On March 22, Professor Milena Sterio moderated a Roundtable on “Establishing a Single Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals.” This discussion was part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution.

The Roundtable focused on the feasibility of establishing a single consolidated residual mechanism for all or multiple international/hybrid tribunals. Experts shared their insights and discussed the feasibility of this idea, addressing the legal and practical issues associated with such consolidation.

Access the Roundtable recording here: https://www.publicinternationallawandpolicygroup.org/expert-roundtable-establishing-a-single-residual-mechanism

Legal Educator-in-Residence Howard E. Katz made a presentation on “Innovative Teaching Techniques” to the faculty at the Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center on March 21st in Baton Rouge, as part of their Spring 2024 Faculty Speaker Series. Although well received and with a very nice turnout, it did not cause quite as much of a stir as the LSU women’s basketball team beginning their NCAA title defense the next day at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on campus.

Professor Milena Sterio was elected Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Midwest Interest Group; her term will begin in April 2024 and will last for three years. Professor Sterio had previously Co-Chaired this Interest Group, and she also currently serves on the Executive Council at ASIL.

Professor Milena Sterio participated in the “Transforming Transitional Justice: Innovative Approaches for Centering Communities to Lead Post-Conflict” conference, which was convened by the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth & Reconciliation (a consortium of organizations and experts funded by the U.S. State Department). During the event, Professor Sterio shared insights from her efforts to provide human rights documentation training to a cohort of Rohingya refugees residing in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Brian Ray, Leon M. & Gloria Plevin Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Online Programs, chaired the drafting group for the Sedona Conference’s U.S. Biometric Systems Privacy Primer (“Primer“) (download here). Recently published for public comment, the Primer provides a general introduction to biometric systems and a summary of existing U.S. laws regulating the collection, use, and sharing of the biometric information these technologies collect.

The Primer is written as a resource for lawyers, judges, legislators, and other policymakers. It provides a general guide to the relationships among the technical, legal, and policy aspects of biometric systems – with a particular focus on privacy and related concerns these systems may raise.

Professor Chris Sagers, the James A. Thomas Professor of Law, wrote and filed a brief on behalf of himself and other academics in United States v. American Airlines Group, a Justice Department antitrust challenge pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The case involved a remarkable tie-up between two air carriers in the Northeast, where air travel markets were already quite congested, and on the government’s allegations it would have severely injured competition there. Upon request from the Justice Department and State Attorneys General, Professor Sagers drafted the brief, which garnered support from 25 professors specializing in law, business, and economics from esteemed institutions such as Stanford, NYU, George Washington, USC, UC Irvine, among others.

Professor Milena Sterio collaborated with colleagues Joshua Smith, Melike Tokatlioglu, Marie-Eve Plamondon (Sullivan & Cromwell), and Tara Ohrtman (Public International Law and Policy Group) to co-author a collection of blog posts recently released on Just Security, a leading international law blog. These posts were featured as part of an online symposium focused on the consolidation of current residual international criminal tribunals into a unified residual mechanism.

The symposium posts are available here: https://www.justsecurity.org/93284/consolidating-the-aftermath-of-justice/

On March 8, Professor Milena Sterio participated in a workshop held at City University of London in the UK. The workshop centered around the theme of “Gender Parity at the International Court of Justice.” This event was a component of a broader initiative aimed at enhancing gender equality at the International Court of Justice, which has seen only five female judges out of over one hundred since its establishment in 1945.

Professor Milena Sterio’s co-authored article, Prosecution of Russian Corporations for War Crimes in Ukraine, (with Professor Michael Kelly, Creighton University Law School, Federica d’Alessandra, Oxford University, Dmytro Koval, Stanford University and Lydia Korostelova, Harvard University) has been accepted for publication by the Texas International Law Journal.

The article proposes a litigation framework that enables U.S. courts to enforce civil judgments issued by Ukrainian courts against Russian corporations implicated in war crimes committed in Ukraine. The ultimate objective is to utilize assets acquired through these judgments to aid Ukrainian reconstruction and recovery efforts.

On March 16, Professor Milena Sterio, along with a group of experts, submitted Commentary to the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor. This submission was in response to the ICC’s call for Commentary regarding its latest policy initiative, which aims to establish a new policy promoting accountability for environmental crimes. Professor Sterio and her colleagues concentrated their Commentary on exploring the potential prosecution of environmental offenses as crimes against humanity or war crimes under the ICC’s Rome Statute.