In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Symposia

22 Jun

[Radu Mares is an Associate Professor, Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University (radu.mares@rwi.lu.se)] The last two decades marked a dramatic expansion of civil liability cases against parent companies. In this period, transnational litigation offered a way to get around the legislative inaction or slowness. Indeed, civil liability principles already exist in all home states. They apply to both natural...

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21 Jun

[Ekaterina Aristova is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights. Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Advisor at the International Commission of Jurists.] Past decades saw an emerging trend towards reliance on civil liability claims to address business-related human rights abuses. A movement that had initial impetus from the United States of America has now expanded to other continents, especially to Europe. The...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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....

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11 Jun

[Patricia Viseur Sellers is the Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College of the University of Oxford and Special Advisor for Gender for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum is the Associate Professor of Clinical Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she directs the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic and the Cardozo Law Institute...

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