Why come to the ASIL Midyear Meeting? Atlanta.

Up in my series of posts on why you should attend the 2012 American Society of International Law Midyear Meeting:
Atlanta.
Have posted before about the Midyear Meeting, to be held here in Georgia October 19 to 21. It's a meeting for which yours truly has the honor of serving as the meeting's co-chair, along with my colleague Charlie Hunnicutt, Senior Counsel at the Thompson Hine law firm and a fellow former ASIL VP:
► An early post gave details about keynote speakers – Patricia O'Brien, Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs and U.N. Legal Counsel, and Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State – as well as a blue-ribbon panel of international arbitration experts, a career mentoring event, and the scores of Research Forum presenters from around the world. You can see the updated schedule, and register, at the Midyear Meeting website.

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► A more recent post sang the praises of Athens, hometown to the University of Georgia School of Law, which will host the latter 2 days of the Midyear Meeting.
Today's post tells of the other host city, Atlanta.
Center of the country's 9th largest metropolitan area, with more than 5 million residents, Atlanta's also a center of business and culture in the American Southeast. Its transportation hub, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, has long been the country's busiest airport.

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There's much to do in this city. This 'Grrl found most moving her visit to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Site. In addition to exhibits like that at left, the site features the civil rights leader's birth home and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, from which Dr. King delivered some of his powerful sermons.
On the lighter side, there's downtown's world-class Georgia Aquarium (above right), and close by, the World of Coca-Cola museum/funpark in downtown Atlanta.
Atlanta is home to numerous educational institutions.
ASIL Academic Partner Emory University School of Law is one of them.
At our Midyear Meeting conference dinner in Athens on October 20, we'll be paying tribute to Emory Law Professor David Bederman (right), the American Journal of International Law editor and U.S. Supreme Court advocate who passed away last year at age 50.
Atlanta's John Marshall Law School is also a meeting sponsor, as are the Atlanta International Arbitration Society, the Association of Corporate Counsel-Georgia, the International Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia, and the Atlanta-officed firms of  Arnall Golden & Gregory, King & Spalding, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, Thompson Hine, and Troutman & Sanders.
An Atlanta corporate anchor is, of course, the Coca-Cola Co. (hence that museum above). We're honored to count Coke as a meeting sponsor; indeed, it's host to all of Friday's events:

Friday, October 19
Coca-Cola headquarters, 1 Coca-Cola Plaza, N.W., Atlanta

3-5 p.m.
Career & Mentoring Fair
This Midyear Meeting kickoff event is geared for students and new professionals interested in learning more about various international law career paths and interacting with experienced public and private international legal professionals in a "speed-mentoring" format.

5-6:30 p.m.
When Transnational Business Deals Go Sour: The Challenges and Opportunities of International Arbitration
Speaking on recent developments, and on real-world case studies of arbitration’s success and failure, will be: Midyear Meeting Host Committee member Valerie Strong Sanders (left), Counsel, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan Litigation Practice Group, Atlanta; Jack Goldsmith, Henry J. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School and former U.S. Assistant Attorney General; Gary Born, Partner and Chair, International Arbitration Practice Group, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, Washington, D.C.; ASIL Immediate Past President David D. Caron, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley; ASIL President Donald Francis Donovan, Partner at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York; and Midyear Meeting Host Committee member Brian A. White, Partner at King & Spalding in Atlanta. Moderator will be Midyear Meeting Host Committee member Glenn P. Hendrix, Partner at Arnall Golden & Gregory in Atlanta.
Attendees will be eligible for 1.5 to 2 MCLE credits in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as detailed here.

6:30-8 p.m.
Reception

Register for the Midyear Meeting here. Hope to see you soon!

