Ukraine

Georgia Law professors, alumna, students take part in annual meeting of American Society of International Law

Many members of the University of Georgia School of Law community – professors, alumna, and students – took part in last week’s 117th Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, the theme of which was “The Reach and Limits of International Law to Solve Today’s Challenges.”

The annual meeting took place Wednesday-Saturday at several venues in Washington, D.C.

Representatives of Georgia Law, an ASIL Academic Partner, included three scholars affiliated with the law school’s Dean Rusk International Law Center:

→ The Center’s Director, Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is also Associate Dean for International Programs and Allen Post Professor, moderated a panel entitled “How Does International Law Change? Theories and Concepts of Legal Change.” (photo top row left) It was sponsored by ASIL’s International Legal Theory Interest Group, for which Durkee serves as Chair. Panelists were: Benedict Kingsbury, New York University; Nico Krisch, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva; and Sivan Shlomo Agon, Bar-Ilan University.

Durkee additionally serves on the ASIL Executive Council and the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law, and took part in the meetings of both those groups.

→ Diane Marie Amann, Regents’ Professor of International Law, Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law, and one of our Center’s Faculty Co-Directors (above second from left), took part in a late-breaking panel, “ICC Arrest Warrant Against Putin: Impunity in Check?” (photo above left) Amann, an international child law expert and former Special Adviser to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict, spoke on the significance of the fact that crimes against children form the basis of the international arrest warrant issued March 17 against the President and the Children’s Rights Commissioner of Russia. Additional panel participants were: Javier Eskauriatza, University of Nottingham; Marko Milanovic, University of Reading; Saira Mohamed, University of California-Berkeley; and moderator Katherine Gallagher, Center for Constitutional Rights. Panel video here.

Amann also attended the ASIL Executive Council meeting, completing her term as an ASIL Counsellor.

→ Harlan G. Cohen, Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, took the ASIL General Assembly stage: in his capacity as Chair of the 2023 Book Awards Committee, he co-presented those honors to numerous authors. (photo top row right, from left to right: ASIL President Greg Shaffer, honoree Damilola Olawuyi, ASIL Executive Director Michael Cooper, and Cohen; video 27:09)

Like Durkee, Cohen is a member of the AJIL Board of Editors and took part in the journal’s meeting. The annual meeting completed his service as Chair of ASIL’s International Legal Theory Interest Group.

A distinguished Georgia Law graduate also was featured:

→ Tess Davis (JD 2009), who is the Executive Director of the D.C.-based Antiquities Coalition and Dean Rusk International Law Center Council member, served as moderator for a session at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. (photo above right) Entitled “Protecting Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches,” the discussion also included: Patty Gerstenblith, DePaul University; Brooke Cuven, Cerberus Capital Management; Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Institution; and Zaydoon Zaid, American Foundation for Cultural Research.

Rounding out the contingent were four Georgia Law students, who received Louis B. Sohn Professional Development grants to serve as volunteers at the meeting: 2L Hao Chen “Bobby” Dong, 3L Collin Douglas, LLM candidate Alexandra Lampe, and 1L Mahi Patel.

Georgia Law Prof Amann presents on children and peace agreements at California-Davis Law symposium

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann spoke on “Children, Armed Conflict, and Peace Agreements” Friday in a hybrid symposium at the University of California, Davis, School of Law.

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, gave an online presentation, as part of a panel on “Human Rights and Social Justice in the International Sphere,” which also featured Wadie E. Said, who is the Miles and Ann Loadholt Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law. Their talks were part of “Justice in War and Conflict: The Role of International and Humanitarian Law,” this year’s annual symposium of the University of California, Davis, Journal of International Law and Policy.

Professor’s Amann’s talk drew upon her research into children and peace settlement options. This research initially was conducted for a project at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge, England, and subsequently was published as “International Child Law and the Settlement of Ukraine-Russia and Other Conflicts,” 99 International Law Studies 559 (2022). (prior posts available here)

The symposium took place on the one-year anniversary of the ongoing war which began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a fact that Professor Amann noted even as she stressed that the findings of her research are applicable to settlement of any armed conflict or similar instance of extreme and protracted violence,

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.

While Visiting Academic at University College London, Georgia Law Professor Amann presents “No Exit at Nuremberg”

Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann gave a presentation yesterday at University College London Faculty of Laws, where she is a Visiting Academic for all of Summer 2022.

