Professor Dermot Groome trains Ukrainian Judges

CARLISLE, Pa.—On March 4 and 5, 2026, Professor Dermot Groome participated in a two-day training for Ukrainian judges organized by the Asser Institute Center for International Law (Asser) and the International Development Law Organization (IDLO). The training was held in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, which is important in the history of international law as the birthplace of Raphael Lemkin, the father of the term for the crime of genocide, and Hersch Lauterpacht, the father of the term “crimes against humanity.” Given the current security situation, Groome elected to participate via Zoom.

Last year, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) enacted a law creating a form of criminal liability found in international law. This mode of responsibility is known as command responsibility and holds military commanders criminally responsible for the crimes of their subordinates if they have effective control over those subordinates, know that a crime has been committed, and fail to prevent or punish that crime. Three of the five international trials Groome led as a prosecutor charged the defendants under this mode of criminal responsibility.

Established in 1965, the T.M.C. Asser Institute is an internationally renowned center of expertise in the fields of public international law, private international law, and European law. The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) is an intergovernmental organization based in Rome and dedicated to the promotion of the rule of law. Forty countries, including the United States, support and direct the activities of the IDLO. The IDLO has worked in Ukraine for many years on criminal justice reforms. These organizations requested that Groome participate in the training of these judges and other lawyers involved in war crimes work. The training included lectures, plenary discussions, and practical case studies developed by Groome and the trainers from Asser and IDLO.

Groome has been training and advising Ukrainian prosecutors since the start of the current conflict in February 2022. He has traveled to Kyiv four times as part of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, a joint effort by the U.S., U.K., and E.U. to provide expert advice and support in the investigation and prosecution of international crimes. He regularly meets with Ukrainian prosecutors via Zoom to answer questions and provide advice.

Professor Dermot Groome is a Professor of Law and the Harvey A. Feldman Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Penn State Dickinson Law. Much of his teaching, scholarship, and service focus on emerging areas of human rights and international criminal law and draw upon his deep expertise and experiences. After starting his career in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he was a member of the Sex Crimes Unit, and after working in Jamaica, W.I. on issues of community development, human rights, and children’s rights, Professor Groome worked in Cambodia. While in Cambodia, he served as a Legal Advisor to the International Human Rights Law Group, helped lead an investigation into a 1997 attack on peaceful protestors and drafted a report for the UN Security Council, helped the Cambodia Defender’s Project and Legal Aid of Cambodia investigate deaths in police custody, worked on issues related to the incarceration of children, and wrote a draft juvenile criminal procedure code. Professor Groome subsequently spent over 11 years as a senior war crimes prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He investigated and drafted the first genocide indictment against a sitting head of state, Slobodan Milošević, and was the Senior Trial Attorney for the Bosnia indictment. In total, Groome led the prosecution of five international criminal trials including the case against Ratko Mladić, who was convicted of genocide for the murder of over 7,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. He led eight large complex international investigations of senior military, political, and police officials. Groome’s cases all included crimes of sexual violence against women, men, and children. He was instrumental in the development of Joint Criminal Enterprise, a theory of criminal responsibility often used to assess the culpability of senior officials for the crimes committed by their subordinates. Two documentaries have been made about Professor Groome’s cases: The Trial of Ratko Mladić (PBS/Frontline 2019) and Crimes Before the ICTY: Višegrad (UN TV 2017).