Go On! Lawfare

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

Lawfare! is the title of this year's annual meeting of the American National Section of the Association internationale de droit pénal, led by our colleague, Creighton Law Professor Michael J. Kelly. The symposium and experts' meeting, cosponsored by numerous other organizations, will be held September 10-11, 2010, in the Moot Courtroom at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, 11075 East Blvd., Cleveland, Ohio.

The conference will explore "lawfare," a concept traditionally defined as “a strategy of using -- or misusing-- law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective,” but recently extended by some to issues of international criminal justice and human rights.

Among the many experts scheduled to take part are IntLawGrrls guests/alumnae Leila Nadya Sadat (Washington University) and Susan Tiefenbrun (Thomas Jefferson), as well as Milena Sterio (Cleveland-Marshall), Laurie Blank (Emory), Melissa Waters (Washington & Lee), Sandy Hodgkinson (Department of Defense; prior post), and American Society of International Law Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen.

Details here.

Suppressing Maritime Piracy: What Are The Options?

Further to Diane's post below, this post is to call attention to a report produced by the ASIL, the Academic Council on the UN System (ACUNS) and the One Earth Future Foundation on international piracy. The report grew out of a conference on the topic, details of which are here and here. (I was a participant along with American Society of International Law Executive Director Betsy Andersen). The conference and report focused on the following topics:

• Can the crime of piracy be added to the jurisdiction of the ICC? If so, what is the process for doing so?
• Given the politics around the 2010 ICC review conference (the possibility that the crime of aggression will be added to the ICC’s jurisdiction; the desire on the part of some to add terrorism), how likely is it that the ICC might try pirates in the near future?
• What are the same possibilities for the Law of the Sea Tribunal?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using (third party) national governments to try apprehended pirates? How might universal jurisdiction work in practice with regard to the crime of piracy in the current era?
• What alternative governance options exist to prosecute pirates?
• What are the prospects for a special tribunal on piracy? How might this be established? By whom or under whose auspices? Through what processes?

My presentation focused on the international/hybrid tribunal option and discussed the different modalities by which international or hybrid tribunals have been established in the past:

• by coercion through the Security Council (ICTY & ICTR)),
• by consent with a host government (SCSL, ECCC, STL), or
• as part of a transitional administration (Special Panels in East Timor & Kosovo).

I also discussed potential regional and bilateral arrangements as well as other cooperative arrangements among affected states (along the lines of the mixed antislavery commissions of the 19th century, which IntLawGrrl Jenny Martinez (right) has written about, or the Lockerbie Tribunal). My presentation argued that given the vagaries of incorporation of the piracy prohibition into domestic law and the demonstrated inability and unwillingness of states to aggressively prosecute offenders, the international community needs a more comprehensive regime to effectively prosecute acts of piracy to supplement the cooperative military and preventative responses to date.
The Security Council's action is indeed welcome. Interestingly, so far, the Council has been careful not to identify piracy per se as a threat to the peace. In the Somalia resolutions, the Council designates the situation in Somalia as the threat that is exacerbated by piracy. Several states (including South Africa) are on record opposing the idea that piracy per se constitutes a threat to the peace. China has taken the opposite position. In its Resolution 1918, the Council asks the Secretary General to report on options

to further the aim of prosecuting and imprisoning persons responsible for acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.

No doubt the ASIL/ACUNS/OEF report will feature prominently in this research. Check it out!

ASIL, Midwest & beyond

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post about a new venture, ASIL Midwest)

On February 22 and 23, IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed (left) and Elizabeth "Betsy" Andersen (below right), the President and the Executive Director, respectively, of the American Society of International Law, will travel to Illinois for two days of ASIL outreach and programming.

While in Champaign as the guests of my home institution (and an ASIL Academic Partner), the University of Illinois College of Law, Lucy and Betsy will meet with faculty and students both from the College of Law and other university units, as well as with local attorneys and judges.

Specific program elements will include:

► Betsy’s “appearance” on a local public radio program, discussing the intersection of international and domestic law in the area of human rights; and

► Lucy’s teaching of the International Commercial Arbitration class.

More public events will include a panel on Careers in International Law and a panel on International Law and the Global Financial Crisis.
Lucy, Betsy, and I (below left) will then travel to Chicago, where, as the guests of the University of Chicago Law School, we'll take part in two panels on International Law and the Global Financial Crisis. Lucy’s and Betsy’s visit to the Midwest will conclude with a lunch at the American Bar Foundation, as the guest of the University of Illinois College of Law and the American Bar Foundation’s Center on Law and Globalization, to meet members of the Chicago practice, corporate, and philanthropic community.
We hope for a good turnout at these events, which follow on an earlier regional project, the ASIL West interest group that was launched a few years ago on the West Coast, and for which Co-Chairs have included IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann and guest/alumna Andrea K. Bjorklund. (prior IntLawGrrls posts) We would like to encourage other ASIL members -- and particularly Academic Partner schools -- to consider hosting such programs in their own regions.

