international law

International law alive and well in Atlanta

Last week was a busy one for international law in Atlanta.

On Thursday evening, the Young Arbitrators Group for the Atlanta International Arbitration Society (AtlAS) and the International Chamber of Commerce Young Arbitrators Forum (ICC YAF) presented an excellent event on international law practice in Atlanta. As announced, it featured four attorneys serving as in-house counsel at major corporations, including:

  • Gary Bunce, Assistant General Counsel, Delta Airlines
  • Carolyn Dinberg, VP and Associate General Counsel, InterContinental Hotels Group
  • Eugenia Milinelli, Counsel, JAS Freight Forwarding
  • Nicole Levy, Executive Director and Senior Legal Counsel, AT&TKing and Spalding

Attended by many young members of AtlAS, ICC YAF, and the broader Atlanta legal community, the evening presented an interesting conversation about the use of international arbitration by large corporations, and provided insight into the career tracks of the panelists. The panelists offered advice to young attorneys, such as the importance of acquiring language skills, and the reception afterwards at the office of King & Spalding provided a valuable networking opportunity.

Then, on Friday morning, the World Affairs Council of Atlanta hosted a breakfast with Ambassador Charles Rivkin, who currently serves as the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs. Amb RivkinAmbassador Rivkin spoke about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) that was signed on February 4, 2016 in New Zealand, but has yet to be approved by Congress. Ambassador Rivkin stressed the ways the TPP would benefit Atlanta businesses, in particular those exporters of: transportation equipment; non-electrical machinery; computer and electronic products; chemicals; processed foods; electrical equipment, appliances and components; the agricultural sector generally. He further stressed that the the TPP is unique and good for U.S. businesses because it sets rules for state-owned enterprises, has a chapter dedicated to small and medium sized businesses, and addresses intellectual property and data flow, labor standards, and the environment. His remarks inspired a lively conversation with the audience, who represented a cross-section of the Atlanta business community.

Emerging security challenges require norm development, State lawyer says

IMG_5540At first blush, today’s security challenges may seem familiar. Yet they are new – emerging, in U.S. State Department parlance – because of the novel ways in which those challenges present themselves.

So explained Mallory Stewart (near right), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Emerging Security Challenges & Defense Policy, during her fascinating talk Monday at Tillar House, the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the American Society of International Law. We at Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center were honored to join ASIL’s Nonproliferation, Arms Control & Disarmament Interest Group in cosponsoring Stewart’s talk, “Common Challenges to Diverse Security Threats.” (For the event video, see here.)

Stewart’s talk followed introductions by Kathleen A. Doty, Interest Group Co-Chair and our Center’s Associate Director for Global Practice Preparation, as well as opening remarks by yours truly (above, at right) respecting Dean Rusk’s arms control legacy.

Stewart pointed to technological change, in outer space and elsewhere, as one of the emerging challenges. Within this category was what is essentially garbage; that is, the debris left in outer space by state actors and, increasingly, nonstate/commercial actors, whose celestial flotsam and jetsam continue to orbit and present hazards to active satellites, space stations, and the like.

Another challenge is dual-use technology. Items as seemingly innocent as chlorine – a chemical essential to everyday cleaning – can become a security threat when deployed as a weapon, as is alleged to have happened during the ongoing conflict in Syria.

Yet another is ubiquity, the reality that technologies, such as cyber capabilities, are, literally, everywhere, and thus not easy to contain.

Containment – regulation – thus is difficult both to design and to effectuate. With regard to dual-use technologies, for instance, Stewart posed questions of intent: How, exactly, does one define and identify the moment that an innocent item is transformed into a weapon? What about attribution – in areas like cyberwarfare, how can the perpetrator be identified? How can attacks waged with such weapons be prohibited in advance?

