Tag: Dean Rusk International Law Center

Travel grants will help students and very-early-career persons to take part in IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference

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A scene from IntLawGrrls’ last conference, “Women in International Criminal Law,” October 29, 2010, at the American Society of International Law

Delighted to announce that we will be able to make it easier for some students or very-early-career persons whose papers are accepted for “IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference” to take part in this daylong celebration.

Thanks to the generosity of the Planethood Foundation, we have established a fund that will provide small grants to help defray the costs of travel to and accommodation at our conference, to be held March 3, 2017, at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, Athens, Georgia USA. The law school is hosting as part of its Georgia Women in Law Lead initiative.

We’re pleased too to announce two additional conference cosponsors: the American Society of International Law and ASIL’s Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG).

As detailed in our call for papers/conference webpage and prior posts, organizers Diane Marie Amann, Beth Van Schaack, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, and Kathleen A. Doty welcome paper proposals from academics, students, policymakers, and advocates, in English, French, or Spanish, on all topics in international, comparative, foreign, and transnational law and policy.

In addition to paper workshops, there will be at least one plenary panel, on “strategies to promote women’s participation in shaping international law and policy amid the global emergence of antiglobalism.”

The deadline for submissions will be January 1, 2017. Students or very-early-career person who would like to be considered for one of these grants to help defray travel costs are asked to indicate this in their submissions. Papers will be accepted on a rolling basis – indeed, we’ve already received several – so we encourage all to submit as soon as they are able.

For more information, see the call for papers or e-mail doty@uga.edu.

(Cross-posted from IntLawGrrls)

“Humanity’s Common Heritage”: Friday Georgia Law-ICRC conference on Geneva Conventions Commentaries

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gjicl_confposter

Humanity’s Common Heritage – norms codified in international humanitarian law treaties to which all countries of the world belong – will be the topic of a conference this Friday, September 23, at the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia.

The conference title derives from this observation about those treaties, the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, by Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross:

“We know that the values that found expression in the Geneva Conventions have become an essential part of our common heritage of humanity, as growing numbers of people around the world share a moral and legal conviction in them. These contradicting realities challenge us to act: to react to the suffering and violations of the law, and to prevent them from occurring in the first place.”

At the core of this daylong event will be the Commentaries on which the ICRC is now working. Published online earlier this year was the initial Commentary, covering the Convention (I) for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, as well as the articles common to all 4 Conventions. (Prior posts here, here, and here.) Experts will examine this 2016 Commentary and its role in the development, promotion, and implementation of contemporary international humanitarian law.

thumbnail_p1130913We’re honored that the Georgia Law alumnus leading that project, Geneva-based ICRC legal adviser Jean-Marie Henckaerts (LLM 1990), will keynote our conference, and also that the ICRC is cosponsoring the conference, along with our Center and our Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law. This student-run review, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this year, will publish papers by the assembled experts and Georgia Law student rapporteurs.

akandeDr. Henckaerts will be part of a public panel from 9:15 a.m.-12 noon in Georgia Law’s Hatton Lovejoy 0042401-14ABCourtroom. Speaking in that morning session will be: Oxford Law Professor Dapo Akande; Emory Law Professor Laurie R. Blank, an IntLawGrrls contributor; Major-General Blaise Cathcart, Judge Advocate General of the Canadian Armed Forces; New York University Law Professor Ryan Goodman; and the cathcartmoderator, yours truly, Diane Marie ryan_goodman_photo_horizontalAmann, Associate Dean for International Programs & Strategic Initiatives and Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at Georgia Law, and also the International Criminal Court Prosecutor’s Special Adviser on Children in & affected by Armed Conflict.

Joining them in closed sessions during the afternoon will be additional international humanitarian law experts experts: Georgia Law Professor Harlan G. Cohen; Houston College of Law Professor Geoffrey S. Corn; American University Law Professor Jennifer Daskal; Jonathan Davis, a University of Georgia international affairs graduates and U.S. Department of State Attorney-Advisor; IntLawGrrl Kathleen A. Doty, our Center’s Director of Global Practice Preparation; Julia Grignon, Université Laval Law; Rutgers Law Professor Adil Haque; Christopher Harland, Legal Adviser at the ICRC’s Washington, D.C., office; Eric Jensen, U.S. Department of Defense; Michael Meier, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps; Naz K. Modirzadeh, Harvard Law; Nicholas W. Mull, U.S. Marine Corps Judge Advocate General Corps (ret.); Vanderbilt Law Professor Michael A. Newton; Sasha Radin, U.S. Naval War College; Professor James K. Reap (JD 1976) of the University of Georgia, who’s just been named to the State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee; IntLawGrrl and Georgia State Law Professor Shana Tabak; and Creighton Law Professor Sean Watts.

