legal theory

Five University of Georgia-based scholars present at 2022 annual conference of the European Society of International Law

Well represented at last week’s annual conference of the European Society of International Law were scholars from the University of Georgia.

Presenting at the conference were 4 professors affiliated with the University of Georgia School of Law – along with one researcher at the University of Georgia Digital Humanities Lab, sponsored by the Willson Center for the Humanities, and two scholars who earned their first degrees at the University of Georgia.

The 2022 ESIL conference took place at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, home institution of a recent Visiting Researcher at the Dean Rusk International Law Center here at Georgia Law, Professor Brianne McGonigle Leyh. Designed to explore the theme “In/Ex-clusiveness of International Law,” the conference began with Interest Group workshops on Wednesday. It concluded on Saturday

University of Georgia scholars’ presentations were as follows:

► Professor Diane Marie Amann (pictured above left) gave an online talk entitled “Absent at the Creation? Women and International Criminal Justice” as part of a Saturday hybrid session exploring “In/Ex-clusiveness of the Legal Construction of Justice.” The presentation drew on her research into the experiences of women professionals at post-World War II international criminal trials. Amann 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; additionally, she serves on the Coordinating Committee of ESIL’s Interest Group on International Criminal Justice. Also participating on this agora session were scholars from the Netherlands’ University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University, and also from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland-Galway.

► Professor Harlan Grant Cohen (second from left), who is 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, presented twice:

► Professor Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee (center), who is 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, likewise gave two presentations at the ESIL conference:

  • She presented “The Technology of Inclusion in International Climate Law,” a talk that drew from her forthcoming Yale Journal of International Law article The Pledging World Order, at a Wednesday workshop session entitled “Just Energy Transition – the International Human Rights Law Perspective.” The workshop’s overall title was “In/Ex-clusiveness in the Energy Transition and Climate Action”; host was the ESIL Interest Group on International Environmental Law. Also on Durkee’s panel were scholars from Leiden University in the Netherlands and from the China Institute of Boundary & Ocean Studies and Research Institute of Environmental Law of Wuhan University, China.
  • Durkee explored “The Logics of Inclusion and Exclusion in International Participatory Structures,” at a Thursday workshop entitled “International Organizations, Elites, and Masses: Perspectives on In/Exclusion,” and sponsored by the ESIL Interest Group on International Organizations. Her talk concerned an early-stage project that organizes perspectives on the inclusion and exclusion of nonstate actors in the activities of international organizations. Presenting other papers were scholars from the University of Hong Kong, the University of Melbourne in Australia, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law in Germany the University of Hamburg in Germany, and the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China.

Meanwhile, Professor Tim R Samples (second from right), Associate Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Georgia Terry College of Business who has a courtesy appointment at Georgia Law, took part in three presentations.

  • Professor Samples and Dr. Katie Ireland (right), who recently joined the university’s DigiLab, spoke at two ESIL workshops along with their co-author, Caroline Kraczon, a Georgetown University Law Center 3L who earned her first degrees at the University of Georgia. Their paper, “Terms of Use Agreements and Social Platforms,” discusses their interdisciplinary project based on an original dataset of 75 digital platforms’ terms-of-use and core policies. The trio presented this research at the Wednesday workshop of the International Law & Technology Interest Group, on “Algorithmic and Technological Modes of In-/Exclusion: International Legal Method and Critique,” and also at “‘In/Ex-clusiveness through the Lens of International Business and Human Rights’” the Thursday workshop of the International Business & Human Rights Interest Group.
  • In addition, Samples co-presented Investment Law’s Transparency Gap, an article forthcoming in Cornell International Law Journal, with co-author Sebastian Puerta, a Ph.D. student in Economics at the University of California-Berkeley who earned his first degrees at the University of Georgia. Their work uses predictive modeling to estimate missing claims and awards in investment treaty arbitration. They spoke at a session of ESIL’s International Economic Law Interest Group, “In/ex-cluding Civil Society in Investment Law-making and Arbitration.” Also taking part in this session were scholars from the Institute of International Relations in Czechoslovakia, Ghent University and Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, University of Vienna in Austria, University of Trento in Italy, and Carleton University in Canada.

The European Society’s 2023 annual conference, themed “Is International Law Fair?,” will begin with Interest Group workshops on August 30, and run through September 2, in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Georgia Law Professor Harlan Cohen talks “Sources of International Law” in Borderline Justice podcast

Harlan Cohen, who is 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, discusses “Sources of International Law” in a podcast released this month.

