In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

18 Jun

[Ingo Venzke is Professor for International Law and Social Justice at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL).] Our edited volume has asked a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: Could international law have been otherwise? One could expect the answer to be a resounding ‘yes’, given that no serious account is nowadays...

|
18 Jun

[Doreen Lustig is a Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and the author of Veiled Power: International Law and the Private Corporation 1886-1981 (Oxford University Press, 2020).] Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s edited volume Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (Oxford University Press, 2021) (hereinafter: Contingency) is a rare editorial accomplishment. A coherent and multifaceted...

|
17 Jun

[Marina Veličković is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Her research interests include International Criminal Law, Political Economy and Critical Theory. I The author extends many thanks to Francisco-Jose Quintana and Justina Uriburu for their comments on an earlier draft.] ‘Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories’, an ambitious volume edited by Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller which was...

|
17 Jun

[Vidya Kumar is an Associate Professor of Law at Leicester University, UK. Twitter: @DrVidyaKumarUK] Between you and me, Professors Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s edited collection reads like a classic expositional text on the ways to think about contingency in international law – not unlike Susan’s Mark’s timeless work “False Contingency”. Composed of no less than 30 innovative readings of the operation – and non-operation – of contingency...

|
16 Jun

While results have not yet been officially announced, it is now a fact that Pedro Castillo, a rural farmer and schoolteacher from the town of Chota, in the northern Peruvian Andes, won Peru’s Presidential Election. Let me say this from the get-go: this is a historical moment. Peru is an immensely centralised, deeply racist country. Castillo’s meteoric rise to the...

|
16 Jun

[Kanad Bagchi is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. The author would like to thank the editorial team for thier comments and feedback.] Edited collections often tend to surface within the hegemonic voice of the editors – they introduce the concept, set the frame, determine the contours, and also illustrate the specific set of argumentative...

|
16 Jun

[Hirofumi Oguri is a Senior Assistant Professor of International Law at Okayama University in Japan.]  In his famous series of lectures delivered at Cambridge University, E. H. Carr displayed a cynical attitude towards those who tend to ask what if an event had happened otherwise. Carr dismissed this ‘might-have-been’ school of thought as no better than a ‘parlour game’. However, asking ‘what if’ questions is...

|
15 Jun

[Ntina Tzouvala is a Senior Lecturer at Australian National University College of Law.] At a time when overseas travel, in-person academic events, and mediocre conference food were still commonplace, I attended the conference in Amsterdam that forms the backdrop for this impressive volume. The event, organised by Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller, was lively, joyful, and not without controversy, which...

|
14 Jun

[Erica Gaston is an international lawyer and non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy institute (GPPi). She has been engaged in research on IHL and conflict-related human rights issues in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and other countries since 2007.] As introduced in Part I of this two-part blog, Western states are now more than ever finding themselves in partnerships (direct or tacit)...

|
14 Jun

[Erica Gaston is an international lawyer and non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy institute (GPPi). She has been engaged in research on IHL and conflict-related human rights issues in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and other countries since 2007.] In the last two decades, Western states have frequently worked with nonstate or substate armed groups to help confront security threats. The greater frequency of...

|
14 Jun

[Adeel Hussain is an Assistant Professor of Legal and Political Theory at Leiden University and a Senior Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. Twitter: @adeelh693.] Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories, an edited volume with thirty distinct contributions just published by...

|
14 Jun

This week, along with Völkerrechtsblog we are thrilled to co-host a symposium on Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s latest edited volume, Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (OUP 2021). Scholars and practitioners who will be contributing include: Adeel Hussain, Ntina Tzouvala, Doreen Lustig, Vidya Kumar, Kanad Bagchi, Marina Veličković and Hirofumi Oguri. The symposium will close with a rejoinder by the editors....

|