Full description and details about the conference here.

(Cross-posted from Exchange of Notes, the Dean Rusk International Law Center blog)

Dean Rusk and the dissent channel

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March 18, 1967. Afternoon. Secretary of State Dean Rusk conducts a briefing on Vietnam for state governors in the Fish Room of the White House.
At White House, with President Johnson in attendance, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk briefs US governors on the US-Vietnam War. The briefing took place March 18, 1967, not long before Rusk set up a “dissent channel” for State Department diplomats frustrated by US foreign policy. (photo credit)

In my current role as leader of the 38-year-old Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law, I tend to take a close look at any reference to our Center’s namesake, Dean Rusk, who served as the only Secretary of State to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

And so it is with the US diplomatic topic du mois, the “dissent channel” at the Department of State.

This channel is much in the news these days, on account of a Page 1 New York Times story leaking a dissent-channel letter by 51 diplomats at State who want more use of force in Syria than President Barack Obama to date has authorized. (Worth-reading questions about the “leak” here.) And then there was yesterday’s Times story by Ellen Barry, about a dissent-channel “Blood Letter” that forestalled career advancement for the eponymous letter-writing diplomat.

Quite a surprise, amid all this, to read this explanation of the dissent channel, in a transcript of the June 17 Daily Press Briefing by a State Department spokesperson:

“This procedure, this vehicle has been in place since Secretary of State Dean Rusk was in office in 1971.”

Why a surprise? Because by 1971, Rusk was regaling Georgia Law students as the revered Sibley Professor of International Law.

At the briefing, an unnamed reporter took immediate issue with the spokesperson’s account:

QUESTION: And just – can we be clear about when it actually began? Because Rusk, I think, was gone by ’69 when the Nixon Administration came in. So I don’t think he was Secretary of State in 1971, but I could certainly be mistaken.

[ANSWER]: I think it was 1971 and —

QUESTION: Okay.

[ANSWER]: — my reading of the history said that Rusk had something to do with it. But I’m not going to quibble with you —

QUESTION: No, no.

[ANSWER]: — over the history of the program.

Uncharacteristic of these kind of transcripts, the spokesperson’s assertion is supported by a footnote [1]. It says only “William P. Rogers.” That’s the name of the man who became Secretary of State in 1969, after Rusk left government service for the last time. But a quick look at Rusk’s bio on the Department’s site would have confirmed the premise of the reporter’s question.

So what’s right, and wrong?

On the small point of timing, the spokesperson is wrong. But on the larger point of establishing a channel for dissent, unique among the world’s diplomatic services, the account is spot on. To quote a memorial published the year that Rusk died, in the Department’s own publication, Dispatch:

Dean Rusk left his mark not only on the nation and the world, but also on the Department of State as an institution. At a time of tremendous domestic social change, he encouraged minorities and women to enter the Foreign Service. He established the Dissent Channel and the Open Forum to give members of the Department alternative ways to make their foreign policy views known.

 

(Cross-posted from our Center’s Exchange of Notes blog)

ICC Office of Prosecutor invites public comment on draft Policy on Children

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draftpolicyIt is my great honor to note today’s release for public comment of the draft Policy on Children of the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor.

Since my December 2012 appointment as Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s Special Adviser on Children in and affected by Armed Conflict, I’ve had the privilege of helping to convene consultations and taking part in the construction of this draft Policy. As part of that process, as noted on page 11 of the draft, we at the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, were honored in October 2014 to host the Prosecutor, members of her staff, and nearly 2 dozen other experts from academic, nongovernmental groups, and intergovernmental organizations. Our “Children & International Criminal Justice” conference featured a morning public plenary and Prosecutor’s keynote (pictured below), followed by an afternoon of closed-door breakout sessions. (Proceedings from that event, to appear in our Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law, are nearing publication.)

Addressed in the draft Policy, which spans 37 pages, are:

► Overarching concerns, such as the nature of a child and childhood, the experiences of children in armed conflict and other contexts within the jurisdiction of the ICC, and how the Rome Statute of the ICC and other documents treat crimes against and affecting children; and

► Practical concerns, such as how the Office of the Prosecutor engages with children, in all aspects of its work, including preliminary examination, investigation, charging, prosecution, sentencing, reparations, and external relations.

