In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Books

23 Aug

[Zinaida Miller is Professor of Law & International Affairs at Northeastern University.] In his wide-ranging exploration, Gerry Simpson demonstrates the fundamental tensions experienced within international law and by international lawyers as they simultaneously embrace and distance themselves from the individuals, sites, histories, modes of violence, and narratives at the center of their work. To approach international law through the sentimental, Simpson suggests, allows him to understand it...

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23 Aug

[Carl Landauer taught history at Yale, Stanford, and McGill Universities and international legal theory at UC Berkeley School of Law.] Gerry Simpson, in the final chapter of The Sentimental Life of International Law, urges international lawyers to follow the Voltairean advice, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin,” which Simpson means both figuratively and literally. Among the various garden images that Simpson marshals for the garden chapter...

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22 Aug

[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...

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22 Aug

I am delighted to announce that this week Opinio Juris will be hosting a symposium on Gerry Simpson's wonderful new book "The Sentimental Life of International Law." Here is Oxford University Press's description: The Sentimental Life of International Law is about our age-old longing for a decent international society and the ways of seeing, being, and speaking that might help us achieve...

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11 Aug

[Barrie Sander (@Barrie_Sander) is Assistant Professor of International Justice at Leiden University – Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs] Reflecting on the narrative nature of law, James Boyd White famously observed how ‘[t]he text does not conclude the difficulties of the real world, but begins a process, a process of its own interpretation. This is the process by which the law is...

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11 Aug

[Marina Veličković is a Lecturer at the University of Kent, UK. In her research she explores the role of international law in (re)producing structures of violence in post-conflict settings.] Everyone has a moment of sheer panic during their PhD journey (or a few moments if your anxiety levels are that of an average academic) when they come across the thesis/article/book that...

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10 Aug

[Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is a Senior Lecturer in Public International Law, University of Edinburgh] It seems that history is repeating itself. Yet again Jenin refugee camp is under attack by Israel’s occupying forces. As in 2002 when the International Criminal Court (ICC) began sitting, the justification for this recent resort to lethal force centres on alleged Palestinian militant activity and the Palestinian...

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09 Aug

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, in association with Somerville College, as well as Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.] Doing Justice to History is an amazing book and a fascinating read, particularly for those of us who, like me, enjoy studying the connections between international law and history. Barrie Sander has...

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08 Aug

[Dr. Cheah W.L. is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore.] In his excellent and compelling monograph, Barrie Sander argues that the historical narratives captured in international criminal judgments amount to “forms of legitimation” by “recognizing and foregrounding particular aspects and perspectives of mass atrocity situations” while “marginalising and excluding others from view”. His book provides a detailed account of how international criminal...

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07 Aug

[Kirsten J. Fisher is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.] Barrie Sander’s Doing Justice to History: Confronting the Past in International Criminal Courts is a significant piece of work on the way history is constructed through contestation in courtrooms and the judgements rendered from those proceedings. While there is much to say about this work, I will focus my thoughts on...

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11 May

[Dr Christine Schwöbel-Patel is Reader at Warwick Law School and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical Legal Studies; she is currently based at the Humboldt University in Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow.] Dear Asad, Filip, and Mark, I’ll begin this letter, as so many letters begin, by apologising for its tardiness. Since you Mark and Asad sent your responses, many months...

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10 May

[Filip Strandberg Hassellind is a doctoral candidate in International Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.] In Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law, Christine Schwöbel-Patel argues that “a global elite benefit from marketized global justice whilst those who tend to be the ‘faces’ of global injustice – particularly victims of conflict – are instrumentalized and ultimately commodified” [p. i]. The book directs...

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