Book Roundtable: Ruti Teitel’s Humanity’s Law

We’re pleased this week to host a discussion of Ruti Teitel’s new book, Humanity’s Law, just out from Oxford University Press.  Ruti is Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School, where she directs the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy.  She is also Visiting Professor, London School of Economics.

The book is a major contribution to understanding the transformed baselines of international law, an integrated account of how international law has reoriented to humanity.  The book describes

the central transformations of the post-Cold War era: the profound normative shift in the international legal order from prioritizing state security to protecting human security. Courts, tribunals, and other international bodies now rely on a humanity-based framework to assess the rights and wrongs of conflict; to determine whether and how to intervene; and to impose accountability and responsibility. Cumulatively, the norms represent a new law of humanity that spans the law of war, international human rights, and international criminal justice. Teitel explains how this framework is reshaping the discourse of international politics with a new approach to the management of violent conflict.

We’ll be joined for the roundtable by Bill Burke-White (Penn Law), Joanne Mariner (Hunter College), and Ralph Wilde (University College London) .  We’ll look forward to a stimulating discussion of Ruti’s important new book.