As stated in the press release accompanying today’s publication:

In highlighting the importance of the Policy, Prosecutor Bensouda stated: “when I assumed 8_events2the role of Prosecutor in June 2012, one of the principal goals I set for the Office was to ensure that we pay particular attention not only to ‘children with arms’, but also ‘children affected by arms.’ This Policy demonstrates our firm commitment to closing the impunity gap for crimes against or affecting children, and adopting a child-sensitive approach in all aspects of our work bearing in mind their rights and best interests. It is also our hope that the Policy, once adopted, will serve as a useful guide to national authorities in their efforts to address crimes against children.”

The Office welcomes public comment on the draft. Such comments should be e-mailed to OTPLegalAdvisorySection@icc-cpi.int, no later than Friday, August 5, 2016.

Following revisions based on the comments, the Office of the Prosecutor expects to publish the final Policy on Children in November of this year.

Antiquities trafficking said to fuel transnational mayhem by Daesh et al.

Published on by Diane Marie Amann1 Comment
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Alumna Tess Davis, 2d from left, met with Georgia Law 1Ls after her lecture; from left, Hannah Williams, Ava Goble & Karen Hays. Hannah will work on cultural heritage issues this summer through a Global Externship Overseas (GEO) at the Cambodia Ministry of Culture & Fine Arts, Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

“As long as there have been tombs, there have been tomb raiders.”

So began the terrific talk on trafficking that Tess Davis, Executive Director of the D.C.-based Antiquities Coalition, delivered to a rapt University of Georgia audience a few days ago.

Having conceded the point quoted at top, Davis stressed that today the problem is much different and much greater. On the list of lucrative transnational organized crime, she asserted, antiquities trafficking places 3d, right behind arms trafficking and drug trafficking.

The threat is not simply one of criminal behavior, she continued. Rather, Davis stressed that profits from antiquities trafficking – profits believed to be in the millions of dollars – provide revenue vital for the nonstate actor waging armed conflict in Syria and Iraq. That entity calls itself “Islamic State” and is often labeled “ISIS” or “ISIL” in the media; taking a lead from diplomats in France and, recently, the United States, Davis preferred “Daesh,” the group’s Arabic acronym, for the simple reason that “they hate to be called that.”

Initially trained as an archeologist, Davis began to focus on legal means to combat antiquities trafficking while still a student at Georgia Law. Since earning her J.D. in 2009, she’s been a leader at the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage and in the American Society of International Law Cultural Heritage & the Arts Interest Group, a researcher at Scotland’s University of Glasgow, a member of Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center Council, and, as the photo above demonstrates, a mentor to Georgia Law students and other young lawyers interested in working in the field. Her efforts to help repatriate antiquities stolen from Cambodia earned multiple mentions in The New York Times.

Her talk drew links between the looting of cultural heritage during and after the 1970s Khmer Rouge reign of terror and current looting in the Middle East today. In both instances, she said, “cultural cleansing” – in the contemporary case, the destruction and thievery of monuments sacred to moderate Muslims and others – precedes and parallels efforts to erase and subjugate the humans who venerate those monuments. It’s a state of affairs documented in her Coalition’s new report, “Culture Under Threat.”

“The world failed Cambodia,”

Davis said, then expressed optimism at growing political will to do something about the Middle East. She advocated enactment of S. 1887, the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act now working its way through Congress. The legislation, whose cosponsors include a Georgia U.S. Senator, David Perdue, is urgent: Davis estimated that U.S. buyers represent 43% of the current demand for looted Syrian antiquities.

(Cross-posted from Exchange of Notes blog)

Georgia Law opens search to fill post in international law honoring Prof. Wilner

Published on by Diane Marie Amann2 Comments

Delighted to share the news that we at the University of Georgia School of Law welcome nominations for the inaugural holder of a newly established professorship in international law.

wilner_gabrielCalled the Gabriel N. Wilner/UGA Foundation Professorship in International Law, it honors Professor Wilner (1938-2010), pictured at left. A Beirut-born scholar, he was an advisor to U.N. agencies and active in organizations like the American Society of International Law throughout the many decades that he studied, practiced, and taught international law. Essential to the growth of our LLM and Belgium summer study abroad offerings, Wilner inspired many others to enter our field; indeed, it is the generosity of one such Georgia Law alumnus that makes this new professorship possible.