He appeared on Borderline Jurisprudence, a podcast devoted to “philosophy and jurisprudence of international law,” in the words of its founders, Başak Etkin, Teaching and Research Fellow at Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, France, and Kostia Gorobets, Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

The conversation with Cohen covered an array of issues, including sources of international law, precedent, opinio juris, fragmentation, pluralism, and behavioral approaches to international law. Writings by Cohen and others, detailed in a bibliography available here, formed a foundation for the talk.

The 53-minute podcast may be accessed at Anchor FM, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Georgia Law Professor Amann on depicting Nuremberg artist Laura Knight for symposium on Carsten Stahn’s new Oxford monograph, “Justice as Message”

In this post Professor Diane Marie Amann, the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, discusses her most recent publication.

Among the more captivating women who worked at the 1st Nuremberg trial – women whose stories I’m now researching – was Dame Laura Knight. Already celebrated as the 1st woman in over 150 years to win election to Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts, Knight, then 68, arrived in January 1946, about a third of the way before the year-long proceedings before the International Military Tribunal. Soon after her departure 4 months later she unveiled a 5-foot by 6-foot oil painting, “The Nuremberg Trial,” at a London exhibition.

That work forms the centerpiece of “What We See When We See Law … Through the Eyes of Dame Laura Knight,” my contribution Monday to an ongoing Opinio Juris symposium on Justice as Message: Expressivist Foundations of International Criminal Justice, a new Oxford University Press book by Carsten Stahn, an international criminal law professor at Leiden Law School and Queen’s University Belfast.

My post began by discussing Stahn’s 2020 book in light of my own 2002 article about expressivist theories and international criminal law. The focus was Nuremberg: not only is it much-discussed in Stahn’s book, but the book’s cover features her 1946 painting, pictured above. Those facts launched my post’s cameo about Knight-as-messenger, available here.

Contributors of other posts in the book series include Marina Aksenova, Mark A. Drumbl, Angela Mudukuti, Darryl Robinson, Priya Urs, and Stahn himself.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)

Georgia Law, ASIL to cosponsor conference on legal responsibility of corporations and nation-states

  • When private companies perform governmental functions and governments own companies, which acts should be attributed to the state?
  • Which should be attributed to the corporation?
  • And whose religious beliefs, speech rights, and moral standing can those entities claim?

These questions and more will be explored in The Law and Logics of Attribution: Constructing the Identity and Responsibility of States and Firms, a 2-day online conference that our Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, will cohost next month.

Melissa “MJ” Durkee, Allen Post Professor at Georgia Law, is leading the event, which will bring together a multinational group of scholars in law and social sciences. It’s cosponsored by the American Society of International Law and ASIL’s Interest Group on International Legal Theory. Durkee serves as Vice Chair of that interest group; Chair is her Georgia Law colleague Harlan G. Cohen, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of our Center. Registration is available here.

Scheduled to speak at the conference, which will take place 1-5 p.m. Friday, September 11, and Friday, September 18:

◄ Olabisi Akinkugbe, Assistant Professor, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Canada

► William C. Banks, Board of Advisors Distinguished Professor, Syracuse University College of Law, New York

◄ Joshua Barkan, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Georgia

► Kristen Boon, Miriam T. Rooney Professor of Law, Seton Hall School of Law, New Jersey

◄ Rachel Brewster, Jeffrey and Bettysue Hughes Professor of Law, Duke Law School, North Carolina

► David Ciepley, Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, California

◄ Laura Dickinson, Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law, George Washington School of Law, District of Columbia

► Melissa “MJ” Durkee, Allen Post Professor, University of Georgia School of Law

◄ Benjamin Edwards, Associate Professor of Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

► James Gathii, Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Illinois

◄ Sarah Haan, Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee School of Law, Virginia

► Catherine Hardee, Associate Professor of Law, California Western School of Law

◄ Doreen Lustig, Associate Professor, Tel Aviv University, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Israel

► Kish Parella, Associate Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Virginia

◄ Dalia Palombo, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Business Ethics, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

► Mikko Rajavuori, Academy of Finland Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Eastern Finland Law School

◄ Ingrid Wuerth, Helen Strong Curry Chair in International Law, Vanderbilt School of Law, Tennessee

 

They’ll be examining aspects of the conference’s concept note:

“In international law, scholars and practitioners struggle to attribute rights and responsibilities between state and private entities in areas as diverse as military contracting, environmental accountability, human rights, international investment, and cyber espionage and warfare. In the corporate governance realm, attributing responsibility to entities is increasingly challenging in the context of globally dispersed corporate families with intricate parent-subsidiary structures; identity attribution has also produced headlining debates.