As ASIL members, we have all heard that ASIL did not have enough programming for those of us living outside the New York and Washington areas. We can do something about that by organizing programs. Of course, there are the challenges of resources and distance, but programs need not aspire to be mini-ASIL annual meetings. They should just be occasions for attention to international law, our work as international lawyers, and ASIL. The key is to make programming flexible enough so that any of us who might want to be part of a regular schedule of ASIL programming in our regions can do so. And, if we share hosting duties, then perhaps no one and no institution will be unduly burdened.

What are the benefits of such ongoing efforts?

► For ASIL, the opportunity to fulfill one of its core mandates, to promote the use and understanding of international law.

► For those of us working in international law, opportunities to connect and to re-connect with colleagues. But perhaps most importantly, it gives us all an opportunity to understand more broadly where international law is a factor in our communities and to know more of the people who now play active roles in its effective operation.

Information about the ASIL Midwest program is here.

If you’re an ASIL member interested in hosting a program in your area, please contact ASIL’s Sheila Ward at sward@asil.org, or me, Charlotte Ku, at chku@law.illinois.edu. We would be happy to work through programming ideas with you.

Go On! Global views on international law

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) Public opinion on international law and on The Hague-based International Court of Justice, as revealed in a 21-country poll, will be the subject of a discussion from 4-5:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 3, at Tillar House, the headquarters of the American Society of International Law, 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.
ASIL's cosponsoring the event along with WorldPublicOpinion.org, whose Director, Steven Kull, will present the findings from a survey from a variety of locations, including Britain, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, and the United States. ASIL Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen will moderate a panel of discussants on the results.
Among the questions to be explored include many on which IntLawGrrls frequently post, such as: the desirability (or not) of compliance with international law; confidence (or not) in the ICJ; the role of the United Nations; intervention under the banner of responsibility to protect or for other reasons; and the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
Details and registration for the free event are here.

Guest Blogger: Marilyn J. Kaman

We at IntLawGrrls are honored to welcome the Honorable Marilyn J. Kaman (right), Judge of the Hennepin County District Court, Minneapolis, Minnesota. As today's guest blogger, she contributes a post drawn from her recent presentation at the 3d Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs in Chautauqua, New York, an event for which, as we've posted, IntLawGrrls was a proud cosponsor.

Marilyn holds a bachelor's degree cum laude from Vanderbilt University, a certificate of proficiency in Russian from Leningrad State University, and a master's degree in teaching from the University of Chicago. After earning her J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin, where she served on the Wisconsin Law Review, she practiced at the firm of Dorsey & Whitney, taught as an adjunct at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, and was an Assistant Hennepin County Public Defender. A judge in that county since 1990, serving in many judicial divisions, she's been Presiding Judge of the Probate/Mental Health Court since 2007. Marilyn's also sat on appeals panels by appointment of the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Her awards are numerous; for example, she was a co-recipient of the Minnesota Trial Judge of the Year-2004, given by the Minnesota Board of Trial Advocates, and the 1995 Marvelous Minnesota Woman Award by then-Governor Arne Carlson.

She's also active in numerous professional organizations, among them: Publications Officer for the Section of International Law of the American Bar Association and past C0-Chair of 2 ABA committees, on United Nations International Institutions and on International Criminal Law.

Those last positions point to the topic of Marilyn's post: her experience while on leave from 2002-2003, having been chosen by the United Nations to serve as an international judge in Kosovo, then a province of Serbia under U.N. administration. As she discusses in her guest post below, her duties included hearing cases alleging war crimes, organized crime, ethnically motivated disputes, and trafficking of human beings. (Her complete presentation is forthcoming in ASIL-published Proceedings, as with those of the 1st Dialogs, available here.)

Marilyn dedicates her post to Dr. Alison Des Forges (left), the human rights investigator who died in February, at age 66, in a plane crash outside Buffalo, New York. (photo credit) Des Forges, as posted, was the subject of a moving tribute by American Society of International Law Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen at this year's IHL Dialogs. Our own post soon after Des Forges' passing detailed the essential role that Des Forges played in Prosecutor v. Akayesu (1998), in her capacity as an expert witness and historian who worked as a Senior Advisor for the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. In addition to her contribution to that 1st trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, we noted,

Des Forges also gave expert testimony in national courts, the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, and the national legislatures of Belgium, France, and the United States. She published Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda the year after the Akayesu judgment, and also won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work as, to use MacArthur words, a 'Human Rights Leader.'

