Tag: international law

“New Methodological Perspectives” concludes summer-long seminar on Global History and International Law

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The inaugural Global History and International Law seminar (prior post) concluded today with a final session, entitled “New Methodological Perspectives.”

Several of us who had discussed our scholarship earlier in the summer-long seminar were honored to return. Focusing on the methodologies that informed our work were:

  • Daniel Joyce, of the law school at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, on “International Law’s Objects” and  International Law’s Objects (OUP 2018), the essay collection he co-edited with Jessie Hohmann.
  • Kerstin von Lingen, Department of Contemporary History, University of Vienna. Her concluding remarks on “Transnational Biographies and Legal Flows” related both to her seminar presentation, “Epistemic Communities in Exile: Coining ‘Crimes against Humanity’ at London, 1940-45” (podcast), a new book and article on the same topic, and books like Transcultural Justice: The Tokyo Tribunal and the Allied Struggle for Justice, 1946-1948 (Brill 2018), which she edited.
  • Yours truly, Diane Marie Amann, Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law. My concluding remarks on “Intersectional Approach” (2 slides pictured at top) related both to my seminar presentation, “Intersectional Sovereignties: Dr. Aline Chalufour, Woman at Nuremberg – and at Paris, Ottawa, and Dalat” (podcast), and to my in-progress book on the roles that women played at the Trial of the Major War Criminals before to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. (prior posts)
  • A. Dirk Moses, Department of History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, on “Conceptualizing Genocide and Mass Violence.” His concluding remarks related to his seminar presentation, “Genocide in Historical Perspective. The Language of Trangression” (podcast), and his book The Problems of Genocide. Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (forthcoming CUP 2021).

Leading the stimulating discussion that followed was one of the seminar’s earlier discussants, Charles S. Maier, emeritus professor of history at Harvard University, along with the seminar’s founding organizer, Anne-Sophie Schoepfel of SciencesPo.

Schoepfel, who will soon take up a postdoc position at Harvard’s Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, announced that the Global History and International Law seminar will continue, with the next edition focusing on geographies of justice.

A podcast of today’s session soon will be available here.

 

Placing ICC Prosecutor in overall justice project: my online symposium post

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Caution in giving too much credit, or blame, to one individual formed the focus of my contribution to last week’s symposium on “The Next ICC Prosecutor.”

Entitled “Placing the Prosecutor within the International Criminal Justice Project,” my post appeared Friday at Opinio Juris, cosponsor along with Justice in Conflict of the online symposium.

My post began by welcoming the rich dialogue – in anticipation of December’s election of the 3d Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court – that had unfolded all week. Fueling that discussion were contributions from a couple dozen commentators on international criminal law: Ewan Brown, Danya Chaikel, David Crane, Geoff Dancy, Tom Dannenbaum, Christian De Vos, Elizabeth Evenson, Kate Gibson, James Goldston, Douglas Guilfoyle, Kevin Jon Heller, Mark Kersten, Patryk Labuda, Stephen Lamony, Luis Moreno Ocampo, Jonathan O’Donohue, Mariana Pena, Priya Pillai, William Schabas, Melinda Taylor, Valerie Oosterveld, Beth Van Schaack, and Kate Vigneswaran, Alex Whiting, and William H. Wiley.

My post then pointed to risks involved in “placing too much weight on the person and position of Prosecutor.” These included:

  • the risk of generating expectations, “inevitably doomed to disappoint”; and
  • the risk that “the very association of a complex project with a lone person or position” obscures the myriad ways that many other actors “play roles, in helping to construct perceptions of the project and in contributing, or not, to the project.”

My contribution is available in full here. For additional posts in the symposium, see list here.

In passing: David Caron (1952-2018)

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The sudden news of the passing of my dear friend and colleague, Dr. David Caron, fills me with sad thoughts and happy memories.