Her talk, entitled “No Exit at Nuremberg: The Postwar Order As Stage for 21st-Century Global Insecurity” (video here) drew upon her research on participants at the post-World War II International Military Tribunal, as well as an existentialist play written toward the end of that long war. The talk investigated the relationship of international criminal justice to security with particular reference to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.

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 (she is pictured above at the right of the table). Chairing her talk in London yesterday, and moderating questions from in-person and online attendees was Dr. Martins Paparinskis (above left), a Reader in Public International Law at UCL who recently was elected to an upcoming term on the United Nations’ International Law Commission.

Georgia Law Professor Amann joins panel on paths to accountability in conference cosponsored by law schools at Notre Dame and Ukrainian Catholic universities

Diane Marie 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, spoke yesterday at “Legal Challenges Posed by the Large-Scale Russian Invasion of Ukraine,” a conference cosponsored by the University of Notre Dame Law School and the Ukrainian Catholic University Law School.

The latter university is located in Lviv, Ukraine – also the birthplace of the late Louis B. Sohn, who was the inaugural holder of Georgia Law’s Woodruff Chair in International Law.

Professor Amann took part in a panel entitled “Prosecution,” along with Marko Milanovic, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Nottingham School of Law in the United Kingdom and Oleksandr Komarov of the Ukrainian Catholic University Law School. Moderating was Tamás Ádány, Fulbright Visiting Professor at Notre Dame Law this semester, and also Head of the Department of International Law at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary.

Discussed in their panel were legal frameworks and forums that hold potential for providing measures of accountability for violations of international law reported since Russia’s February 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine. These include the illegal resort to armed force – that is, the crime of aggression – as well as atrocity crimes committed once the armed conflict had begun. (Related prior posts here, here, here, and here.)

Participants in the online conference’s two other panels examined additional aspects of the Ukraine-Russia conflict; namely, challenges to the collective security structure, and the use of economic sanctions by states and international organizations.

Georgia Law Professor Amann post proposes considering new war crimes commission to investigate in Ukraine

Referring to Russia’s invasion last month of Ukraine, as well as the brutal attacks that followed, Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann published “Time for a New War Crimes Commission?” Friday at Articles of War, the blog of the Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare, U.S. Military Academy West Point.

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, began by outlining the limitation that international law rules place on existing tribunals, such as the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice, and European Court of Human Rights, as well as a proposed special tribunal on the crime of aggression. Having thus identified gaps in accountability, she wrote:

“Now and going forward, accountability could be enhanced by setting up a clearinghouse for gathering, cataloging, and preserving evidence, with an aim to eventual prosecutions in multiple national, regional, and international systems. The idea is not new; indeed, a useful model may be found in a Second World War-era institution known as the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC).”

Her post proceeded to sketch the history of this 1943-1948 commission, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. She concluded by calling for a body that would be empowered to carry out the UNWCC’s “core function”:

“specifically, the conduct of investigations aimed at preserving evidence and facilitating criminal prosecutions of suspects at all levels, for all potential offenses, and before any number of national, regional, and international systems willing and able to afford the persons they accuse a full and fair trial.”

The full Articles of War post is here.

University of Georgia roundtable “Understanding Ukraine,” with Law Dean Rutledge moderating, set for March 17

Experts from throughout the University of Georgia community will take part in “Understanding Ukraine,” an online roundtable to be held at 12 noon Thursday, March 17.

Moderating the discussion will be Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, Dean and Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law at the law school, and an expert in international dispute settlement.

The following university experts will speak on the implications, from the perspective of their respective disciplines, of Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing armed conflict:

• Jeffrey D. Berejikian, Associate Professor of International affairs, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Senior Fellow, Center for International Trade & Security, at the School of Public & International Affairs

• Joseph Kellner, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Franklin College of Arts & Sciences

• Victoria Hasko, Associate Professor in the Department of Language & Literacy Education at the Mary Frances Early College of Education

• Gopinath Munisamy, Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences

• James W. Porter, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Odum School of Ecology

• Ralitsa Vassileva, Lecturer at the Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication

Registration for this event here.

Dean Rusk International Law Center hosts “International Law and the Ukraine-Russia Conflict,” featuring Georgia Law Professors Amann, Cohen, and Durkee

Nearly a hundred members of the University of Georgia School of Law community took part Wednesday in “International Law and the Ukraine-Russia Conflict,” a forum hosted by our Dean Rusk International Law Center and presented by three international law experts on the law school’s faculty.

