Events and Announcements: 29 November 2020

Events

COVID-19 and International Law: The Bocconi University , with the support of the European Society of International Law, is organising a webinar on the theme of ‘COVID-19 and International law: Novel Strain or old wine in new test tubes?’. The Webinar will be held on 15 December 2020 at 13.30-18.00. Concept note: As the blogosphere breathlessly attests, the COVID-19 pandemic and the reactions of states to it have thrown up a host of issues of international law. There is talk in the international legal academy of a turning point … as there was last time something big and out of the ordinary occurred. To what extent is this talk justified and to what extent is it just hype? The webinar will examine these and more specific questions of international law raised by the current global health crisis. The first panel focuses on issues of “rights, obligations and responsibility” and the second panel focuses on “defences”.  The full programme can be found here and you can register here.

Reconceptualizing International Law: The traditional ways in which we conceptualize and practice international law may be insufficient to address the pressing issues of global injustice and systemic inequality. This Series (to run through 2021) will feature leading academics and practitioners who will engage in critical thinking across the core topics of public international law to conceptualize practical measures and mechanisms to convert and transform normative foundations of justice into procedural and substantive realities for today’s world. In the first Session to be held at 3PM EST on Wednesday 2 December, the roundtable will address how the status quo came to be, as well as how and why there is a need to reconceptualize international law to address matters of justice and inequality. Panelists include: Prof. Tendayi Achiume, United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; UCLA School of Law (Moderator); Prof. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Prof. Sundhya Pahuja, Director of Melbourne Law School’s Institute for International Law and the Humanities; and Prof. Makane Moïse Mbengue, Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva. This series is co-organized by Independent International Legal Advocates, International Arbitration Group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and the TWAIL Seminar at UCLA Law. Registration for the Zoom webinar can be found here.

If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris, please contact John Heieck at eventsandannouncements[at]gmail[dot]com with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information. Failure to provide said information may result in delayed posting of your announcement. Thank you!