Events and Announcements: 10 March 2024

To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. 

Calls for Papers

An Abolition Movement for International Criminal Law?: Submissions are called for to participate in an upcoming workshop entitled ‘An Abolition Movement for International Criminal Law?’, to be held in person at RMIT University Melbourne and online, 27-28 June 2024. Papers are called for that will examine any aspect of the relationship between carceral abolition and international criminal law. Critical scholars have pointed out international criminal law’s ideological grounding in neoliberalism and its relationships to race, global capital, and colonialism and imperialism – all of which ensure that race, nationality, class, and gender, are powerful determinants of who will be brought before a court. Now building on these understandings, we might begin to ask: What alternative responses might be imagined to this carceral system? Can we refuse imprisonment and policing as the main response to mass atrocity, and instead seek to understand and respond to the social causes and conditions that cause such mass atrocity? Can we critically ask how (and why) criminal law has become the preeminent ‘legitimate hand of justice’, in place of other non-carceral approaches?

The workshop will be designed to be small, intensive, and with a view to high-quality discussion and paper publication. A Special Issue of the Australian Feminist Law Journal will publish selected papers from the workshop in 2025. For full details – and to submit an abstract of no more than 350 words by 24 March 2024 – please see here or contact Sophie Rigney, Senior Lecturer in Law, RMIT University at sophie.rigney@rmit.edu.au.

Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Conference: The Common Good Foundation in partnership with The Jersey Law Commission is hosting a conference in St. Helier, Jersey, on July 12, 2024 focusing on economic, social and cultural rights. CGF, in particular, is interested in advancing discussions on minority rights and ESCR. Please see the call for papers here.

Double Standards in International Law: Double standards are ubiquitous within the study and practice of international law. Examples abound as states speak abstractly about the need for accountability and their commitment to international law but in practice act inconsistently, for example, in applying human rights standards, combatting transnational and international crimes, or making and enforcing the rules that govern trade and development. As wars continue to grip parts of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, many openly question or seek to remake features of the international system, resurrecting old and raising new challenges for global governance and multilateralism. With the United Nations, World Bank and other multilateral bodies struggling for legitimacy, and globalization increasingly associated with unequal outcomes, authoritarian governments and populist movements around the world have re-asserted their authority inter alia by challenging the legitimacy of the post-Second World War legal order. This symposium will seek to foster debate about how double standards are expressed within international law and enhance understanding of how evidence of double standards impacts perceptions and practice. It will feature a wide range of papers that show the many ways that claims and evidence of double standards manifest in different forms of international legal argument, as well as time- and area-specific considerations of how double standards operate in different fields of international law, including from Global South(s) and empirical perspectives. This symposium on 15-16 July 2024 will bring together scholars and practitioners, from various fields of international law and through divergent theoretical and geographical perspectives. For more information, click here.

From Protection to Coercion: the Limits of Positive Obligations in Human Rights Law: 3-4 October, Lund, Sweden, organized by Dr Vladislava Stoyanova, Associate Professor, Lund University, Faculty of Law, and Dr David McGrogan, Associate Professor, Northumbria Law School. Positive obligations in human rights law appear to be relentlessly expanding, and far beyond what was envisaged by the drafters of the relevant treaties. Given the extensive regulatory functions of the State and the enormous breadth of state activities, any harm could potentially be a ground for making an argument that the State failed to fulfil its positive human rights obligations by failing to prevent or mitigate harm or risk. As a result, it is rather unclear under which conditions positive obligations may be triggered and how far-reaching they may be, given how difficult it is to draw the limits of state responsibility for omissions. The difficulties we experience in determining and delimiting the role of the State in contemporary society contribute to this uncertainty. Given the pervasiveness of positive obligations, it is important to ask whether there are any limits as to when and how they should be developed. Relatedly, what considerations should guide the development of such limits? What considerations should be relevant in determining whether a State is responsible under human rights law for omissions? For more details, see here.

Technology and the Changing Landscape of International Criminal Justice: The European Society of International Law (ESIL)’s Interest Group on International Criminal Justice has issued a call for papers for a hybrid workshop titled ‘Technology and the Changing Landscape of International Criminal Justice’. This workshop will take place both online and in-person in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Wednesday, September 4, 2024, immediately prior to the ESIL 2024 Annual Conference. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, April 11, 2024. Please find the call and further details here.

