Leuven (plus additional partnerships with O.P. Jindal University in India and Bar Ilan University in Israel).

The full newsletter is here.

Video available for “The Law of Global Economic Statecraft,” conference held October 24 at Georgia Law

Anyone who missed our October 24 University of Georgia School of Law conference entitled “The Law of Global Economic Statecraft” are most welcome now to view the event online.

As posted, an interdisciplinary and international range of speakers came together to address the intensifying geopolitics of sanctions, economic pressure, economic competition t this annual conference of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, which was cosponsored by the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and other University of Georgia units: Willson Center for Humanities & Arts; Georgia Law students’ International Law Society; the Center for International Trade & Security, School of Public & International Affairs; the Department of History, Franklin College of Arts & Sciences; and the Department of Economics, Terry College of Business.

Keynoting the conference was a book discussion with Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder, author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (Yale University Press 2022).

The video link is here. Times and descriptions of each panel are as follows:

00:07 Panel 1: How We Got Here, with Zohra Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law; Mona Ali, Associate Professor of Economics, State University of New York-New Paltz; Harlan Grant Cohen, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and  GJICL’s Faculty Advisor; Nicholas Mulder, Assistant Professor and Milstein Faculty Fellow, Cornell University Department of History.

01:31 Panel 2: Where We Are, with Lauren Brown, Associate, Squire Patton Boggs, Washington, D.C.; Sarah Bauerle Danzman, Director, Tobias Center for Innovation in International Development, and Associate Professor, International Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington; Maryam Jamshidi, Associate Professor of Law University of Florida Levin College of Law; Tom Ruys, Professor, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Department of European, Public, and International Law, Ghent University, Belgium; and Jan Zahradil, Member, European Parliament.

02:53 Panel 3: Where We’re Headed, with Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor, University of Georgia School of Law; Elena Chachko, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; J. Benton Heath, Assistant Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law; Henry Farrell, SNF Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University; and Mona Paulsen, Assistant Professor of Law, London School of Economics Law School, England.

04:17, Keynote Book Discussion of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War, with (pictured above, from left) author Nicholas Mulder; Laura Phillips-Sawyer, Associate Professor at the University of Georgia School of Law; and Scott Reynolds Nelson, Georgia Athletic Association Professor at the University of Georgia Department of History.

Georgia Law Professors Amann, Cohen, Durkee participate in Research Forum and other ASIL Midyear Meeting events

University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center professors took part in Research Forum panels at the 2022 American Society of International Law Midyear Meeting, held last weekend in Florida, at the University of Miami School of Law.

Our Center’s Director, Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee (top right), who is also Associate Dean for International Programs and Allen Post Professor here at Georgia Law, presented “The Pledging World Order,” her article forthcoming in Yale Journal of International Law, at a Research Forum panel entitled “Global Trends in International Law-Making,” at which Hannah Birkenkoetter, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, and Nicolas Lamp, Queen’s University Faculty of Law in Canada, presented, with Jeffrey Dunoff, Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia, as discussant.

Meanwhile, Diane Marie Amann (left, in yellow jacket), who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Center, served as discussant for a Research Forum panel, entitled “The Behavior of International Courts,” at which Barbara Bazánth, Alina Papanastasiou, and Piero Vásquez Agüero presented works in progress drawn from their dissertation research. All three are Ph.D. candidates, at, respectively, Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, University of Cambridge in England, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

The Editorial Board of the Society’s American Journal of International Law also met during the Midyear Meeting. AJIL Board member Durkee attended in person, while a 3d member of the Georgia Law faculty, AJIL Board member Harlan Grant Cohen (bottom right), who is the Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and a Faculty Co-Director of our Center, attended online.

Present at this weekend’s biennial meeting of the ASIL Executive Council were Durkee, who is a Council member, and Amann, who is an ASIL Counsellor.

Georgia Law Professors Durkee, Amann in key roles at annual International Law Weekend conference in New York

Our University of Georgia School of Law Dean Rusk International Law Center was well-represented at last week’s International Law Weekend, the annual 3-day conference of the American Branch of the International Law Association held at multiple venues in New York City. Theme of this year’s conference, which marked the centennial anniversary of the American Branch, was “The Next 100 Years of International Law.”

Our Center’s Director, Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is also Associate Dean for International Programs and Allen Post Professor here at Georgia Law, served as a Co-Chair of the ILW conference. She also chaired Friday’s keynote address, on “The Biden Administration’s Approach to International Justice,” delivered by Beth Van Schaack, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice.

On Saturday, Diane Marie Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and a Faculty Co-Director of our Center, took part in exploration of “The Legitimacy and Fundamental Principles of International Human Rights Law.” Moderated by Mortimer Sellers (Maryland), the panel also featured as speakers Gloria Y.A. Ayee (Harvard), Hélène Ruiz Fabri (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg), and Aaron Xavier Fellmeth (Arizona State). In her own talk on legitimacy and human rights, Amann discussed her article on international child law and peace negotiations, which grew out of a University of Cambridge Lauterpacht Centre settlement options project. (Article available here; prior posts here and here.)