“While attribution questions fuel important conversations in both corporate and international law, the two literatures are not often in conversation. Questions of attribution in both domains nevertheless are becoming more complex and urgent, and the fields increasingly intersect: In some areas of law, attribution doctrines must determine the dividing line between states and firms. Doctrines of attribution construct the public domain, and thereby also the private. Attribution questions in both domains reinvigorate classic inquiries about the nature of a corporation, the relationship between private entities and the state, and the proper function of the law in mediating between the two.

“This conference will draw together corporate and international legal scholars, as well as thinkers outside the law, in order to cross-pollinate these two fields and the questions at their intersection, and to unearth promising theoretical tools. It will consider theoretical and doctrinal approaches to attribution, potential consequences of these approaches, and whether they may reconcile the ambiguities and deficiencies that drive current debates. The project aims to offer a new point of entry to enduring theoretical and doctrinal questions about the nature of corporations, of states, and of the relationship between them. It is particularly relevant at a time where corporations are ‘jurisdictionally ambiguous and spatially diffuse,’ states are deferential, dependent or outflanked, and multilateralism is at an ebb.”

Full details, including registration for this online event, are available here.

Georgia Law Professor Cade presents at Immigration Theory Workshop at University of Houston Law Center

Jason A. Cade, J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law and the Director of the Community Health Law Partnership Clinic here at the University of Georgia School of Law, presented on a panel, entitled “Where are We Now? Unpacking Migration’s Present,” at the inaugural interdisciplinary Immigration Theory Workshop: “Imagining Migration After Populism,” held recently at the University of Houston Law Center in Houston, Texas.

Georgia Law Professor Harlan Cohen publishes “Thoughts on the Concepts of International and Rabbinic Laws”

Harlan Cohen, who is 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, has published “The Primitive Lawyer Speaks!: Thoughts on the Concepts of International and Rabbinic Laws” in 64 Villanova Law Review 665 (2019).

The publication arose out of a symposium, held last year at Pennsylvania’s Villanova University School of Law, which explored explored implications of a 2018 Princeton University Press book by Villanova Law Professor Chaim Saiman. (prior post)

Here’s the abstract for Professor Cohen’s article, as set out at SSRN:

“Inspired by Chaim Saiman’s brilliant book, Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, this essay draws connections between the lived experiences of international law and Jewish law, focusing in particular on (1) the centrality of practice, (2) the search for and construction of authority in communities of practice (the “invisible college”), (3) the challenges and opportunities of fragmentation and pluralism, and (4) the difficulty translating their methods to more state-like institutions, like courts and legislation. The hope is that this testimony of one of H.L.A. Hart’s primitive lawyers can provide a fuller, more textured picture of how law might operate or be experienced.”

Georgia Law Professor Harlan Cohen publishes chapter on “Fragmentation”

“Fragmentation” is the title of a just-published book chapter by Harlan Cohen, 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.

The chapter appears in  Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019), a 60-essay collection edited by scholars Jean d’Aspremont, of Sciences Po in Paris and the University of Manchester, and Sahib Singh, of the University of Helsinki.

Here’s the chapter abstract:

A danger, an opportunity, passé, a cliché, destabilizing, empowering, destructive, creative: depending on whom you ask, fragmentation has meant any and all of these for international law. The concept of fragmentation has been a mirror reflecting international lawyers’ perception of themselves, their field and its prospects for the future. This chapter chronicles fragmentation’s meanings over the past few decades. In particular, it focuses on the spreading fears of fragmentation around the turn of the millennium; how those fears were eventually repurposed; where, speculatively, those fears may have gone; and how and to what extent faith in international law was restored.

The book is available here; a version of Cohen’s contribution also is available at SSRN.

Georgia Law Professor Cohen speaks at “Rabbinic Idea of Law” conference

Interrelations of jurisprudence and Jewish law were the focus of a daylong conference whose speakers included Harlan Cohen, who is 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. (photo credit)

Held last week at Pennsylvania’s Villanova University School of Law, the annual Norman J. Shachoy Symposium explored implications of Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, a 2018 Princeton University Press book by Villanova Law Professor Chaim Saiman.

Cohen spoke on a panel entitled “The Rabbinic Idea of Law in Conversation with Movements in Legal Theory.” The gathering brought together scholars of legal theory, law and literature, religious law and theology, and religious studies, from institutions including the University of Chicago, New York University, and the University of Texas.