ASIL leadership nominees sought

This year's Nominating Committee of the American Society of International Law seeks a few good leaders.
Specifically, it seeks, from among its members, nominees – including self-nominees – to stand for election for a number of leadership positions, to be filled at the Society’s 2013 Annual Meeting, to be held April 3-6 in Washington, D.C.
ASIL's immediate past President, David D. Caron (University of California-Berkeley), who will chair the committee, whose members include Lucinda A.  Low (Steptoe & Johnson LLP), Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (University of Minnesota/University of Ulster, and an IntLawGrrls contributor), William H. Taft IV (Fried Frank/former Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State), Catherine M. Amirfar (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP); Edith Brown Weiss (Georgetown), and, as an alternate, Vikram Raghavan (World Bank).
According to the ASIL notice, "The Committee will seek to nominate those who have evidenced a willingness to contribute time and effort to the work of the Society, while endeavoring also to enhance the diversity of the Society's leadership." The Committee will be guided in its decisions by the Society's Guidelines, available here, which the Committee advises every candidate and prospective nominator to review.

Positions
► President-Elect: The term will be for 1 year; then, in April 2014, the President-Elect will be expected to succeed incumbent President Donald Francis Donovan, and so to serve a 2-year term as President. In keeping with tradition of alternating between practitioners and academics, it's anticipated that the 2013 President-Elect will be drawn from among ASIL's academic members.
► Vice Presidents: To be filled are 2 vacancies (an academic and a practitioner) for this position  – which carries a 1-year term, usually renewed once. Vice Presidents generally take the lead in overseeing a major ASIL activity or program.
► Executive Council: To be filled are 8 vacancies on the Council, ASIL's chief governing body. Members convene as a group twice a year, at the Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., and at the traveling Midyear Meeting (this year, in Georgia). Members, who served 3-year terms, are expected to provide leadership to one or more of ASIL's programs or activities.
► Counsellors: To be filled are up to 8 vacancies, each for a 3-year term. Counsellors are nonvoting members of the Executive Council, who attend the Council meetings and are "chosen from from among the more senior members of the Society."

Nominating Process
To nominate someone else or yourself:
► Required is submission of the candidate's current CV, one that includes a description of the candidate's prior service to ASIL.
►  Also required, for all offices except Counsellor, is a 1- or 2-page statement setting out the candidate's ideas on the Society, its programs, and the candidate's potential contribution to its work.
► Optional (and not mentioned at all for the office of Counsellor) is a list of references whom the Nominating Committee may wish to contact for further information about the candidate. According to ASIL's notice, "The Nominating Committee does not encourage or expect to receive letters in support of particular nominees, and the Committee requests that no more than one such letter be submitted in support of any candidate."

Deadline

The deadline for submission of candidates for all positions is August 3, 2012. 

ASIL Cable on WILIG Luncheon: Internationalization of Law: Diversity, Perplexity, Complexity, Thurs., Mar. 29, 2012, 1:30 pm

The annual Women in International Law Interest Group (WILIG) luncheon always serves both to build community and recognize the contributions of women in international law. This year's luncheon honored Mireille Delmas-Marty (left), Chair of Comparative Legal Studies and Internationalization of Law at College de France, and also featured opening remarks by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Professor Delmas-Marty's tremendous scholarly and public policy contributions are detailed in this year's annual program, and a full text of her remarks will be available on the Intlawgrrls blog. This ASIL Cable focuses on describing the event and reflecting upon Professor Delmas-Marty’s address, which is printed in full here.

The event began with warm welcomes from WILIG Co-Chair Kristine Anne Huskey and ASIL President David Caron. Justice Stephen Breyer then provided opening remarks that set a wonderful tone for the rest of the event through quoting Eleanor Roosevelt and explaining the critical role that law professors, and particularly Honoree Mireille Delmas-Marty, play in the work of international law. He described the "indefatigable" way in which she thinks, writes, and contributes to the web of rule of law. He said that he does not know anyone who does this better than Mireille Delmas-Marty.

Professor Delmas-Marty's analysis of the internationalization of law served as the centerpiece of this year's WILIG luncheon. She argued that we need imagination to introduce the complexity needed in international law to address diversity and resulting perplexity. She described the diversity stemming from different legal orders, multi-level governance, the many fields of international law, varying rates of legal evolution, and the wide range of key governmental and nongovernmental actors.

She then explained that diversity results in perplexity driven by disaggregation and fragmentation and two challenges that it poses. First, it poses a challenge for legal formalism: Is diversity a disruption or an irruption? Its fragmentation can lead to conflict, but its plurality can also help needed support needed evolution. Second, diversity poses a challenge of global governance: Is diversity a disease or a metamorphosis? Diversity could be a disease that weakens democracy and strengthens uncontrolled powers that act with impunity. But it could also help with law's needed evolution through a mix of hard and soft law.