Georgia Law was honored to serve as a Gold Level cosponsor of this conference.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents “Absent at the Creation? Nuremberg Women and International Justice” at Max Planck Luxembourg conference

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann opened a 2-day conference on “Women & International Law” with a presentation entitled “Absent at the Creation? Nuremberg Women & International Criminal Justice.” Also on the initial panel, which Temple Law Professor Jaya Ramji-Nogales moderated, were Professor Helena Alviar García, (Sciences Po-Paris, France), Ph.D. candidate Justina Uriburu (Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland), and Professor Ignacio de la Rasilla (Wuhan University, China).

The conference took place last Thursday and Friday at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, whose Director is Professor Hélène Ruiz Fabri. It featured more than 4 dozen scholars and other experts from across the globe, including several from Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. The chapters they presented will appear in a forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Women and International Law, co-edited by Ramji-Nogales and Ruiz Fabri along with Baltimore Law Professor Nienke Grossman and Howard Political Science Professor J. Jarpa Dawuni.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, 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, presented on an aspect of her ongoing research into the roles and experiences of lawyers and other women professionals at post-World War II international criminal trials.

“Law of Global Economic Statecraft,” October 24 Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law conference, to feature book keynote discussion with Nicholas Mulder

This year’s annual conference of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law will consider a highly topical question: “The Law of Global Economic Statecraft.” Featured will be a keynote discussion by Cornell University historian Nicholas Mulder, author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (Yale University Press 2022), as well as panels including more than a dozen experts from around the world.

The daylong conference will take place on Monday, October 24, in the Larry Walker Room of Dean Rusk Hall at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Sponsoring along with GJICL, a 50-year-old student-edited journal, is the law school’s Dean Rusk International Law Center. GJICL Executive Conference Editor, 3L Claire Kimbrell, and Senior Conference Editor, Sarah Grace McCord, worked closely with Catrina Martin, the Center’s Global Practice Preparation Assistant, and with GJICL’s Faculty Advisor, Professor Harlan Grant Cohen, who is Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and one of the Center’s Faculty Co-Directors.

The University of Georgia Willson Center for Humanities & Arts is a cosponsor of the keynote event. Additional conference cosponsors include these University of Georgia units: Georgia Law students’ International Law Society; the Center for International Trade & Security, School of Public & International Affairs; the Department of History, Franklin College of Arts & Sciences; and the Department of Economics, Terry College of Business.

Registration for all aspects of the conference (to be livestreamed for online registrants) here.

Here’s the concept note:

“The global economy has been weaponized.  It’s not clear when it happened, or whether it’s even something new, but watching the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it impossible to ignore.  With breathtaking speed, a full phalanx of sophisticated economic tools was mobilized against Russia that threatened to sever it from the global economy.  For its, part, Russia demonstrated the continued force of its own economic weapons – its control over substantial supplies of oil and gas.  But the speed with which these tools were amassed was in fact testament to years of experiments and practice.  Economic tools that had been developed to isolate “rogue states,” to fight terrorist networks, and to punish human rights abusers had begun to show how the carrot of the global market could quickly become a lever of influence and a forceful stick.  But these tools gained new prominence as they were refined and redeployed for use in the intensifying economic and geopolitical rivalry between China, the United States, and Europe.  

“Is international law prepared for this reality?  Until recently, tools of economic pressure have been left largely to the margins of the discipline, treated at best as the preferred alternative to more regulated fields of military activities, at worst as exceptional tools that could largely be ignored – even in the face of critiques from the Global South and regarding human rights.  While every international law textbook has chapters on the regulation of military activity and economic cooperation, few have standalone sections on sanctions.  International economic law regimes meanwhile struggle to adapt to the realities of ‘geoeconomics’ and ‘weaponized interdependence,’ in which, structures designed to encourage economic cooperation are repurposed as tools of competition and rivalry.

“A reconsideration is long overdue.  This symposium surveys the current state of economic statecraft – the tools in use, their purposes, and their targets.  It explores how they are or should be regulated.  But most importantly, it seeks to put today’s economic statecraft in historical, political, and legal context asking critical questions about the international order they reflect and the international order they might require.”

