WomenNuremberg

Georgia Law Professor Amann takes part in podcast tribute to last surviving prosecutor at post-WWII Nuremberg trials, Benjamin B. Ferencz (1920-2023)

Among the international law experts featured in a podcast honoring the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor is a Faculty Co-Director of our Center, Professor Diane Marie Amann.

The tribute, entitled “In Memoriam: Benjamin B. Ferencz,” was released recently at Asymmetrical Haircuts: Your International Justice Podcast. In it, the podcast’s co-founders, journalists Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, first provided their own memories of Ferencz, who died on April 7 in Florida, at age 103. They continue with comments not only from Professor Amann, but also from Christopher “Kip” Hale, Adama Dieng, David Donat Cattin, and Ferencz’ son, Don Ferencz.

As a twenty-something lawyer, Ferencz had played a role post-World War II trials at Nuremberg, leading the Einsatzgruppen trial. (His wife, Gertrude Fried Ferencz (1919-2019), likewise worked at the trials, in administrative capacities.) He remained active throughout his life in promoting international criminal law – to quote his own favorite phrase, campaigning for “Law, Not War.”

The comments by Amann, who is Regents’ Professor of International Law and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law here at the University of Georgia School of Law, drew from a tribute she posted here the day after Ferencz’ passing.

(Depicted in photo montage at podcast website: from top left, Amann interviewing Ferencz at International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, Chautauqua, New York; Ferencz with inter alia his son Don Ferencz, Kip Hale, and then-Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda; prosecutor Ferencz addressing a court at Nuremberg; and Ferencz on a bench dedicated to him at the Peace Palace at The Hague, the Netherlands, in which the phrase “Law Not War” has been carved)

Nuremberg podcast with Georgia Law Professor Amann top download of 2022

“Understanding Nuremberg,” with Professor Diane Marie Amann, a Faculty Co-Director of our Dean Rusk International Law Center here at the University of Georgia School of Law, and University of Wisconsin Professor Francine Hirsch, was the most-downloaded 2022 episode of Asymmetrical Haircuts: Your International Justice Podcast.

As quoted in a prior post, the hosts, Hague-based journalists Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, described the podcast (available here) as a discussion of “what we think we know (and what we don’t) about Nuremberg trials.”

Amann, Regents’ Professor of International Law and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law here at Georgia Law, is writing Nuremberg Women, a book about the roles that lawyers and other women professionals played at the post-World War II trial before the International Military Tribunal. Hirsch, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is author of the award-winning Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (202o).

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.

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.

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 Diane Marie Amann gives talks on “Femmes d’exception au procès de Nuremberg” during journey to Lyon, France

Georgia Law’s Diane Marie Amann is back from France, where last week she presented, at three venues, her ongoing research regarding women who worked at first post-World War II international criminal trial in Nuremberg, Germany.

Her journey, which occurred at the invitation of and with support from the U.S. State Department’s Consulate General in Lyon, coincided with the 75th anniversary of the International Military Tribunal : on September 30-October 1, 1946, the yearlong IMT trial ended with the reading of a verdict that convicted most of the twenty-one Nazis on trial; some of them also were sentenced to die by hanging.

The talks by 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, were as follows:

► At the Hôtel de Ville de Lyon, or Lyon City Hall, at a Thursday luncheon honoring the anniversary, she summarized her research (pictured above at upper right). It focuses on 6 women who worked at the IMT as lawyers or in other professional capacities, including analyst, translator, and interpreter. The group includes at least one woman from each of the Allied nations – from France, Great Britain, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States – that conducted the trial.

► At the Faculté de Droit Julie-Victoire Daubié, Université Lumière Lyon 2, she presented “Les femmes et le droit : l’exemple des procès internationaux de Nuremberg” (“Women and Law: The Example of the Nuremberg International Trials”) to a hundred or so law students (above at lower right), as part of the law faculty’s year-long celebration, including a “Pionnières : Les femmes et le droit” (“Pioneers: Women and Law”) lecture series, of its namesake Daubié, who, 160 years ago, was the first woman to earn a bachelor’s degree in law there. Amann’s talk linked the experiences of Nuremberg women to those of women and persons belonging to other underrepresented groups in the field of international law today.

► At Maison d’Izieu, the site of a onetime children’s home in a village located near the Alps, about 65 miles east of Lyon, Amann presented “Le rôle des avocates et autres femmes d’exception au procès de Nuremberg” (“The Role of Lawyers and Other Women of Exception at the Nuremberg Trial”) (above at left). Her talk formed part of a daylong conference entitled “Actualité du procès de Nuremberg, 75 ans après” (“News about the Nuremberg Trial 75 Years Later”). Her talk focused on the only woman lawyer in the French delegation, Docteur-Maître-Juge Aline Chalufour (video here, at 2:14:40). Other speakers, among them Stéphanie Boissard, Matthias Gemählich, Jean-Paul Jean, Xavier-Jean Keita, Michel Massé, Guillaume Mouralis, and Philippe Sands, discussed other members of the French delegation, the trial as a whole, and its impact on contemporary trials at the International Criminal Court and other forums.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents on “Women and Nuremberg-Tokyo Era” in Siracusa Institute summer session

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 3siracusa.jpg

“History of International Criminal Law” was the topic on which I was honored to present Wednesday alongside two eminent historians. Our session formed part of “Human Rights, Criminal Justice and International Law,” the 20th Specialization Course in International Criminal Law for Young Penalists organized by the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, under the direction of Professor William A. Schabas.