Today Des Forges joins other transnational foremothers in IntLawGrrls' honor roll just below our "visiting from ..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Go On! ASIL Leadership California Tour

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest.) California international lawyers will be treated this week to visits from two leaders of the century-old, D.C.-based American Society of International Law: President Lucy Reed (below left), a partner at the New York office of the Freshfields law firm, member of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, and IntLawGrrl, and Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen (below right). Coordinating the events is ASIL-West, the regional pilot project of which yours truly's a co-chair. Here's the itinerary:

Wednesday, October 1: Sacramento/Davis area

12 noon: Networking International Law, a lunchtime discussion with Lucy Reed and Betsy Andersen at the University of California Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall). Cosponsored by the King Hall International Law Society.

6 p.m.: New Types of International Courts and Tribunals, dinner and discussion featuring Lucy Reed, Betsy Andersen, and Pacific McGeorge Law Professor Stephen C. McCaffrey; moderated by California-Davis Law Professor Andrea K. Bjorklund. At the University of California Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall).

Thursday, October 2: San Francisco Bay Area

12:30 p.m.: Contemporary International Tribunals: From Investment Disputes to War Crimes, lunch discussion featuring Lucy Reed, at Stanford Law School, Palo Alto.

4:30 p.m.: Vice Presidential Debate Party. Begins with pre-debate foreign policy/international law panel featuring Lucy Reed, Betsy Andersen, and 3 former State Department officials now based in the Bay Area: William D. Kissinger, Abraham D. Sofaer, and Allen S. Weiner. Followed by dinner and viewing of debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, respectively, the GOP and Democratic nominees for Vice President. At Munger Tolles Olson law firm in San Francisco. Registration (required) here.

Friday, October 3: Los Angeles

11 a.m.: International Criminal Justice: Does It Work? Public lecture by Judge Theodor Meron of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, with commentary by General Wesley K. Clark (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, moderated by UCLA Law School's David Kaye, at that law school.

Saturday, October 4: Orange County

6 p.m.: Debating International Law Since 9/11: Principled & Pragmatic Controversies, lecture by Richard Falk, Betty & Wylie Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Chapman University School of Law, at that law school, located in Orange.

Details and registration for all events here.

Girl Soldier & 2nd Chautauqua Declaration

I post again from the 2nd Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs at Chautauqua, New York. The conference closed with the solemn reading by American Society of International Law Executive Director Betsy Andersen (left) of the 2nd Chautauqua Declaration, signed by the international criminal prosecutors present. The first two operative paragraphs are powerful:

That states must conform their conduct to the law, to settle disputes peaceably to refrain from aggressive acts, to honor the sanctity of the person, and to allow the peoples of the world to live free from want, fear, and to worship and express themselves without repression;
That states honor their legal commitments to uphold the directions and orders of the justice mechanisms they have created and once again, call upon all states to arrest and surrender to the appropriate court, tribunal or chamber Ratko Mladić, Felician Kabuga, Joseph Kony, Ahmad Harun, Ali Kushyab and all others not listed here and who are sought by international justice.

Missing from the list of fugitives in the 1st Chautauqua Declaration is Radovan Karadžić; let's hope for more missing names next year. The full text is posted on the website of the Robert H. Jackson Center.

The most moving event of the day was the talk by former child soldier Grace Akallo (left), one of the Ugandan schoolgirls abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army. Grace quietly recounted her story, not flinching at describing the mistreatment that caused her to become a killer to survive. With a shy smile, she told us about her college degree and infant son. Her message to us? Just as she is speaking out to educate the public and counseling other victims, we as lawyers should work to bring Joseph Kony and the LRA to justice and thereby facilitate lasting peace.

I highly recommend Girl Soldier (2007) (right), the book that Grace co-authored with Faith J.H. McDonnell.

International Law Women

Midsummer greetings from some attendees at this week's AALS/ASIL conference on international law in Vancouver. Standing in front at far left is the Honorable Diane P. Wood, Judge on the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, whose lunchtime keynote examined the interrelation of national and international law in norm creation, treaties, and customary international law. Over her left shoulder is ASIL Executive Director Elizabeth Andersen. Beside them, a host of the many other women who think and write about, teach, and work in international law.