Years ago, when I was starting out in international law, David – then a chaired professor at Berkeley, the law school an hour’s drive from my own – was a pillar of support. He was the 1st scholar to accept my invitation to speak at the 1st conference I organized, anchoring debate on “Reconstruction after Iraq” and publishing in our Cal-Davis journal an important analysis of claims commissions as a transitional justice tool.

Warm and witty, David once sent me a handwritten note of thanks for the “lovely bouquet” of pre-tenure reprints he’d received from me.

Both of us transplants from Back East, David and I shared an enthusiasm for California and enjoyed helping to cultivate a close-knit Left Coast international law community – even as we took part in events and activities across the globe.

David’s achievements truly are too numerous to mention. Among many other things, he was an inspiring President of the American Society of International Law, from 2010 to 2012. About the time he completed that term, he took emeritus status at Berkeley, and he and his wife, Susan Spencer, embarked on new adventures – 1st as Law Dean at King’s College London.  (A distinguished international arbitration specialist (see GAR obituary here), he had practiced at London’s 20 Essex Street Chambers since 2009. David, a proud graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, also was a noted expert on the law of the sea.) In 2016, he was appointed a member of  the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.

It was in this last capacity that I last saw David. The Global Governance Summer School sponsored by my current institution, the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law, brought us to The Hague not many months ago. The highlight of our legal-institution briefings was the half-day we spent as David’s guests in the lovely mansion that houses this 37-year-old claims tribunal. With breaks for tea and biscuits – David was ever the gracious host – our students were treated to a candid discussion between David and Dr. Hossein Piran, Senior Legal Adviser. The two had served as tribunal law clerks years earlier, and the respect they showed one another provided an invaluable lesson about the promise of civil discourse and of the pacific settlement of international disputes.

That lesson is a most fitting way to commemorate David’s passing.

Pictured above, during our June 2017 visit to the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, front from left: Ana Morales Ramos, Legal Adviser; Hossein Piran, Senior Legal Adviser; Kathleen A. Doty, Director of Georgia Law’s Dean Rusk International Law Center; David Caron, Tribunal Member; and Georgia Law Professor Diane Marie Amann, Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center. Back row, students Nicholas Duffey, Lyddy O’Brien, Brian Griffin, Wade Herring, Jennifer Cotton, Evans Horsley, Casey Callaghan, Kristopher Kolb, Nils Okeson, James Cox, and Ezra Thompson.

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

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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 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

Important essays on myriad international law subfields in our new OUP book, “Arcs of Global Justice: Essays in Honour of William A. Schabas”

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LONDON – Building on yesterday’s post about the magical London conference launching Arcs of Global Justice: Essays in Honour of William A. Schabas (Margaret M. deGuzman and Diane Marie Amann eds.), today’s post profiles the book itself, which, thanks to excellent assistance from John Louth, Blake Ratcliff, and their staff, has just been published by Oxford University Press. (The hardback may be ordered via OUP or Amazon, and the book’s also available on Kindle.)

Very pleased to have coedited this volume with my colleague Meg. The concept, in our words:

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ Testing the optimism of that claim were the many fits and starts in the struggle for human rights that King helped to catalyze. The same is true of other events in the last half-century, from resistance to apartheid and genocide to equal and fair treatment in domestic criminal justice systems, to the formation of entities to prevent atrocities and to bring their perpetrators to justice. Within this display of myriad arcs may be found the many persons who helped shape this half-century of global justice-and prominent among them is William A. Schabas. His panoramic scholarship includes dozens of books and hundreds of articles, and he also has served as an influential policymaker, advocate, and mentor.

This work honours William A. Schabas and his career with essays by luminary scholars and jurists from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The essays examine contemporary, historical, cultural, and theoretical aspects of the many arcs of global justice with which Professor Schabas has engaged, in fields including public international law, human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, and capital punishment.