Stewart gave due respect to the 20th C. arms control treaties that form the core portfolio of State’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification & Compliance, where she practices. Nevertheless, stressing global interdependence, she stressed the need for more nimble forms of international lawmaking. To be precise, she looked to mechanisms of soft law, such as codes of conduct, as ways that states and other essential actors might develop norms for responsible behavior in the short term. In the longer term, if the internalization and implementation of such norms should prove successful, eventually legally binding treaties may result.

(Part 2 of a 2-part series; Part 1 is here.)

At Center event in D.C., reviewing namesake Rusk’s arms control legacy

outerspaceVisitors to Tillar House, the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the American Society of International Law, were treated yesterday to a superb overview of emerging security challenges by the U.S. State Department lawyer who leads that portfolio, Mallory Stewart. I was proud both to have Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center cosponsor, and also to serve as discussant for this important event. This post and another tomorrow will outline the proceedings. (For the event video, see here.) Today’s post consists of my opening remarks, which aimed to to reacquaint the audience with to the role that our Center’s namesake, Dean Rusk, played in building the arms control framework within which Stewart and her colleagues work.

. . .

Everyone knows, of course, about Dean Rusk and Vietnam – of his role in championing a foreign conflict that claimed more than a million American and Vietnamese lives between 1965 and 1974. Everyone knows, too, of his pivotal role in averting nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Rusk famously said,

“We are eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked.”

What may be less well known – or been forgotten – is likewise significant. That is Rusk’s role in the design and implementation of the international arms control regime that has prevailed since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan seven decades ago. An Army officer who served in Asia and then in the War Department in D.C., Rusk, like many of his generation, did not fault the military decision. Yet in his memoir, As I Saw It, he wrote (p.122):

“[W]e made a mistake with the Manhattan Project from its inception. We should have built in a political task force to consider the ramifications of using the bomb.”

That position is consistent with Rusk’s own work, first as a State Department diplomat who championed the United Nations, NATO, and other multilateral postwar efforts, and ultimately as the head of that Cabinet department, for the entirety of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

As Secretary of State, Rusk oversaw the establishment of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, a forerunner of the Bureau for which our principal speaker, Mallory Stewart, now works. Moreover, Rusk was instrumental in the drafting, negotiation, conclusion, or implementation of at least seven major arms control treaties.

ltbtruskOne was the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, about which Rusk wrote (p. 259):

“[A]fter the Cuban missile crisis, it was important to demonstrate that the United States and Soviet Union could coexist. The test ban required careful and extensive negotiations, but we and they did sign a major agreement on the heels of the most horrendous crisis the world has seen. … Such is the legacy of what President Kennedy felt was his proudest achievement.”

The other treaties were the Antarctic Treaty, the Outer Space Treaty, the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Seabed Arms Control Treaty, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Many of them remain at the core of the U.S. arms control portfolio to this day. Yet with the same modesty that pervades his memoir, Rusk wrote (p. 353):

“On the whole, our record on arms control under Lyndon Johnson was respectable.”

He did allow himself a light pat on the back (p.353):

“In reviewing the accomplishments of the Kennedy-Johnson years, I claim only one for myself: that with the agreements negotiated and our constant talking with the Soviets, my colleagues and I helped add eight years to the time since a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger.”

Rusk’s commitment to extending that time continued long after he left government, in 1969, and joined the faculty at the University of Georgia School of Law. Professor Rusk spoke often about arms control, with students, with the larger community, and with the stream of colleagues who consulted with him at his new home. Indeed, as late as 1985 – less than a decade before his death – Rusk welcomed to Athens, Georgia, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, former Secretary of Defense McGeorge Bundy, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, and others for a televised discussion entitled “Forty Years Since Hiroshima: What Next for Mankind?”

Rusk’s 1990 memoir returned to that question. In the final chapter, entitled “Dean Rusk’s Message to the Young,” he wrote (p. 630):

“Your generation will discover in the decades ahead whether mankind can organize a durable peace in a world in which thousands of megatons are lying around in the hands of frail human beings. A world in which collective security – what my generation used to try to curb the obscenity of war – is withering away, and we are not even discussing what shall take its place.”