This annual summer course typically takes place on the island of Ortigia, the ancient quarter of Siracusa, a Sicilian city founded 2,700 years ago. This year found it online because of the pandemic. That happenstance enabled well over a hundred persons from around the world to attend.

My panel participants and I focused on a founding moment of international criminal law; specifically, the post-Wold War II international criminal courts and tribunals established at Nuremberg, Germany, Tokyo, Japan, and other sites in Europe and Asia.

First, Francine Hirsch, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (above center) presented “Nuremberg at 75: Revisiting the History of the International Military Tribunal and Its Lessons.” Drawing from her book Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press 2020), she argued that the participation of the Soviet Union was essential to what was achieved at Nuremberg.

Next, Kerstin von Lingen (above left), Professor of Contemporary History at the Department for Contemporary History of the University of Vienna, Austria, addressed “Crimes Against Humanity: A Neglected Concept within the Asian War Crimes Trials?” Her careful tracing of the origins of the ethical concept and legal doctrine of crimes against humanity talk drew upon her extensive research and publications related to the postwar emergence of international criminal justice in Europe and Asia – among these is her contribution and co-editorship of The Tokyo Tribunal: Perspectives on Law, History and Memory (Torkel Apsahl 2020), a Nuremberg Academy anthology to which I also contributed.

Yours truly, Diane Marie Amann (above right), Regents’ Professor of International Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, then discussed “Women and the Nuremberg-Tokyo Era.” Featured in my talk were the lawyers and other women professionals who are the subjects of my ongoing research, and about whom I have published here, here, and here.

(Cross-posted from Diane Marie Amann blog)

Georgia Law’s Diane Marie Amann now Regents’ Professor of International Law

Georgia Law faculty member Diane Marie Amann is now Regents’ Professor of International Law, as her November 2020 appointment to the post by the Board of Regents, University System of Georgia, takes effect today.

She becomes the third law professor and seventh woman to have earned this honor since it was instituted in 1947. In the words of the university:

“Regents’ Professorships are bestowed by the Board of Regents on truly distinguished faculty of the University of Georgia whose scholarship or creative activity is recognized both nationally and internationally as innovative and pace-setting.”

Amann (prior posts) joined the faculty at the University of Georgia School of Law in 2011, taking up the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law previously by Professor Louis B. Sohn and Professor Daniel Bodansky. From 2015 to 2017 she was the law school’s Associate Dean for International Programs & Strategic Initiatives, a position that included directing the Dean Rusk International Law Center, and she has served since 2017 as a Faculty Co-Director of the Center. She is also a Professor (by courtesy) of International Affairs, University of Georgia School of Public & International Affairs, and an Affiliated Faculty Member of the University of Georgia African Studies Institute.

Under contract with Oxford University Press, Amann is writing what will be the first book on the roles of women professionals at the 1945-46 war crimes trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. As depicted above and available in full on YouTube (59:10), she presented on this research in “Nuremberg Women,” one of the four University of Georgia Charter Lectures that the 2020-21 Regents’ Professors delivered online this past April.

Amann’s expertise in international law includes, as indicated by her more than eighty publications, not only international legal history but also international criminal law and child rights. She served as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in and affected by Armed Conflict from December 2012 to June 2021, assisting in the preparation, publication, and dissemination of the 2016 ICC OTP Policy on Children.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Counsellor and former Vice President of the American Society of International Law, Amann was Professor of Law, Martin Luther King Jr. Hall Research Scholar, and Director of the California International Law Center at the University of California-Davis, School of Law. She has been a Visiting Professor, Professeur invitée, or Fellow at Northwestern Pritzker University School of Law, University of California-Berkeley, University of California-Los Angeles, Irish Centre for Human Rights at National University of Ireland-Galway, Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), Max Planck Institute Luxembourg, and University of Southern California Shoah Foundation.

Georgia Law Professor Amann presents on Nuremberg to help open KU Leuven seminar on women and international Law

Diane Marie Amann, the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Dean Rusk International Law Center Faculty Co-Director here at the University of Georgia School of Law, last week took part in an online panel kicking off a Women in International Law seminar series, hosted by the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and the Faculty of Law of KU Leuven.

Professor Amann spoke on “Nuremberg Women as Shapers of International Criminal Justice,” as part of a panel entitled “Hidden Figures in International Courts and Tribunals.” She joined Howard University Professor J. Jarpa Dawuni, Director of the Institute for African Women in Law, and University of Baltimore Law Professor Nienke Grossman, Co-Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law. One of the seminar series’ organizers, Nina Pineau, moderated, while her co-organizer, Rita Guerreiro Texeira, gave opening remarks. Both are doctoral researchers at the Belgium-based Leuven Centre, with which our own Center partnered, pre-pandemic, on our Global Governance Summer School.

Scheduled to run throughout the 2021 spring and fall terms, the Women in International Law seminar commemorates 100 years since the first arrival of women law students at KU Leuven, one of the premier institutions of higher education in Europe. Details on and registration for subsequent sessions, at which experts who work in in Amsterdam, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Geneva, The Hague, and Rome, on issues including international organizations, international fair trials, and law of the sea, here.

Georgia Law Professor Amann marks Holocaust Remembrance Day with talk on women at Nuremberg trials

Women at the Nuremberg Trials was the title of a lecture delivered last week by Professor Diane Marie Amann, the 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.

Occurring on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wednesday’s talk focused on several of the many women who took part in the Nuremberg proceedings, as lawyers and legal professionals, translators and interpreters, witnesses and journalists – in short, in nearly every post except judge.

Sponsor of the event was the Center on National Security and Human Rights Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law.