LCIL International Law Centre Podcast

A series of three lectures by Benedict Kingsbury, New York University. Vice Dean and Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law Director, Institute for International Law and Justice Faculty Director, Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies. Benedict Kingsbury’s broad, theoretically grounded approach to international law closely integrates work in legal theory, political theory, and history. His current research focuses on infrastructure; global data law; and vaccines issues.

A series of three lectures by Benedict Kingsbury, New York University. Vice Dean and Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law Director, Institute for International Law and Justice Faculty Director, Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies. Benedict Kingsbury’s broad, theoretically grounded approach to international law closely integrates work in legal theory, political theory, and history. His current research focuses on infrastructure; global data law; and vaccines issues.

Lecture summary: ‘Is there an international law of remedies?’ asked Cambridge’s very own Christine Gray in 1985. The United Kingdom was sceptical in the 1993 UN General Assembly’s Sixth Committee, with a particular reference to compensation: ‘The international law of remedies was piecemeal and undeveloped … . Many of the authorities culled by the [International Law Commission’s] Special Rapporteur [on State responsibility Arangio-Ruiz] were somewhat old, and there was a legitimate question of how far the guidance they provided remained valid for the current times.’ Yet within eight years the International Law Commission (ILC) adopted the 2001 Articles on responsibility for internationally wrongful acts, following Special Rapporteur James Crawford’s proposal on a provision on compensation in Article 36, without much scholarly controversy or indeed (mostly) even interest. Since then, compensation under international law has been increasingly addressed by international courts and tribunals, and may well play an important role in disputes about war reparations, environmental damage, and historical wrongs. In this lecture, Martins Paparinskis will explain the peculiarities of the international legal order of the 1990s that shaped the Commission’s assumptions regarding compensation, consider the fit of Article 36 within the international legal process of the following two decades, and sketch the direction for possible future developments. Martins Paparinskis is Professor of Public International Law at University College London and a member designate of the International Law Commission. He is a generalist international lawyer with a particular interest in State responsibility and dispute settlement as well as the specialist fields of investment law, human rights law, and transboundary water law, and has published on these topics in leading peer reviewed journals. https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/press/events/2022/10/compensation-under-international-law-and-international-law-commission-martins-paparinskis-ucl

Lecture summary: How does international law change? Must international law await change by external political intervention from outside the legal system? Or does international law provide reasons for its own development to those empowered to develop it? To address these questions, we should draw on an unlikely source. Joseph Raz was one of the greatest legal philosophers of all time. But he wrote relatively little about international law until the last decade of his life. Nevertheless, we should draw on Raz’s ideas to illuminate three pathways of international legal change: in the law of treaties, in customary international law, and in international adjudication. Adil Ahmad Haque is a Professor of Law and Judge Jon O Newman Scholar at Rutgers Law School. Professor Haque writes on the law and ethics of armed conflict, and the philosophy of international law. His first book, Law and Morality at War, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Chair: Dr Federica Paddeu

Lecture summary: What explains the persistence of the idea of international law’s systematicity in view of its decentralised nature, constantly dependent upon the shifting consent of states and the vagaries of political will? To what extent can its systemic character endure and adapt as the tectonic plates of geo-politics shift? In this lecture, Campbell McLachlan critically re-examines the evidence for the impulse to integrate the disparate elements of international law into a coherent system: the impulse that underpins the principle of systemic integration. He does so in light of the practice of states and international tribunals, which has deepened over the last fifteen years since his research on the principle for the ILC Fragmentation Study Group in 2005. He tests the fruits of this internal analytical perspective against both an increasing scholarly critique and the external disintegrative pressures that the system currently faces––pressures that appear to challenge the very value of global cooperation under law that underpins the idea of systematicity. Campbell McLachlan KC is Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington and 2022–23 Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor of Legal Science in the University of Cambridge. He is author of Foreign Relations Law (CUP 2014) and International Investment Arbitration: Substantive Principles (2nd edn, OUP 2017). His book The Principle of Systemic Integration in International Law will be published by OUP in 2023. Elected to the Institut de Droit International in 2015, he served as Rapporteur of its 18th Commission on ‘The equality of the parties before international investment tribunals’, whose resolution was adopted in 2019. He has been invited to give the General Course at The Hague Academy of International Law in 2024. He is an associate member of Essex Court Chambers and Bankside Chambers and currently serves as president of a number of international arbitral tribunals.