In all, the book includes 29 contributions by 35 academics, advocates, and jurists, as detailed in the table of contents below. Providing jacket-cover testimonials were Steven Kay QC, Philippe Sands QC, Professor and former Ambassador David Scheffer, and Judge Christine Van den Wyngaert. We hope that you’ll follow their recommendations and give these important, substantive essays a very good read.

Arcs of Global Justice:
Essays in Honour of William A. Schabas

► Foreword by Diane Marie Amann and Margaret M. deGuzman, coeditors
► Introduction: William Schabas: Portrait of a Scholar/Activist Extraordinaire by Roger S. Clark, Board of Governors Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law

Human Rights
► Human Rights and International Criminal Justice in the Twenty First Century: The End of the Post-WWII Phase and the Beginning of an Uncertain New Era by M. Cherif Bassiouni (He died at age 79 in September, just weeks after he completed final changes on this essay; as posted, our conference included a memorial to him. At the time of his death, he was Emeritus Professor of Law, DePaul University College of Law; Honorary President, Siracusa Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights; and Honorary President, L’Association internationale de droit pénal.)
► William Schabas, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and International Human Rights Law by Justice Thomas A. Cromwell, Supreme Court of Canada, and Bruno Gélinas-Faucher, formerly a law clerk on that court and now a Cambridge PhD candidate
► The International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, as a Victim-Oriented Treaty by Emmanuel Decaux, Professor Emeritus, Université Paris 2 (Panthéon-Assas), and former President, Committee on Enforced Disappearances
► The Politics of Sectarianism and its Reflection in Questions of International Law & State Formation in The Middle East by Kathleen Cavanaugh, Senior Lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway, and  Joshua Castellino, Professor of Law & Dean of the School of Law, as well as the Business School, at Middlesex University, London

Capital Punishment
► International Law and the Death Penalty: A Toothless Tiger, or a Meaningful Force for Change? by Sandra L. Babcock, Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and Faculty Director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide
► The UN Optional Protocol on the Abolition of the Death Penalty by Marc Bossuyt, Fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, Emeritus Professor of the University of Antwerp, Emeritus President of the Constitutional Court of Belgium, and former Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights
► The Right to Life and the Progressive Abolition of the Death Penalty by Christof Heyns, formerly the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2010 through 2016, and now a member of the UN Human Rights Committee and Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Pretoria, Thomas Probert, Research Associate, Centre of Governance & Human Rights, University of Cambridge, and Tess Borden, Aryeh Neier Fellow at Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, and former researcher for the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution
► Progress and Trend of the Reform of the Death Penalty in China by Zhao Bingzhi, Dean of the College for Criminal Law Science of Beijing Normal University, President of the Criminal Law Research Association of China, Vice-President of the International Association of Penal Law, and President of that association’s Chinese National Group

International Criminal Law
► Criminal Law Philosophy in William Schabas’ Scholarship by Margaret M. deGuzman, Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law
► Is the ICC Focusing too Much on Non-State Actors? by Frédéric Mégret, Associate Professor and Dawson Scholar, Faculty of Law, McGill University
► The Principle of Legality at the Crossroads of Human Rights and International Criminal Law by Shane Darcy, Senior Lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway
► Revisiting the Sources of Applicable Law Before the ICC by Alain Pellet, Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris Nanterre, former Chairperson of the UN International Law Commission, President of the French Society for International Law, Member of the Institut de droit international, as well as Counsel and Advocate before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and other forums
► The ICC as a Work in Progress, for a World in Process by Mireille Delmas-Marty, Member, Institut de France, and Professor Emerita, Collège de France de Paris
► Legacy in International Criminal Justice by Carsten Stahn, Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice, Leiden University
► Torture by Private Actors and ‘Gold Plating’ the Offence in National Law: An Exchange of Emails in Honour of William Schabas by Andrew Clapham, Professor of Public International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and Paola Gaeta, Professor of International Law and International Criminal Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
► Secrets and Surprises in the Travaux Préparatoires of the Genocide Convention by Hirad Abtahi, First Legal Adviser, Head of the Legal and Enforcement Unit, at the Presidency of the International Criminal Court, and Philippa Webb, Reader (Associate Professor) in Public International Law at King’s College London and a barrister at 20 Essex Street Chambers
► Perspectives on Cultural Genocide: From Criminal Law to Cultural Diversity by Jérémie Gilbert, Professor of International and Comparative Law, University of East London
► Crimes Against Humanity: Repairing Title 18’s Blind Spots by Beth Van Schaack, Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School and Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security & Cooperation at Stanford University
► A New Global Treaty on Crimes Against Humanity: Future Prospects by Leila Nadya Sadat, James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law and Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on Crimes Against Humanity, and Director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative

Transitional Justice and Atrocity Prevention
► Justice Outside of Criminal Courtrooms and Jailhouses by Mark A. Drumbl, Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University School of Law
► Toward Greater Synergy between Courts and Truth Commissions in Post-Conflict Contexts: Lessons from Sierra Leone by Charles Chernor Jalloh, Professor of Law, Florida International University, and a member of the International Law Commission
► International Criminal Tribunals and Cooperation with States: Serbia and the provision of evidence for the Slobodan Milosevic Trial at the ICTY by Geoffrey Nice QC, a barrister since 1971, formerly at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and Nevenka Tromp, Lecturer in East European Studies at the University of Amsterdam and former member of the ICTY Leadership Research Team
► The Arc toward Justice and Peace by Mary Ellen O’Connell, the Robert and Marion Short Chair in Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School
► The Maintenance of International Peace and Security through Prevention of Atrocity Crimes: The Question of Co-operation between the UN and regional Arrangements by Adama Dieng, UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, as well as former Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and former Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists

Justice in Culture and Practice
► Law and Film: Curating Rights Cinema by Emma Sandon, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Research Fellow to the Chair for Social Change, University of Johannesburg
► The Role of Advocates in Developing International Law by Wayne Jordash QC, international human rights and humanitarian lawyer and founding partner of Global Rights Compliance
► Bill the Blogger by Diane Marie Amann, Emily and Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law

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

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1029_3
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)

“IntLawGrrls conceived”: Heartfelt invitation to our 10th Birthday Conference

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image001

Why IntLawGrrls?

The need for an online forum giving voice to women who work in international law and policy began to take shape 10 years ago this autumn.

An issue of the day was Guantánamo; specifically, what was the United States to do now that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a June 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, had ruled President George W. Bush’s military commissions unconstitutional?

Many women had worked, spoken, or written on GTMO – not only in law review articles, but also in court pleadings. I was one of them, having published “Guantánamo” in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law in 2004 and served in 2006 as principal author of the amicus brief in Hamdan filed jointly by the National Institute of Military Justice and the Bar Association of the District of Columbia.

And yet, when Congress convened post-Hamdan hearings, witness after witness was exclusively male. Worse still, the perspectives these men advanced by no means covered the spectrum – no surprise given that all of them had served in the Executive Branch of the U.S. government, and only one staked any claim to expertise in human rights law. Nothing approximating either a nongovernmental or feminist perspective surfaced in those sessions on Capitol Hill.

News accounts of such manels got me thinking about launching a blog.

Opinio Juris, founded in November 2004, had revealed an international law community rife with readers and contributors. But posts by women were few, as was then and remains today the case on digital platforms. I imagined that a blog open only to women might attract women – that women would see it as both an invitation and an obligation to contribute. Going pink would set a strong contrast with OJ‘s baby-blue image.

The name? “IntLaw” was easy, and for obvious reasons.

“Grrls” was obvious too. The spelling’s angry “grr” owes much to the circa-1990s Riot Grrrls; the concept, to the Guerrilla Girls, a group that since 1985 has been wreaking feminist havoc in the male-dominated art world. (Years later, we would recognize Pussy Riot, a band-turned-movement that, like Guerrilla Girls, remains active.)

dowomenhavetobenaked2005smallrgbAs the Guerrilla Girls’ website recalls:

“They assumed the names of dead women artists and wore gorilla masks in public, concealing their identities and focusing on the issues rather than their personalities.”

