[Martin Baumgartner is a PhD candidate and a Teaching and Research Assistant at the University of Vienna] As an early career researcher, a considerable amount of my time in the last few years has been spent creating and going over references. While this is sometimes a strenuous task, what most puzzled me was the difficulty to find the correct references for...
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 Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage through Past, Present and Future: 18-19 January 2024, Bologna, Italy. The third edition of the International Symposium on Heritage in War and Peace will be held under the following theme: “Tangible and Intangible...
[Nick Leddy is Head of Litigation at Legal Action Worldwide, and a former Trial Lawyer for the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, where he worked, inter alia, on the situation in Myanmar/Bangladesh] Six years ago, in August 2017, the Myanmar military began a deadly operation in Rakhine State targeting the Rohingya group. This “Clearance Operation” caused incredible...
[Gerry Simpson is Chair in Public International Law at the LSE and is currently co-writing (with Matt Craven and Sundhya Pahuja) Rival World-Makers: The International Laws of the Cold War, and a short memoirish book entitled The Atomics: My Nuclear Family at the End of the Earth] I’ve been speaking to audiences recently about writing a book. How do you end? How bad should...
[Ruth Buchanan is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University] “Words in the right order make us feel differently about the world.” (p. 19) I will begin this review with a confession—that is it late. Very late. There are reasons for its lateness of course—some mundane (family caregiving obligations, etc), others perhaps more telling. As a long- time supervisor of graduate...
[Ankit Malhotra is reading his LLM at SOAS as the Felix Scholar and is the co-editor of the recently published book “Reimagining the International Legal Order.”] It is always a pleasure and honour to read the work of Professor Gerry Simpson. His new magnum opus, “The Sentimental Life of International Law” is no exception. That is because his vivid portrait explores...
[Simon Stern teaches law and English at the University of Toronto. He is a co-editor of The New Rambler Review and Critical Analysis of Law. With Robert Spoo, he is editor of the Law and Literature series published by OUP. His current research focuses on the history and theory of legal fictions, and the history of cross-examination.] No sooner has Gerry...
[Isobel Roele is a Reader in the Department of Law at Queen Mary University of London, and the author of Articulating Security: The United Nations and Its Infra-Law (CUP, 2022)] The Sentimental Life of International Law makes a radical proposal: that we think of ourselves as living our lives when we do international law. The book invites readers to imagine a world where the professional is...
Evropeyska Pravda is reporting that, although clearly not its first choice, Ukraine would be willing to accept an internationalized tribunal for the crime of aggression as long as it is based in another state's judicial system. Here are the relevant paragraphs, quoting the Deputy Head of the Office of the President: Ukraine decided on these concessions, Andriy Smirnov admitted for the...
[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...
[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...
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...