Events

Seminar: The effectiveness of human rights in a multilevel legal order under threat?: Radboud University organises a seminar prior to the inaugural lecture of prof. dr. Jasper Krommendijk (professor of Human Rights Law) on 19 June 2024 in Nijmegen. During this seminar various practitioners, academics and judges will reflect on the ways in which (inter)national human rights norms and institutions have been effective and how they can continue to be. Speakers include Petra Bárd (CEU/ RU), Ineke Boerefijn (NHRI), Yvonne Donders (University of Amsterdam & UN Human Rights Committee), Janneke Gerards (Utrecht University),  Merel Hendrickx (PILP), Miriam Kullman (Utrecht University & European Committee of Social Rights), Kushtrim Istrefi (Utrecht University & Venice Commission), John Morijn (University of Groningen), Hanneke Palm (Staatscommissie rechtsstaat), Floris Tan (MFA) and Marc de Werd (University of Amsterdam & Amsterdam court of appeal). Attendance is free of charge. For the programme and registration, see here. 

Tübingen Lecture Series on the Laws of War: TuLaW provides a critical perspective on pertinent challenges of the laws of war, broadly understood. Each one-hour event features a thought-provoking presentation by a leading scholar in the first half hour followed by a discussion in the second half hour. All events are held exclusively online from 6–7 pm CET (noon to 1 pm EST, 9-10 am PST). The inaugural lecture will be given by Professor Sarah Nouwen (EUI/Cambridge), who will speak on “Intra-State Peace Agreements – Prose, Poetry, Legal Instrument?”. The lecture will be held on Wednesday 13 March 2024 from 6-7 pm CET. Please send an email to jessica.oheim@student.uni-tuebingen.de to register. The Zoom link and login data will be sent to those registered ahead of the event.

Proportionality and Emerging Technologies: The Last Farewell?: The International Law at Westminster (ILaW) group organises a talk on Proportionality and Emerging Technologies: The Last Farewell?, 15 Mar 2024, 11am, London. Speakers include Dr Afonso Seixas-Nunes (Saint Louis University School of Law) and Dr Marco Longobardo (University of Westminster). More info and free registration are available here.

Legal Consequences of the Situation in the Gaza Strip: Conflict, Occupation, and International Crimes: The Association of Young International Criminal Lawyers (AYICL) is pleased to invite you to its upcoming event on ‘Legal Consequences of the Situation in the Gaza Strip: Conflict, Occupation, and International Crimes’, hosting Professor Triestino Mariniello, Professor Ata Hindi, and Kathryn Ravey. The event, which will take place on March 14 at 3pm CET on Zoom, is open to all, including scholars, early career researchers, practitioners, and students, and provides an opportunity to engage with legal experts who have worked extensively on the topic and are directly involved in the current proceedings. To join the event, please register here.

National Security & International Business Roundtable: On September 27, 2024, Washington and Lee University School of Law’s Frances Lewis Law Center, Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security, and Steptoe LLP will host a roundtable at Steptoe’s Washington, DC office on “National Security & International Business.” The roundtable is intended to foster learning and engagement between academics, legal practitioners, industry experts and policymakers. It will consist of four sessions and each will feature an academic presentation with commentaries from discussants in practice, industry or policymaking.

Calls for Applications

Adamas Residencies 2024: Research residency as part of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy Award. From 6 to 15 September 2024, the Château de Goutelas, in collaboration with the International Nuremberg Principles Academy, the French Constitutional Council, the International Association of Economic Law (A.I.D.E.) and the Institute for Studies and Research on Law and Justice (IERDJ), is hosting the fourth edition of the distinctive European residency programme for legal researchers – the Adamas Residencies. The aim of the residency program is to explore contemporary legal issues and foster connections among young jurists, artists and researchers from different disciplines. In this context, the International Nuremberg Principles Academy awards a prize to co-finance one research stay.

Are you a French-speaking PhD student or postdoc interested in the field of international criminal law? Apply now for the European research residencies in law “Adamas Residencies”. Send your application by 31 May 2024. More information on the Adamas Residencies, including the call for applications is available here.