And so did IntLawGrrls. Well, not the gorilla masks (at least not in public). But in the infant months after our birth-day on March 3, 2007, each of us assumed the name of a foremother as our pseudonym, and posted in her honor. I was Gráinne Ni Mháille, or Grace O’Malley, the Irish pirate who also would be embraced by contributors Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Gráinne de Búrca. A charter contributor, Beth Van Schaack, took the name of her distant relative, Eleanor Roosevelt. It will come as little surprise to learn that others followed suit in honoring ER, who remains our blog’s proto-foremother. Another early contributor, Jaya Ramji-Nogales, posted in the name of the 19th Century Indian queen Lakshmi Bai.

A half-dozen months and scores of contributors later, we ‘Grrls began posting in our own names, though we continued to name foremothers both in introductory posts and in an honor roll posted online. Kathleen A. “Kate” Doty, for example, thus paid homage to Queen Lili‘uokalani, the last monarch of Hawai‘i.

clearerwicl_posterOver time, Beth, Jaya, Kate, and I evolved into the editors of IntLawGrrls. Our collaboration included hosting a conference at Tillar House, the American Society of International Law headquarters, and publishing a special issue of the International Criminal Law Review, dedicated to Judge Patricia M. Wald, on “Women and International Criminal Law.” We worked together through December 2012, when the blog took a couple-months’ hiatus and then revived. It’s been wonderful to watch the replenishment of energy and contributors at this new URL, thanks to Cecilia Marcela Bailliet and many others.

Then as now – nearly 10 years, hundreds of contributors, and thousands of posts later – IntLawGrrls mentors new voices and fosters community among contributors at all stages of their careers. Our periodic group photos are evidence of that. (At top is our photo from last spring’s ASIL annual meeting, when IntLawGrrl Betsy Andersen, 2d from right in top row, earned the Prominent Woman in International Law Award.)

To celebrate our utterly unexpected achievement, we’re throwing a party.

georgiawill_logoBeth, Jaya, Kate, and I have reunited to organize IntLawGrrls! 10th Birthday Conference. We welcome all of our vast IntLawGrrls community to join us on Friday, March 3, 2017 – on the precise date of our 10th birthday – at my home institution, the Dean Rusk International Law Center, University of Georgia School of Law, Athens, Georgia USA, which is hosting as part of our Georgia WILL initiative.

Details and our call for papers are available at our conference website and in the item Jaya posted last week. Suffice it to say that we welcome proposals, in English, French, or Spanish, from all in our community. Topics may include any issue of international, comparative, foreign, or transnational law or policy. We especially welcome contributions from subfields traditionally dominated by men. Academics and practitioners, students and professors, advocates and policymakers alike are most welcome to submit.

We’re planning a plenary aimed at getting us through the next several years – title is “strategies to promote women’s participation in shaping international law and policy amid the global emergence of antiglobalism” – and we hope to organize a few more according to participants’ interests. We look forward to an opportunity to network, to meet old friends and make new ones, to celebrate our accomplishments and lay plans for greater achievements in the coming decade.

I thank all of you for your support of our efforts this last decade, and look forward to seeing many of you here in March.

‘Nuff said.

(Cross-posted from IntLawGrrls blog)

Emerging security challenges require norm development, State lawyer says

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Cross-posted from Exchange of Notes blog, where this post appears as Part 2 of a 2-part series; Part 1 is here.)

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

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

. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Cross-posted from Exchange of Notes blog. Part 2 of this 2-part series outlines Mallory Stewart’s remarks. Credit for photo at top, of Rusk signing the Outer Space Treaty; credit for photo above of Rusk, standing just to the left of the portrait as President Kennedy signs the Limited Test Ban Treaty)