We—people who socialize, shop, and work online—are generating a lot of data. Since the advent of computers to 2017, the sum of all the data produced was about ninety-four zettabytes (ninety-four billion gigabytes). We are expected to produce more than that in just this year alone. This data creates a lot of value, but its collection has also caused growing concerns about how it is being used to surveil people, manipulate their behavior, and expose them to harm.

I want to thank the family of Detlev Vagts for supporting the now annual Detlev F. Vagts Roundtable on Transnational Law and thank Rebecca for convening all of us. I also want to thank Salomé for producing such thought-provoking scholarship that indeed deserves our every praise, and I only hope my remarks will do it justice.

U.S. privacy law often is criticized in comparison with international privacy regimes, particularly the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. Parts of this criticism are fair, but, at the same time, U.S. privacy law provides meaningful protections in a substantial set of circumstances, and, on occasion, provides either “better” privacy protection than the GDPR or presents a more targeted approach to balancing appropriate privacy protections with other important public policy concerns. This balancing often is not a question of “consumers vs. industry” (although it certainly can be). In some situations—particularly in the health care settings that I will focus on—it often is a question of providing an appropriate balance between privacy interests and other policy interests that benefit both industry and consumers.

The American Society of International Law has included for this year's Annual Meeting a major but often overlooked issue about Personalizing International Law—the role of families. To understand how individuals experience international law in their daily lives, we must examine the role of families in shaping, implementing, and experiencing international law.

The theme of this panel is “Privatizing International Governance.” As the opening vignettes should make clear, public-private partnerships of all kinds are increasingly common in the international system. Since United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's launch of the Global Compact in 2000, the United Nations has increasingly opened up to business entities. Now, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Compact, and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights all encourage engaging with business entities as partners in developing and executing global governance agendas. These partnerships are seen by some as indispensable to sustainable development, international business regulation, climate change mitigation, and other global governance agendas. Business entities can offer expertise and funding, and their participation can soften resistance and increase buy-in for international regulatory agendas.

The private sector has an important role to play in international governance processes. Not only is it critical that stakeholders from all affected sectors are at the decision-making table, private actors are often key when it comes to implementing any new principles, rules, and processes.

There can be benefits to industry group participation in international governance. However, some engagements between business groups and international organizations raise concerns, including with respect to the legitimacy and trust of international governance and lawmaking itself. These concerns require the establishment and enforcement of guardrails surrounding industry group engagement to ensure participation is responsible.

Welcome, everyone; it is a pleasure to see you as always. This is a very special inaugural event and one that I am very excited about because as we all know, the history of Goler T. Butcher is very special. This award has been awarded since 1997 to a distinguished person of American or other nationality for outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights, and as we also know, it was named for Goler Teal Butcher, a remarkable person, prominent African American scholar, and professor of international law at Howard University School of Law, who served as the assistant administrator for Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Carter administration, and was a leading advocate for ending global hunger. We are here very much to honor the legacy.

Thank you so much, Catherine. As Catherine said, I am Michael Scharf, dean of Case Western Reserve University School of Law. We are very pleased to be sponsoring this program today, a conversation with Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, one of my oldest friends in this field and recipient of the Butcher Medal.

Thank you, Michael. When Mark Agrast and I settled on the title of this lecture on February 4, 2022, the idea was to speak generally about the accountability of sovereign power for international crimes. That was to discuss no particular head of state, except perhaps historical figures whose behaviors helped to develop the norm of individual criminal responsibility for even heads of state.

Increasingly, issues are arising regarding transnational access to evidence in electronic formats in dispute resolution proceedings. Currently, there is not a comprehensive solution to cross-border gathering of electronic stored information and regulations in the area remain a patchwork of divergent instruments. Over the past few years, private practitioners and in-house counsel have had to familiarize themselves with various discovery rules, data privacy laws, and data localization laws to ensure that they transfer data in ways that are compliant with strict cross-border data transfer requirements. Further, the current private international law framework seems outdated for the rapidly changing transnational e-evidence discovery needs. This Panel, organized by the ASIL Private International Law Interest Group (PILIG), addressed issues concerning cross-border conflicts of e-evidence in party-managed processes and whether there is a “best practice” for adjudicators and parties to co-develop such a protocol. As the Co-Chair of PILIG, I had the pleasure of moderating the Panel.

More countries than ever require post-disaster international assistance in an era of accelerating climate change-driven events and intensifying risk from other threats. Accordingly, affected states must legally prepare to ensure that incoming aid is effective, appropriate, and accountable to its intended recipients. This session focused on how the Guidelines on the Domestic Facilitation and Regulation of International Disaster Assistance (IDRL Guidelines) can support governments in proactively addressing legal and other issues surrounding incoming disaster assistance.