The day’s events are as follows:

9-9:10 am Welcome

  • Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, Associate Dean for International Programs, Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and Allen Post Professor, University of Georgia School of Law

9:10-10:30 am How We Got Here

Speaking on this 1st panel:

  • Zohra Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law
  • Mona Ali, Associate Professor of Economics, State University of New York-New Paltz
  • Henrique Choer Moraes, Minister-Counsellor, Embassy of Brazil in New Zealand
  • Nicholas Mulder, Assistant Professor and Milstein Faculty Fellow, Cornell University Department of History

10:45 am-12:05 pm Where We Are

Lauren Brown, Associate, Squire Patton Boggs, Washington, D.C., will moderate this 2d panel. Speaking will be:

  • Sarah Bauerle Danzman, Director, Tobias Center for Innovation in International Development, and Associate Professor, International Studies, Indiana University-Bloomington
  • Maryam Jamshidi, Associate Professor of Law University of Florida Levin College of Law
  • Tom Ruys, Professor, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Department of European, Public, and International Law, Ghent University, Belgium
  • Jan Zahradil, Member, European Parliament

1:05-2:25 pm Where We’re Headed

Speakers on this 3d panel:

  • Elena Chachko, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
  • J. Benton Heath, Assistant Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
  • Henry Farrell, SNF Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University
  • Mona Paulsen, Assistant Professor of Law, London School of Economics Law School, England

2:40-3:55 pm Keynote Book Discussion on “The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War”

3:55 pm Thank You

  • Courtney Robinson, Editor-in-Chief, Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law

Georgia Law Dean Bo Rutledge, co-author Gary Born publish “International Civil Litigation in the United States” (7th ed.)

The seventh edition of International Civil Ligitation in the United States has just been published by its co-authors, Gary B. Born (bottom left), a London-based lawyer who is chair of the International Arbitration Practice Group at the global law firm WilmerHale, and Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge (top left), who is Dean and Talmadge Chair of Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Here’re the details from Aspen Publishing:

“Examining every topic discussed in competing texts with extensive narrative, unparalleled notes, and detailed citations, this book covers the gamut of international dispute resolution, whether judicial jurisdiction, sovereign immunity, extraterritoriality, conflicts of law, parallel proceedings, discovery disputes, service, judgment enforcement, and international arbitration. This Seventh Edition includes excerpts and updated discussions of recent U.S. court decisions and legislation relating to a wide range of private and public international law topics.” 

Included in this edition are a critique of the Restatement (Fourth) of the Foreign Relations of the United States (American Law Institute 2021), as well as developments in: litigation under the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act; sovereign immunity law following several landmark Supreme Court decisions; and extraterritorial application of federal law in the wake of landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann interviewed on international law and developments in Ukraine-Russia war

An international law analysis by Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann on recent developments in the Ukraine-Russia war is quoted in an article published Sunday by Voice of America Russian Service.

The Russian-language article, Юристы по международному праву: аннексия, проведенная Путиным, юридически ничтожна (that is, International Lawyers: The Annexation Carried out by Putin Is Legally Null and Void), was written by Evgenii Komarov. In addition to Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, 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, Komarov interviewed international law professors Lea Brilmayer and Zakhar Tropin, from, respectively, Yale Law School and the Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, Ukraine.

The article related particularly to last week’s assertion by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country had annexed four regions of Ukraine that Russian troops had occupied in the months following their February 2022 invasion of the country.

Amann analyzed this development in light of international law norms set out in agreements to which Ukraine and Russia both belong, including the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and human rights treaties. She also discussed the potential for accountability and international pressure, through, for instance, economic sanctions and geopolitical isolation, UN treaty bodies on human rights and anti-discrimination, the International Criminal Court, and proposals for a special tribunal.

Komarov wrote:

“The effectiveness of international law ‘depends on political will, and I think that the countries that make these decisions weigh the benefits and costs,’ states Diane Marie Amann. This leads to the fact that justice is moving very slowly.”

Georgia Law Professor Amann publishes “International Child Law and the Settlement of Ukraine-Russia and Other Conflicts” in International Law Studies

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann has published, in the century-old, peer-reviewed international law journal of the U.S. Naval War College, an article analyzed international child law in order to imagine ways that peace processes may engage with children and ensure that children’s issues are addressed in future peace agreements.

Entitled “International Child Law and the Settlement of Ukraine-Russia and Other Conflicts,” the article appears at 99 International Law Studies 559-601 (2022) and is available here.

Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law, 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, she served from 2012 to 2021 as the Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict.

She undertook research on this topic while a Visiting Academic at University College London this past summer. An earlier version of her research forms part of the Ukraine Peace Settlement Project of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. (prior post)

Here’s the abstract for Amann’s just-published article:

The Ukraine-Russia conflict has wreaked disproportionate harms upon children. Hundreds reportedly were killed or wounded within the opening months of the conflict, thousands lost loved ones, and millions left their homes, their schools, and their communities. Yet public discussions of how to settle the conflict contain very little at all about children. This article seeks to change that dynamic. It builds on a relatively recent trend, one that situates human rights within the structure of peace negotiations, to push for particularized treatment of children’s experiences, needs, rights, and capacities in eventual negotiations. The article draws upon twenty-first century projects that examine the lives of children in armed conflict by synthesizing international child law. The projects’ syntheses have influenced the work of certain international organizations bodies but not, to date, the work of peace settlements.

To demonstrate their relevance to conflict resolution, the article first outlines two syntheses by the United Nations and by the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor. After mapping child rights and conflict harms, it examines the treatment of children in Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement and a 1999 agreement related to Sierra Leone. The article concludes by proposing child-inclusive options for peace processes and eventual peace agreements.