LCIL International Law Centre Podcast

Lecture summary: The talk will draw upon my recent report submitted to the UNHRC earlier this year. See: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/CFI_20years_SR_adequate_housing.aspx Balakrishnan Rajagopal is currently a Professor of Law and Development at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). A lawyer by training, he is an expert on many areas of human rights including economic, social and cultural rights, the UN system, and the human rights challenges posed by development activities. He is the founder of the Displacement Research and Action Network at MIT which leads research and engagement with communities, NGOs, and local and national authorities. He has conducted over 20 years of research on social movements and human rights advocacy around the world focusing in particular, on land and property rights, evictions and displacement. He has a law degree from University of Madras, India, a Masters degree in law from the American University as well as an interdisciplinary doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. Prof Rajagopal served as a human rights advisor to the World Commission on Dams and has advised numerous governments and UN agencies on human rights issues. He served for many years with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia during the 1990s when he was responsible for human rights monitoring, investigation, education and advocacy, as well as law drafting in a variety of areas. He has held visiting professorships and fellowships at many prestigious institutions around the world. He has delivered many distinguished lectures on invitation such as the Lecture on “International Courts and Second and Third Generation Human Rights” at the Brandeis Institute for International Judges, Brandeis University, the Keynote on ‘Rethinking the Right to Development: Challenges and Opportunities’ at the 3nd Inter-American Conference on Human Rights, Bogota, Colombia, the Keynote on ‘Right to housing: Comparative perspectives’, Human Rights Law Resource Center, Melbourne, Australia, Special Lectures at the UN University for Peace, Costa Rica, the Rechtskulturen Lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study, Germany, the Valerie Gordon Human Rights Lecture, Northeastern University School of Law, the Annual Hansen/Hostler Distinguished Lecture on Global Justice, San Diego State University, the Annual New Frontiers Lecture at the Nigerian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies and Keynotes at various conferences including the joint annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Societies of International Law. Prof Rajagopal has published numerous scholarly articles, and book chapters and is the author/editor of four books. He has also led or contributed to field and research reports on evictions, displacement and housing and related human rights and development policy issues. He has also published widely in the media on human rights and international law and issues concerning the South including in such publications as the Boston Globe, the Hindu, the Wire, Washington Post, the Indian Express, El Universal, and the Nation, and the huffingtonpost.com.

Lecture summary: From 1995, when he arrived in Cambridge, to 2014, when he left, Roger O'Keefe witnessed first hand the evolution and expansion of the small, somewhat homespun Research Centre for International Law into the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, one of the world's leading centres for the research, teaching, and discussion of public international law. He was also privileged to work alongside two of the figures whose names will forever be associated with the Centre, its founder Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht and its long-time director Professor James Crawford. The passing of both, in 2017 and 2021 respectively, marks the end of an era in the Centre's history, an era on which Professor O'Keefe will share his personal recollections and reflections.Roger O’Keefe is Professor of International Law at Bocconi University, Milan and Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, where from 2014 to 2018 he was Professor of Public International Law. From 2000 to 2014 he lectured in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge, was a Fellow of Magdalene College, and was a Fellow and, from 2003, Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. He is joint General Editor of the Oxford University Press series Oxford Monographs in International Law.

This lecture is part of the Cambridge Arbitration Society (CUArb)/Lauterpacht Centre for International Law lecture series.

Lecture summary: This lecture puts forward the conceptual argument that the transformative goals of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against (CEDAW), which require states to eradicate root causes of injustice, can be made more effective not only through legislation and policy, as commonly argued, but through the judiciary. It highlights the need to develop the content and scope of transformative judicial obligations under CEDAW based on a comparative study of judicial decisions dealing with the abuse of female migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in three key MDW destinations that are CEDAW parties—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. By engaging with scholarship on CEDAW’s positive obligations, transformative equality, and theories of adjudication, it argues that criminal law courts should not only ensure the accountability and punishment of perpetrators but also ascertain and critique the laws, policies, and practices enabling MDW abuse in judicial decisions. While there is much scholarship on the nature of MDW abuse and regulation of domestic work, there has yet to be a CEDAW-focused comparative analysis of case law dealing with such abuse. This research thus addresses a gap in academic debates on MDW rights and the types of positive obligations owed by courts under CEDAW. Dr. Cheah W.L. is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore (NUS) since 2007. She holds academic qualifications from the National University of Singapore (LL.B., LL.M.), Harvard Law School (LL.M.), and Oxford University (D.Phil). She conducts research in the core disciplines of international criminal law, transitional justice, and human rights law with a focus on the intersections of law, culture, and power. Within these areas, her research explores the diverse and complex roles performed by domestic and international criminal courts beyond their paradigm aim of adjudicating on the guilt or otherwise of those charged with criminal offences. Her work has been accepted for publication in journals such as the Leiden Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Michigan Journal of International Law, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Human Rights Quarterly, and Harvard Human Rights Journal.My publications and work may be found at: https://cheahwuiling.com/ and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1102439