The inaugural holder will join Georgia Law’s long tradition of excellence in international law. The tradition began in 1940, when Sigmund Cohn, a German-Jewish judge who had fled to Nazism, taught our first international law class. It was nurtured by Georgia Law professors – among them, Professor Wilner and Professor Louis B. Sohn and, of course, Dean Rusk, namesake of our vibrant, 38-year-old Dean Rusk International Law Center. The tradition continues today through the endeavors of faculty like Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, Professor Harlan G. Cohen, and yours truly.

Applicants must be eligible for hire at the rank of full professor, and international applicants are welcome. We welcome a pool of highly qualified candidates for this position, for which the official job notice reads as follows:

The University of Georgia School of Law invites applications for a full endowed professorship in international law beginning August of 2016. Applicants should be able to join the faculty at the rank of full professor. They should have a J.D. from an accredited university or its foreign equivalent, superior academic credentials and demonstrated excellence in scholarship and teaching. Applications received by February 1, 2016 are assured of consideration. All interested persons should submit a curriculum vitae, including scholarly publications, with a letter of interest at http://facultyjobs.uga.edu/postings/527

The University of Georgia is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or protected veteran status.

Georgia Law’s United Nations tradition

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UN 70th Anniversary logo_English_CMYKWhy are we at Georgia Law celebrating the UN’s birthday? Because its 70-year tradition is our own.

Our global tradition dates back at least 75 years, in fact. That’s when noted German-Jewish judge Sigmund Cohn, a refugee from Hitler’s Berlin and Mussolini’s Genoa, arrived at the University of Georgia and began teaching courses in international and comparative law.

Reinforcing the tradition Cohn established was the arrival of Dean Rusk, who returned to his native state of Georgia after serving as Secretary of State to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Rusk had stevebegun his diplomatic career as Assistant Secretary of State for Special Political Affairs (SPA), at age 38, right after the United Nations was established. In his autobiography, Rusk wrote:

Around Washington, SPA personnel were called those UN boys with some derision, but this only inspired us to work harder. In the aftermath of global war a special atmosphere surrounded the United Nations. The human race had paid fifty million lives to draft that Charter. Our minds and hearts had been purged in the fires of a great war, and the UN Charter represented the best that was in us at the time. We had a talented group, bound together by a sense of commitment, an exhilaration rare in government, a feeling that somehow the human race was off to a fresh start.

Eventually joining Rusk at Georgia Law was Louis B. Sohn, who came to Athens following mandatory retirement from Harvard Law. Like Cohn someone who suffered personally from the ravages of World War II, Sohn helped to draft the Charter of the United Nations. It was his effort in a lifelong career of working with the United Nations. Among many other roles, he served as chair of the conference that led to adoption of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Our tradition is even richer, extending from these 3 to professors like Gabriel Wilner, himself a UN adviser, and including the international law service of my colleagues and me to this day. And so we will  mark the UN’s 70th birthday this Monday, Oct. 26, by rededicating our Louis B. Sohn Library on International Relations and by celebrating the 38th birthday of our own Dean Rusk International Law Center.

(September 25, 1961, photo by Cecil W. Stoughton of US delegation–including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Rep. Marguerite Stitt Church (R-Ill.), and Arthur Dean, Chair, US delegation to Geneva Conference on Disarmament–listening to speech at UN General Assembly of the United Nations. Courtest of JFK Presidential Library)

Celebrating decades-old international law tradition – and UN Charter’s 70th birthday

Published on by Diane Marie Amann1 Comment

Rusk Library Rededication PosterFINAL

The UN Charter turns 70 this week, and we at Georgia Law are honored to be joining in the global celebration – not least because it’s also the 38th birthday of our Dean Rusk International Law Center.

UN 70th Anniversary logo_English_CMYKOn Monday, October 26, from 4-6 p.m., we’ll rededicate the Louis B. Sohn Library on International Relations in its new home, our renovated Center unit. An alum, Dr. Kannan Rajarathinam (LLM88), Head of Office, UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, Basra, will speak on a critical topic: “The United Nations at 70: Pursuing Peace in the 21st Century.”

asil_logoAlso giving remarks – on Georgia Law luminaries like Professors Sohn, Professor and former U.S. Secretary of State Rusk, Professor Gabriel Wilner, and Professor Sigmund Cohn – will be Dean Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, Professor Harlan Cohen, alums Dorinda Dallmeyer and Ken Dious, and myself.

