Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
02 Mar Russia Reminds the World (and International Lawyers) of the Limits of International Law
JNB I'm relatively new to world of int'l law, but I must ask what is the obsession with pointing out that states don't always obey international law? It seems to be the center of so many discussions. Of course it is an important observation, but it is not the only issue. Scholars of criminal law don't sit around and wonder (to the same degree) why people still murder. If states always obeyed int'l law, then there would be no need to have the law (bc laws criminalize acts at the...
29 May Affective Justice Symposium: An Anthropology of International Criminal Justice Across Multiple Scales–A Response to Commentaries
pertinent to the various ways that justice is made real through contemporary emotional regimes, affects, and biopolitical instrumentalities. In raising his critique, Zenker is not fully convinced and proposes that book may have possibly missed the chance to fully appreciate the ironic, if not paradoxical, potential of law. In response, I would remind the reader that law’s emancipatory potential is not in its structure or form. Rather, law’s potential is in its ability to bring about possibility. But this is also its limit. Law’s frameworks – its structures and assumptions...
22 Aug Symposium on The Sentimental Life of International Law: ‘The Sentimental Life of International Law’ Travels
[Immi Tallgren is docent of international law at the University of Helsinki, researching ICL, the history of international law and feminism. Her latest publication is Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces (OUP 2023). ] I was thrilled to be invited to this symposium on Gerry Simpson’s The Sentimental Life of International Law (2022). My thrill soon turned to Angst. How to engage with a book like this, to live up to its dazzlingly fluid and distinctive style, its ‘mixology-of-several-disciplines-on-ice’ methodology, and its charismatic author, an...09 Feb Is International Law International? Continuing the Conversation
and Crimea, respectively. I agree with Milanovic that this issue arises in my book but deserves more explicit attention in comparative international law work going forward. In fact, I am currently working on a piece with a colleague addressing this very issue. But I disagree with Ku’s conclusion that adopting a comparative international law approach necessitates descending into pure relativism. As I say in the book, recognizing “differences in the way international law is understood, interpreted, applied, and approached can be examined without adopting a relativist stance that all positions...
05 Aug Emerging Voices: Methodological Individualism
[Dr. Tamar Megiddo is a Research Fellow at the TraffLab Research Project at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law.] To suggest in 2019 that international law scholarship remains statist may immediately lift some eyebrows. Although international law scholarship had traditionally embraced a state-centric approach, many have assumed that the field has long left statism behind. In my article Methodological Individualism, forthcoming in the Harvard International Law Journal, I challenge this assumption. I argue that although mainstream international law scholarship may no longer embrace ontological statism, according to which states are the sole,...08 Jul Emerging Voices: A View from Early Modern Cultural Studies on Fragmentation and the Law of Nations
Koskenniemi explains, can now be “narrate[d] as part of a different set of human pursuits, values, and priorities,” including trade law, transport law, environmental law, law of the sea, or human rights. Koskenniemi’s account of jurisdictional and normative fragmentation usefully captures two main insights, first, that narrative—story—plays a critical and maybe increasing role on what is notably called the “international stage”; and secondly, that the stories we tell and the ways that we tell them have legal, social, economic, and political consequences. Robert Cover’s foundational essay “Nomos and Narrative” (pdf)...
13 Aug Counseling the Prince: Reflections on the Art of Advising the State on International Law
the rule of law and respect for the interests of justice,” by presenting honest and accurate advice on the international legal rights and obligations of the state, by promoting international law through encouraging the state to comply with international law, and by protecting international law through preserving and developing its role in international relations. The Illusory Community: My principal concern with Harry Aitken’s proposal is that it is sociologically flawed. The institutional duties of domestic lawyers are not merely obligations codified in areas of law such as ethics and professional...
07 Jan Welcome Back to the Rule of Guns and Lawyers: A Tale of Two Ursulas, From Ukraine to Venezuela
[Nikolas M. Rajkovic is Chair of International Law at Tilburg University, and Senior Faculty at the Institute for Global Law and Policy of Harvard Law School (nikolasrajkovic.com). His research examines how international law is being reshaped by geopolitical, infrastructural, digital, and ecological transformations, drawing on interdisciplinary work across international law, international relations, and critical geography. He is the author of Off the Map: A Critical Geography of International Law (forthcoming CUP, 2026) and co-editor of The Power of Legality (CUP, 2016).] In February 2022, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine,...
19 May Symposium on Systemic Racism and Sexism in Legal Academia: Racial Hierarchies and the Internationalization of Southern Law Schools
[Roy is a faculty member at Jindal Global Law School in India. Roy has published under a pseudonym so that they may remain anonymous.] International law school rankings are dominated by institutions in Europe, North America and Australia. As an indication, the previous editions of the Times Higher Education and QS rankings included just one and two law schools from outside these regions in their top 20 worldwide. Law schools in the Global South have become increasingly conscious of their relegation in rankings and the implications this has for their...
17 Mar International Law for a Fragile World: Ecological Risk and the Limits of Consent-Based Governance
[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of Law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Distinguished Visiting Global Scholar at the NUS Centre for International Law (2025)] Climate change has long been framed as a problem of the future – a looming catastrophe that international law was expected to prevent before it arrived. That framing is now increasingly untenable. Climate collapse is no longer a hypothetical threat awaiting legal intervention – it is an ongoing, cumulative process whose most serious consequences are already unfolding. Rising sea levels, extreme heat, biodiversity loss, and...