Lecture summary: International law is in constant movement, and any proper account of the international legal order needs to place this movement at the centre. “The course of international law needs to be understood if international law is to be understood,” says James Crawford in the opening of his general course at the Hague Academy in 2013. Yet rarely do we find focused and systematic attention to this ‘course of international law,’ to the ways in which international legal rules change, get reaffirmed or disappear. In this paper, we take a step towards a broader account of these dynamics, and we interrogate in particular the varying roles states play in them – largely from an empirical, not a doctrinal starting point. We pay particular attention to contexts in which states take secondary roles in change processes – roles of bystanders, catalysts, or spoilers – and we outline two core factors which, we believe, can help us understand much of the variation we observe. With this, we hope to dispel some of the shadows cast by doctrinal representations and make progress on the way to on the way to developing a richer, more empirically-oriented and more ‘social’ account of the paths of international law. The paper results from a research project on “The Paths of International Law”, funded by the European Research Council, and it is co-authored with Ezgi Yildiz, postdoctoral researcher at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. Dr Nico Krisch is a professor of international law at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies. His main research interests concern the legal structure of international organizations and global governance, the politics of international law, and the postnational legal order emerging at the intersection of domestic, transnational and international law. Prior to joining the The wInstitute, he was an ICREA research professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals and held faculty positions at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and the Law Department of the London School of Economics. He was also a research fellow at Oxford University’s Merton College, at New York University School of Law and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, as well as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Heidelberg. His 2010 book, Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law (OUP), received the Certificate of Merit of the American Society of International Law. Dr Krisch is a member of the Council of the International Society of Public Law, and of the editorial/advisory boards of the European Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Dispute Settlement, and the London Review of International Law. In 2017, he was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant for a project on change and stability in international law; in 2019, he received the inaugural Max Planck-Cambride Prize for International Law.

Lecture summary: In a series of recent decisions related to same-sex relationships, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has stated that the American Convention on Human Rights does not advance a singular notion or closed conception of family. A 2017 Advisory Opinion from the Inter-American Court also concluded that the American Convention demands that same sex couples have equal access to de jure marriage. This lecture considers what is to be gained from more broadly contending with the question, ‘what is a family’ in the Americas’ regional human rights system. Even though the inter-American system now clearly rejects ‘a limited, stereotyped perception of the concept of the family’, it has only infrequently considered the question, ‘what is a family?’, across the diversity of the Americas. That question matters not only to determining the scope of various rights to family life in inter-American instruments.Rethinking the family as a ‘basic element of society’ (American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man), grounded in time, space, human mobility and our political-economic systems, could help us see more fully ‘who’ constitutes the Americas, which is an essential for a human rights system aspiring to be universally applicable across the Americas.Tracy Robinson is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law, The University of the West Indies, Mona, and serves as Deputy Dean, Graduate Studies and Research. She researches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, family law, human rights law and gender, sexuality and the law. She is a co-founder and co-coordinator (with Arif Bulkan) of the Faculty of Law UWI Rights Advocacy Project (U-RAP) that led successful strategic litigation in Belize and Guyana on the criminalization of LGBTQ persons. She served on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as a Commissioner, President of the body (2014-2015), Rapporteur on the Rights of Women and inaugural Rapporteur on the Rights of LGBTI people. In 2020, she was appointed as one of three experts on the Independent Fact Finding Mission on Libya, a mandate established by the UN Human Rights Council.