The armed conflict began on February 24, 2022, when Russian military troops invaded the neighboring state of Ukraine, entering the latter country at points on its northern, eastern, and southern borders. At this writing just a week later, thousands of persons, civilians and combatants alike, reportedly had been killed, and, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, more than a million Ukrainians had been forcibly displaced.

At Wednesday’s forum, each of the three Georgia Law professors first offered a brief overview of a particular aspect of the armed conflict:

  • Our Center’s Director, Melissa J. “MJ” Durkee, who is also Associate Dean for International Programs and Allen Post Professor, began by outlining the international rules that have outlawed aggressive war – that is, one country’s unjustified invasion of another – since the adoption of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations. She explained why reasons that Russia has put forward do not constitute legally valid justifications for the invasion, and further emphasized the threat that Russia’s actions place on the international rules-based order that came into being after the Allied victory in World War II. In so doing, Durkee cited a UN General Assembly resolution, adopted Wednesday by a huge majority of votes, which condemned Russia’s actions as violative of this order.
  • Next came Harlan Grant Cohen, who is Gabriel M. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professor in International Law and one of our Center’s 2 Faculty Co-Directors. Cohen focused on economic sanctions that have been levied against Russia in the last week, by individual countries including the United States and also by international organizations including the European Union. While noting that these types of economic actions had been developed in response to Iran’s nuclear program, Cohen stressed that the extent and impact of the sanctions already imposed against Russia is unprecedented.
  • Then followed our Center’s other Faculty Co-Director, Diane Marie Amann, who is also Regents’ Professor of International Law and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law. She addressed international humanitarian law, the body of law concerned with the ways that armies and armed groups actually conduct the war. She underscored that this body of law concerns itself with all sides of the conflict, regardless of who started the conflict: fighters on either side may be found liable for violations, and thus charged with war crimes. Amann concluded with a look at forums already engaged to review legal issues arising out of the war, among them the European Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, and International Court of Justice.

The forum concluded with a lively and wide-ranging question-and-answer period.

Fitting tribute for Georgia Law Prof. Louis B. Sohn (1914-2006): conference and plaque in Lviv, city of his birth

Since arriving at the University of Georgia School of Law in 2011, I have had the very great honor of holding the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law – a chair established decades ago to welcome the renowned international lawyer and academic, Louis B. Sohn (prior posts). Professor Sohn’s record of achievement as an author and teacher, and his public service as well, is an inspiration. Indeed, his oil portrait greets me whenever I step a few doors from my office and into the Louis B. Sohn Library on International Relations, both situated in our law school’s Dean Rusk International Law Center.

Peter Trooboff, Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling, Washington, D.C., and former President of the American Society of International Law, speaks at the ceremony unveiling Sohn’s plaque, affixed to a building in Lviv where Sohn once lived. Thanks for this photo are due to ASIL President-Elect Sean Murphy, who attended the ceremony along with Trooboff and another former ASIL President, Lori Fisler Damrosch.

I was thus very pleased to contribute, along with many others (including some of my Georgia Law colleagues), to the recent commemoration of Professor Sohn in the city of his birth: Lviv, Ukraine, known as Lwów, or Lemberg, and located in Poland, when he was born there on March 1, 1914. As detailed in Philippe Sands‘ masterful 2016 book, East West Street, the city was home not only to Sohn, but also to two other 20th C. giants of international law, Hersh Lauterpacht (1897-1960) and Raphael Lemkin (1914-2006).

The commemoration took place last November in Lviv. Featured were a workshop and conference, a multimedia art performance, and the unveiling of 3 plaques, each honoring one of these sons of Lviv.

Sohn’s plaque, depicted below, includes a photo, short bio, and 1981 quote of Sohn, in two languages/alphabets. The English version says:

Louis B. Sohn

1914-2006 Lemberg/Lwów-Washington, D.C.

graduate of law faculty and diplomatic science of Jan Kazimierz University (now Lviv University); renowned international lawer, professor at Harvard University, University of Georgia and George Washington University; President, American Society of International Law (1988-1990); participant in drafting the United Nations Charter and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea

To deny the existence of an international law of human rights at this time is no longer defensible (1981)

1932-1935 Lived in this building

This plaque has been made possible with the support of the City of Lviv, the Center for Urban History, family, friends and colleagues

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann)