Professor Rogers convenes roundtable discussion on global legal ethics at ASIL meeting

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State Law professor Catherine Rogers convened the inaugural Detlev F. Vagts Annual ASIL Roundtable on Transnational Law at the 110th meeting of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) on April 1 in Washington, D.C.

The roundtable, announced last year to honor the late Detlev F. Vagts, will convene annually and include presentations and discussions on transnational law that will then be presented for publication in a book or journal. Rogers was appointed to convene the inaugural roundtable by a committee established by ASIL president Lori Damrosh.

Given Vagts focus on global legal ethics and the role of lawyers in the development of international law, the inaugural roundtable focused on global legal ethics, and featured a panel of experts discussing a hypothetical that was loosely based on actual cases in which false evidence was allegedly presented to the International Court of Justice. The roundtable was established to honor both Vagts’ intellectual commitment to integrated consideration of practical and theoretical concepts as well as his personal commitment to promoting junior scholars. For this reason, the panel also discussed a paper presented by Christina Skinner, an associate in law at Columbia Law School.

In addition to Rogers and Skinner, the panel included:

• Catherine Amirfar, ‎counselor on international law at the State Department;
• Cecily Rose, assistant professor of public international law at Leiden University; and
• Stephan Schill, professor of international and economic law and governance at the Amsterdam Center for International Law.

A video recording of the roundtable discussion is available on YouTube, courtesy of ASIL.

Vagts, who died in 2013, was a Harvard law professor and renowned international law scholar with an expertise in transnational business problems and the laws affecting international commerce. He served on the faculty at Harvard from 1959 until his retirement in 2005. His family established the Detlev F. Vagts ASIL Roundtable on Transnational Law in his memory to promote the scholarship of younger academics in transnational law, support the exchange of ideas across jurisdictions, and maintain connections between scholars and practitioners in international law. 

Rogers is the Paul and Marjorie Price Faculty Scholar at Penn State Law and professor of ethics, regulation & the rule of law at Queen Mary, University of London, where she is also co-director of the Institute on Ethics & Regulation.