Thursday, 28 October 2021 - 5.45pmThis lecture is part of the Cambridge Arbitration Society (CUArb)/Lauterpacht Centre for International Law lecture series.Speakers: Iain Mckenny, Profile Investment & Louis Young, Augusta Ventures Chair: Ibrahim Alturki

Lecture summary: International law still struggles with an understanding of an “international community” that has legally cognizable interests distinguishable from those of individual sovereign States. This international community is imagined variously as the collectivity of sovereign states, an abstract concept of all human beings, an international body or a nongovernmental organization tasked with representing humanity—or even the planet. The further these concepts move from traditional State sovereignty, the more fanciful they may seem, yet the participation of corporations in treaty-making, international litigation, and other fora of international law tells a different story: international law is not a “States only” activity. In this lecture, roles that the international community might assume in a treaty regime for conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity (BBNJ) are examined, which allows us to move from academic speculation to concrete scenario analysis. The starting premise is that BBNJ obligations will be owed to the international community as a whole, “erga omnes” obligations. They will not be bilateral, nor will they solely address narrow national interests. Professor Cymie R. Payne is a member of the Rutgers University faculty, where she teaches international and environmental law. She has appeared as counsel before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in its deep seabed mining and fisheries advisory opinion cases and as expert on environmental reparations in the International Court of Justice case Certain Activities (Costa Rica v. Nicaragua). Currently, she is legal advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) delegation to the intergovernmental conference for a legally binding agreement on conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ) and Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law - Ocean, Coasts and Coral Reefs Specialist Group. She participated, as counsel for the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), in reparations for environmental damage due to armed conflict and in the creation of a related environmental award oversight program to ensure that awards were used to restore the environmental harm. She is the editor, with Peter H. Sand, of Gulf War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission: Environmental Liability (Oxford University Press 2011). She has also been a member of the Berkeley Law faculty and served as attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the law firm of Goodwin, Procter. She holds a MA from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a Fellow of the American College of Environmental Lawyers. She was a member of the International Law Association Committee on Sustainable Natural Resource Management For Development.

Lecture summary: Globalization has lifted millions out of poverty. Globalization is a weapon the rich use to exploit the poor. Globalization builds bridges across national boundaries. Globalization fuels the populism and great-power competition that is tearing the world apart. When it comes to the politics of free trade and open borders, the camps are dug in, producing a kaleidoscope of claims and counterclaims, unlikely alliances, and unexpected foes. But what exactly are we fighting about? And how might we approach these issues more productively?In this talk, Anthea introduces her book, co-authored with Nicolas Lamp, Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why it Matters, exploring the interests, logics, and ideologies driving these intractable debates. Examining six competing narratives about the virtues and vices of globalization, Anthea and Nicolas provide a framework for understanding current debates about economic globalization and showcase a more integrative way of thinking about complex problems. Their approach not only helps enable us to understand where we have come apart but also how we might come back together.Flyer: Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why it MattersSix Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It MattersAnthea Roberts is a Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) who specializes in public international law, international trade and investment law, and the effect of geopolitical change on global governance. From 2008-2015, she taught at the London School of Economics, Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School. Anthea has chaired the ANU Working Group on Geoeconomics since 2018 and was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School teaching Geoeconomics in 2020. She is currently teaching courses on complexity, risk and resilience. In 2019, the League of Scholars named Anthea the world’s leading international law scholar and Australia’s leading law scholar based on the quality of her publications and the quantity of citations they had received in the previous five years. Her last book, Is International Law International? (2017), won numerous prizes, including the American Society of International Law’s Book Prize, and was Oxford University Press’s top-selling law monograph worldwide in 2017-2018. Anthea is currently working on a variety of projects about governing in complex, contested and evolving fields.

Lecture summary: 20 years after the events of 9/11 and as we assess the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban fundamental questions about the scope, success and future of counter-terrorism need to be asked and answered. What have the last 20 years of a global architecture of counter-terrorism delivered, what have been the costs, and how can those costs help us better understand the recent events in Afghanistan. This lecture will trace the evolution of counter-terrorism over the past 20 years, with a particular focus on the rule of law and human rights costs of global counter-terrorism practice and reflect on what may happen next.