Professor Delmas-Marty finally introduced the way in which imaginative introduction of complexity into the legal world could help address diversity and perplexity. She proposed an “ordered pluralism” that includes new techniques for integrating legal orders and new guidelines for sharing rulemaking and legal responsibility, with a focus on hybridization and harmonization. She noted that judges play a very important role in avoiding inappropriate extensions of power and argued for the need to organize judicial review at a global level between national and international levels, drawing from principles of complementarity and universal jurisdiction.

Professor Delmas-Marty concluded her remarks by examining the International Criminal Court's first verdict delivered 15 days ago and making two observations and one lesson. Her first observation was that complexity seems well-organized in the verdict, but that the result was also frustrating because the indictment and conviction did not cover all of the offences that accused allegedly committed. Her second observation was that complexity does not work without engagement of political realities and shared values. But she sees signs of progress and thinks that the court has a long shadow. Her lesson was to be patient but not passive. She said that we have a duty to improve legal instruments and view humanization of the law as a dynamic, interactive process. Beyond the challenge of complexity, there is an ethical challenge emerging of protecting our “common and plural humanity” that we need to meet imaginatively.

As someone who has worked on climate change and argued for more pluralist approaches in the face of international governance failures in that context, I am very sympathetic to Professor Delmas-Marty’s perspective. I think she is right that we need governance approaches that imaginatively incorporate diversity. Her remarks and examples made me interested in learning more about how she thinks the challenges of operationalizing such an approach might vary across substantive areas of international law, and when formal strategies for incorporating pluralism in new ways into international law might be most effective. I was particularly intrigued when I asked her about whether transnational agreements among subnational entities should be treated as part of pluralist international lawmaking or incorporated more directly into international law processes that she favored the latter approach. Her ideas open up many future possibilities for dialogue and for imaginative international legal work.

Following the question and discussion period, co-chairs Janie Chuang and Kristine Anne Huskey presented Professor Delmas-Marty with her award and "Prominent Women in International Law" mug. Professor Chuang then announced the election of the new co-chair Clara Brillembourg and secretary Milena Sterio, as well as new steering committee members. The event concluded as is traditional with everyone in the room introducing themselves to one another, with ASIL President David Caron in his introduction calling this lunch "the best event of the best week of the year."

(This Cable is Cross-Posted at ASIL Cables) (credit for photo by Hilary Schwab, courtesy of American Society of International Law)

Confronting complexity

'A rock is not a complexity.'
'What we see as a complexity reveals something about us.'
'An elegant solution in law is a solution that takes responsibility for the consequences of it.'
'Complexity and elegance.'

These are just some of the deep (complex?) thoughts just conveyed by David Caron (above, standing), President of the American Society of International Law, in his "TED"-like talk which opened the Society's 106th annual meeting, themed "Confronting Complexity."
Bravo!

Go On! ASIL midyear in Miami

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

Next month the American Society of International Law will break from a long D.C. tradition and hold its 2010 Midyear Meeting in Miami, Florida. Of the plan to meet November 12 and 13 in that southernmost city, ASIL President David D. Caron explained:

Convening the international law community throughout the United States and the rest of the world is an important priority for the Society — to serve our far-flung members, and also to reach growing new constituencies of international law within the bar and the judiciary, among representatives of the media, and in the general public.

As they do every autumn, ASIL's Executive Council and the editors of the American Journal of International Law will gather. Additionally, those of us who are working on ASIL's Benchbook on International Law project look forward to the opportunity to vet drafts with a panel of federal judges.

Newly supplementing in camera sessions like these will be a day of events open to the public (many offering Continuing Legal Education credit). Examples of public events for Friday, November 12, at the University of Miami Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Alumni Center:

► "Stop the Hand-Wringing and Do Something: Solutions on the Table to What is Perceived to be Wrong with International Arbitration," featuring: Catherine Amirfar (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP); Edward Mullins (Astigarraga Davis LLP); and Michael Reisman (Yale Law). Chaired by IntLawGrrl Lucy Reed (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP), ASIL's Immediate Past President.