The Eli Lauterpacht Lecture was established after Sir Eli's death in 2017 to celebrate his life and work. This lecture takes place on the first Friday lecture of the Centre at the start of the Michaelmas Term in any academic year. The Eli Lauterpacht Lecture for 2022 will be delivered by Professor Noah Feldman.Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chairman of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and religion, and the history of legal ideas.A policy & public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Feldman also writes for The New York Review of Books and was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine for nearly a decade. He hosts the Deep Background podcast, an interview show that explores the historical, scientific, legal and cultural context behind the biggest stories in the news.Through his consultancy, Ethical Compass, Feldman advises clients like Facebook & eBay on how to improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. In this capacity, he conceived and architected the Facebook Oversight Board, and continues to advise the company on ethics and governance issues.Further information: https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/noah-r-feldman/

Judge Christopher Greenwood KC lectures on' The Future of International Law' at the celebratory event of the Dr Ivan and Francesca Berkowitz Seminar Room Opening on Thursday 6 October 2022.For more about the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, see: https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/

This lecture is is part of the Art, Architecture and International Law seminar series which is being launched this academic year. The series is designed to bridge the worlds of art, architecture and international law. It explores the different ways in which art and architecture and international law intersect. It also demonstrates that international law exists well beyond the written word.Lecture summary: In this talk I am inviting you on a sightseeing tour in The Hague, the ‘International City of Peace and Justice’. But it is not a tour from A to B and back. It is a tour in the form of a collage, assembled from artworks, texts, and objects from or about institutions of international law. Through a cacophony of shifting perspectives and modalities, I try to (un)make sense of international institutional sites as a spaces of encounter and exclusion.Dr Sofia Stolk is a researcher in international law at the Asser Institute in The Hague and the University of Amsterdam. Her research project 'Imagining Justice' focuses on the use of visual means by international courts and tribunals and explores how different audiences engage with international law through its representation in visual media. She has published about the intersection of international law and art, architecture, theater, and film. Her monograph ‘The Opening Statement of the Prosecution in International Criminal Trials: A Solemn Tale of Horror’ was published by Routledge in 2021. Sofia coordinates the Camera Justitia programme on law and social justice at the annual Movies that Matter Festival is co-founder of the Legal Sightseeing platform (www.legalsightseeing.org) together with Dr. Renske Vos (VU Amsterdam).

Friday, 18 March 2022 - 2.00pmThis event, divided into two panels, showcases recent scholarship in international criminal law and international humanitarian law. Transcending disciplinary boundaries and theoretical traditions whilst harnessing extensive archival research and deeper empirical data, these scholars’ work reimagines two venerable legal fields anew through more robust historicizing and bolder critiques.

The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL) and the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS) held an online Rapid Response Seminar on the War in Ukraine on 7 March 2022. On the 24 February 2022 Russian troops launched a fully-fledged invasion of Ukraine after force had been used between the two countries in February 2014 with the annexing of Crimea by Russia. The UN General Assembly in its emergency session decided on 2 March 2022 that it: ‘[d]eplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2 (4) of the Charter; demands that the Russian Federation immediately cease its use of force against Ukraine and to refrain from any further unlawful threat or use of force against any Member State; also demands that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and [d]eplores the 21 February 2022 decision by the Russian Federation related to the status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine as a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the Charter.’ In this Webinar we aimed to analyse the international and EU law aspects of the war in Ukraine. Experts on international and EU law, discussed different aspects of the use of force by Russia, and the European Union’s reaction. It will brought different legal perspectives together and provided expert opinions on this new and troubling development in international law in Europe. Speakers: - Professor Marc Weller: Use of Force – UN Charter – Security Council, also Peace Treaty and International Humanitarian Law - Dr Dan Saxon: International Criminal Law – Crime of Aggression – International Criminal Court jurisdiction - Francisco-José Quintana: Human Rights in War - Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger: Protection of Livelihoods and the Environment during War in Ukraine - Dr Emilija Leinarte: European Union Relations with Ukraine – EU-Ukraine Association Agreement - Dr Markus Gehring: EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, external dimension of migration and prospect for Ukraine’s EU membership For more information see: https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/ and https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/