First Annual Opinio Juris Symposium: Challenges to Public International Law

On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris, I am pleased to annouce that the first annual Opinio Juris on-line symposium, “Challenges to Public International Law,” will be held this fall. The details below will be posted on our sidebar for future reference.

Opinio Juris Online Symposium 2006: Challenges to Public International Law

Theme Statement

As long as people have been writing about public international law, commentators have suggested that it is a system in crisis or somehow under stress. After a moment of optimism at the end of the Cold War, scholarship has returned to the challenges of international law. Opinio Juris is convening an on-line symposium to carefully consider just what these challenges may be: terrorism, hegemony, illegitimacy, or other topics that have not yet been fully explained. Is the problem that international law is too weak to make a difference or that its institutions are invasive to the point of being undemocratic? We invite the submission of manuscripts that have not yet been accepted for publication that consider one or more challenges facing international law.

Call for Papers

We invite junior faculty (i.e., pre-tenure), international practitioners, those entering the teaching market in 2006, and advanced law students (3Ls, LLM and JSD candidates) to submit papers that fit within our theme. The papers selected will be made available for public discussion on Opinio Juris. The writers of Opinio Juris and selected guest commentators will serve as on-line moderators and commentators for selected panels of papers. Panels will be devised according to the themes and topics, and authors will be given a platform to respond to comments and questions. Our goal is to provide an open forum for dissemination and discussion of new scholarship. We hope to give new scholars an opportunity to receive feedback on their scholarship prior to publication. The symposium will take place during the month of October 2006 over several selected dates.

Submissions

Deadline for submissions is September 15, 2006 (midnight GMT). Papers may be submitted from any country, but must be in English and should not exceed 35,000 words (including footnotes). Please submit your paper in electronic format to Professor Peggy McGuinness at McGuinnessM@missouri.edu prior to the deadline. Questions about the selection process should be addressed to Professor McGuinness.