► "The Top Six Recent Arbitrations Everyone Should Know," featuring: Mahnoush Arsanjani (International Law Associates), an ASIL Vice President; David Bederman (Emory Law); Ryan Reetz (Squire Sanders LLP). Chaired by Donald Francis Donovan (Debevoise & Plimpton LLP).
► Luncheon keynote, "Florida and the Globalization of the Legal Profession: Insights from the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20," by Carolyn Lamm (White & Case LLP) (above left), Immediate Past President of the American Bar Association.

► "Career Fair/Mentoring Session for Students"

► "Revisiting the Place of International Law in Domestic Law," featuring: Judge Rosemary Barkett (U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit) (right); Judge Adalberto Jordan (U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida); Curtis Bradley (Duke Law); and Eyal Benvenisti (Tel Aviv Law); chaired by Laurence Helfer (Duke Law).
► "National, Regional, and International Perspectives on International Criminal Accountability," featuring: Olivia Swaak-Goldman (Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court); and Dinah Shelton (George Washington Law) (below left), a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Chaired by yours truly, IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann (University of California, Davis, Law), an ASIL Vice President.

All participants also are welcome to register for the conference dinner that evening at the Biltmore Hotel; featured will be "Justice and Leadership Dilemmas in Shakespeare," the keynote by Judge Theodor Meron, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and ASIL Honorary President.

Events are free for students, ASIL members, and affiliates of the meeting's cosponsoring law firms and law schools; for others, there is a fee. Details and registration here.

Go On! ICC Deputy Prosecutor Bensouda to give Women's Day address in California

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest) It's an immense honor to announce the 1st-ever trip to California of the 2d-in-command at the Office of the Prosecution, International Criminal Court: ICC Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (left and below right)will visit the home institutions of 2 IntLawGrrls, Beth Van Schaack and me, next week:
► On International Women's Day, the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law, for which I serve as founding Director, will host Bensouda's address on "Gender Violence and International Criminal Law" from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, March 8, in our Moot Courtroom. Introducing her will be California Superior Court Judge Ramona J. Garrett, a 1980 King Hall alumna. Joining me in leading Q&A after the address will be California-Berkeley Law Professor David D. Caron, who's also President-Elect of the American Society of International Law.
► On the following day, Tuesday, March 9, from 12 noon to 1 p.m., Bensouda will speak at Santa Clara University School of Law. Details here.
Bensouda will discuss her work investigating and prosecuting persons accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes -- ranging from sexual violence to forced recruitment of child soldiers -- in wartorn places like Darfur, Democratic Republic Congo, Central African Republic, Guinea, and Uganda. Interviews with Bensouda about this work were featured (right) in The Reckoning (2009) (prior posts here and here), the documentary by IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Pamela Yates.
Before joining the ICC in 2004, Bensouda served as the Attorney General in her native country of The Gambia. She played key roles in negotiations at the United Nations and at the Economic Community of West African States. Bensouda's long advocacy for the rights of women led human rights groups to applaud her ICC appointment.
We're most grateful for support from the Planethood Foundation, established by Donald Ferencz, son of Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, to aid programs that promote international criminal justice.
Hope to see you at one of these events!

Go On! Modern-Day Piracy Off Somalia

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) An evening of discussion of international legal issues on the current situation of modern-day piracy -- entitled "Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia: Challenges to Deterrence, Pursuit, and Prosecution" -- is on hand from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday, March 2, at the University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, Sacramento, California. Cosponsors of are Pacific McGeorge's Global Center for Business & Development and ASIL-West, a regional project of the American Society of International Law.
Opening the discussion moderated by Linda Carter (Pacific McGeorge) will be Fausto Pocar (left), the University of Milan international law professor who serves as a Judge on the Appeals Chamber for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and who is the former President of the ICTY and a past member of the Human Rights Committee, the U.N. body that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Leading the ensuing open discussion will be ASIL-West Co-Chair David D. Caron (California-Berkeley), John Cary Sims (Pacific McGeorge), and IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack (Santa Clara).
Details and registration here.