Our event is honored by multiple cosponsors: the American Bar Association Section of International Law, the American Branch of the International Law Association, and the American Society of International Law, for which Professor Sohn served, respectively, as Chair, Vice President, and President. Those titles signal the influAbilaence of Professor Sohn, who, inter alia, helped draft the UN Charter, advised UN agencies, and chaired the conference that led to conclusion of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Sponsors among the Georgia Law community include the Alexander Campbell King Law Library, whose staff have contributed immensely to the move of Sohn’s 5,000-volume personal collection to its new space in our Center. Cosponsoring student organizations are the Asian Law Students Association, the Davenport-Benham Chapter of the Black Law Students Association, the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law, the Georgia Society for International & abasectionintlawComparative Law, the Hispanic Law Students Association, the Jewish Law Students Association, the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition team (that’s Georgia Law’s 1990 Jessup world champions in the poster at top), and the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot team.

Details here. If you are in our area on the day, please join us. If you can’t be there in person, feel free to watch the livestream.

Seeking great administrators: Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center

Published on by Diane Marie AmannLeave a comment

sign2We’re looking for a couple great administrators.

Having just about completed physical renovation of the Dean Rusk International Law Center, an office suite at the University of Georgia School of Law, we’re now focusing on building staff. To be precise, we’re looking for an Executive Administrator (aka Administrative Manager I) and an Administrative Assistant (aka Administrative Specialist I).

Together, they’ll be responsible for office management (financial and otherwise), secretarial support for Center staff (including our Director of International Professional Education, our Associate Director for Global Practice Preparation, and our Associate Dean for International Programs & Strategic Initiatives, aka me), and support for an array of Center programs (LLMs, conferences, lectures, and events, study abroad, Global Externships, faculty exchanges, visiting scholars, professional trainings, and research projects).

To skim the job notices, see here and here. To apply, click here and follow registration/application instructions, inserting the posting numbers indicated on the prior document(s) in order to reach the precise vacancy of interest to you.

We’d like to fill these positions asap, so if you’re interested, don’t delay!

(And if you’d just like to keep apprised of our activities, please follow us at Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook)

Great start to global year at Georgia Law

Published on by Diane Marie AmannLeave a comment

mixer3 - CopyA highlight of every new school year is acquainting students with opportunities in international, comparative, and transnational law. An early chance came yesterday, when well over a hundred members of the Georgia Law deborah - Copycommunity networked at a mixer cosponsored by our student organization, the Georgia Society of International & Comparative Law, and our Dean Rusk International Law Center, which will celebrate its 38th birthday with a major event next month.

Yesterday we:

mixer4 - Copy► Thanked the Center’s Fall 2015 Student Ambassadors, Taryn L. Arbeiter, Chanel Chauvet, Jennifer J. Cross, Ruibo Dong, Pedro Dorado (our Dean Rusk International Law Center Fellow), Ashley Ferrelli, Danielle Glover, Deborah Nogueira-Yates, Kevin Parker, Alyssa A. Pickett, Eric A. Sterling, Ximena Vasquez, Bo Uuganbayar, and Sarah Willis; international law experts like Professor Harlan Cohen; our staffers, Laura Tate Kagel and Kiz Adams, respectively, the Center’s Director and Associate Director of International Professional Education; and Lisa Mathis, events coordinator extraordinaire;

chanel_lisa - Copy► Invited all in attendance to visit the Louis B. Sohn Library on International Relations and to explore Georgia Law’s many Global Practice Preparation offerings (including our new Atlanta Semester in Practice and its older sibling, our D.C. Semester in Practice, as well as courses, the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law, Jessup and Vis teams, Global Externships, Brussels and Oxford study abroad);

amann_mixer_crop► Urged everyone to follow us on Twitter (@DeanRuskIntLaw), LinkedIn, and Facebook;

► Looked forward to a year of exciting events. Stay tuned!

(photos by Student Ambassador Chanel Chauvet, pictured immediately above with Lisa Mathis. Other photos, from top: welcome by GSICL President Kelly Sullivan; Miguel Cordoba, Deborah Nogueira-Yates, and Kiz Adams; Tingting Tang, Xiao Zhang, and Huajin Tang; and Associate Dean Diane Marie Amann chats with Ron Chicken)