We are here today to put the lie to that last line – that is, to discuss those very issues of global security. I look forward to Ms. Stewart’s remarks.

(Tomorrow: Outline of Mallory Stewart’s remarks. Credit for photo at top, of Rusk signing the Outer Space Treaty; credit for photo above of Rusk, standing just to the left of the portrait as President Kennedy signs the Limited Test Ban Treaty)

D.C. week: Sohn Fellow Pentagon tour

pentagon1apr16This week in D.C.: In their first days volunteering at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, our Louis B. Sohn Professional Development Fellows have witnessed both a panoramic (and pan-American) Grotius Lecture by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and a witty talk by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on his new book, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities.

Today, they’re on a behind-scenes tour of the Pentagon. Depicted at center is Kathleen A. Doty, Associate Director for Global Practice Preparation at our Dean Rusk International Law Center– a former Department of Navy lawyer, she arranged the visit. The Georgia Law students surrounding her are, from left, Hannah Mojdeh Williams, Victoria Aynne Barker, Katherine Nicole Richardson, and  Deborah Nogueira Yates.

Learning law on both sides of Atlantic: Join Georgia Law at Oxford Spring 2017

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Learning in London: Georgia Law at Oxford Spring 2016 students with Professor-in-Residence James Smith and Kit Traub (JD 1988), Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs (acting), U.S. Embassy

Over the last decade, more than a hundred U.S. students have enriched their legal studies through Georgia Law’s offering of a semester-long experience the University of Oxford, one of England’s most venerable institutions. Providing 12 credits over the course of about 15 weeks, Georgia Law at Oxford is one of the few such semester-long opportunities among U.S. law schools.

According to Georgia Law Professor Joseph Miller, Director of Georgia Law at Oxford:

“The Oxford program is deeply engaging and rewarding. I remember my time there in Spring 2013 so fondly, and I continue to hear from alums of the program about how much they grew and learned in Oxford, one of the world’s ultimate university towns. It’s filled with life and living history, side by side.”

Applications are welcome for Spring 2017. Interested Georgia Law students are encouraged to attend one of 2 information sessions next week, to be held on Monday, March 14, and Wednesday, March 17; interested students from other law schools should contact Professor Miller, getmejoe[at]uga[dot]com, for information about attending as a University of Georgia visiting student.

The exciting Spring 2017 curriculum will be led by professors from both sides of the Atlantic:

Chapman_head► Georgia Law Professor Nathan Chapman (right) will be the Georgia Law professor in residence in Spring 2017. He’ll teach 2 courses, for a total of 7 units:

►► Comparative Constitutional Law: The course will survey the historical and philosophical origins of constitutionalism, with a special emphasis on the development of the liberal constitutional tradition associated with Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. The bulk of the course will explore the different structures, procedures, and rights provisions in a variety of contemporary constitutional systems (including treaty-based systems such as the European Union). A special concern will be legitimacy and methods of constitutional change.

►► The History of the Common Law: Using the excellent textbook by Langbein, Lettow Lerner, and Smith, this course will survey the development of the common law, courts, and legal profession in England and the United States, giving special emphasis to the ways that the common law and legal practice have diverged in England and American in the past 200 years. The course will conclude by comparing how the practice of law is structured and regulated in both countries today.

enchelmaierTN► Joining Professor Chapman will be Oxford Law’s Stefan Enchelmaier (left), Professor of European and Comparative Law. His 2-unit course, EU Economic Law, will examine the economic components of European Union law.

► Rounding out the curriculum will be a 3-unit Supervised Research Tutorial, modeled on the format of the renowned Oxford tutorial and taught by an array of Oxford Law faculty. Small-group meetings will be devoted to planning or revising the research paper that each student will complete during the semester, on a topic of comparative or international law.

Details and application here.