LCIL International Law Centre Podcast

Offshore exploitation of oil and gas started in the 1930s and thousands of installations are distributed around the world. Offshore installations threaten the environment, not only when it comes to oil spills, which are most visible but admittedly rare, but also in relation to their contribution to marine debris, pollution by dumping and greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the construction, operation and decommissioning of offshore installations, in the energy sector and beyond, is one of the maritime economic activities that has not yet been comprehensively regulated at the global level. The relevant international legal framework consists of a plethora of instruments adopted at the global, regional and supranational level, which have developed in different institutional settings and following different formats. The result is that, first, there is no specialised framework convention and consequently, the legal framework is fragmented at the sectoral, institutional, geographical and issue-related level. Second, the legal framework is weak because of the non-binding nature of many of the instruments that are the outcome of unconventional lawmaking1 processes. Third, the lawmaking processes in this field seem to be industry-led because of the important role the industry plays in unconventional lawmaking, both within and outside conventional fora.

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: At the heart of this lecture is the question of how music could serve as an effective instrumental tool for rethinking the theoretical and processual dimensions of international law in Africa. This lecture argues that socially conscious songs provide a beneficial lens/gateway to the popular understanding of the problematics of international law. As Daniel Newman rightly noted, “the use of popular music offers a writer a valuable device to render what could be quite dry and, otherwise dull, argument suddenly more interesting and thus engaging to the reader”. Such knowledge further engenders the possibility of repurposing the applicative dimensions of international law on the continent.Babatunde Fagbayibo is a Professor in Law at the University of South Africa. He graduated with a doctoral degree in Public Law, with specialisation in regional integration law, from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His research interests include supranational regionalism, transnational policy analysis, critical approaches to international law, and governance and democratisation in Africa. His writings have been published in several academic journals, as chapters in books, and on other online platforms. In 2014, he was recognised by the Young People in International Affairs (YPIA) as one of the top 35 Africans under the age of 35 for his research in the field of supranational regionalism in Africa. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Southern African Public Law Journal (SAPL) and is on the editorial boards of the African Journal of Democracy and Governance (RADG) and the Nigerian Yearbook of International Law (NYIL).

The distinctive vocabulary and broad principles of the modern laws of war developed within a broader project that from early modernity spelled out the nature and powers of state sovereignty. This lecture focuses on the Enlightenment theorists of “regular war.” It shows how their project of limiting war through law was anchored in a capacious conception of sovereign power, in which reason of state appeared as a restraining force through the vehicle of the law of nations.This Enlightenment project of regular war is contrasted with late-19th century humanitarianism, which had serious misgivings about reason of state and sovereignty itself. Restraint through humanitarian action was possible only with state support, but it resulted from neutral rescue action and moral condemnation.The lecture shows how these two conflicting conceptions of restraint came together in the first codified instruments of the laws of war, and how they are still present in the law of armed conflict. It concludes by discussing some implications of this genealogical analysis for contemporary debates on the convergence of international humanitarian, human rights, and criminal law.Pablo Kalmanovitz is research professor and head of the International Studies Division at CIDE, in Mexico City, and general editor of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law. He has held permanent or visiting positions at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, the European University Institute, Yale University, McGill University, and the University of Ulster. His research focuses on historical and theoretical aspects of the international regulation of armed force, on which he has published numerous articles and book chapters. His book The Laws of War in International Thought was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

A series of conversations on international legal scholarship, political engagement and the transformative potential of academia. Each conversation is chaired by Francisco José Quintana and Marina Veličković and centres around a theme, concept or a method and their relationship to political movements, struggles and margins from which they have emerged and within (and for) which they have emancipatory potential.This conversation will explore the significance, possibilities, and limits of researching international law from a “history and theory” approach. The distinctiveness of international legal analysis to understand crucial developments from decolonization to neoliberalism, and the political nature and economic foundations of legal form and legal formalism will serve as our starting points. The event will last one hour. Marina and Francisco will lead the conversation for ~40 minutes after which they will pass the pleasure and responsibility on to the audience.Umut Özsu is Associate Professor at the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. He is a scholar of public international law, the history and theory of international law, and Marxist critiques of law, rights, and the state. He is the author of Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers (Oxford University Press, 2015), and is currently finalizing Completing Humanity: The International Law of Decolonization, 1960–82 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is also co-editor of the Research Handbook on Law and Marxism (Edward Elgar, forthcoming) and The Extraterritoriality of Law: History, Theory, Politics (Routledge, 2019), as well as several journal symposia.

Lecture summary: This talk uses the novel coronavirus pandemic as an entry point to explore the intersections between race and global health. The pandemic is simultaneously reviving stereotypical colonial imaginations about disease directionality, but also challenging racialized hierarchies of diseases. This lecture illuminates how the racialization of diseases is reflected in historic and ongoing United States’ public health law policy as well as the global health law regime. By demonstrating the close relationship between often separately treated areas this lecture clarifies underlying currents in global health and public health law and policy that stem from fears of the racialized other. Rendering these intersections visible creates avenues for rethinking and reshaping both theory and praxis toward anti-subordination efforts. Matiangai Sirleaf is the Nathan Patz Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law. Professor Sirleaf writes and teaches in the areas of global public health law, public international law, international human rights law, international criminal law, post-conflict and transitional justice and criminal law. She recently joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Law as a professor of law. Professor Sirleaf previously served as an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, as an assistant professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and as a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture will be given by Professor Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics. 6 pm Tuesday 2 March (Part 1): 'Dignity as a Worldly Concept' 6 pm Wednesday 3 March (Part 2): 'The Idea of Human Dignity' 6 pm Thursday 4 March (Part 3): 'Dignity and Indignity in the South African Toilet Wars' Lecture summary: These lectures explore dignity as a worldly phenomenon that is not just an idea, but also a social practice and lived experience. We say that dignity is a right, or a foundational concept for human rights, yet we know that, in reality, it is a privilege enjoyed by some of us more than others and all of us at some times of our lives more than at others. How are we to understand asymmetries in the distribution of dignity? What can we learn by approaching dignity from the perspective of the presumptively undignified? When dignity is not simply denied but refused, can we then make out a different, defiant dignity with a different relationship to indignity? Professor Susan Marks joined the LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights.

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture will be given by Professor Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics. Lecture summary: These lectures explore dignity as a worldly phenomenon that is not just an idea, but also a social practice and lived experience. We say that dignity is a right, or a foundational concept for human rights, yet we know that, in reality, it is a privilege enjoyed by some of us more than others and all of us at some times of our lives more than at others. How are we to understand asymmetries in the distribution of dignity? What can we learn by approaching dignity from the perspective of the presumptively undignified? When dignity is not simply denied but refused, can we then make out a different, defiant dignity with a different relationship to indignity? Professor Susan Marks joined the LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights.

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture will be given by Professor Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics. Lecture summary: These lectures explore dignity as a worldly phenomenon that is not just an idea, but also a social practice and lived experience. We say that dignity is a right, or a foundational concept for human rights, yet we know that, in reality, it is a privilege enjoyed by some of us more than others and all of us at some times of our lives more than at others. How are we to understand asymmetries in the distribution of dignity? What can we learn by approaching dignity from the perspective of the presumptively undignified? When dignity is not simply denied but refused, can we then make out a different, defiant dignity with a different relationship to indignity? Professor Susan Marks joined the LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights.

Lecture summary: Like many other areas of work, international humanitarian practice and thinking are being transformed by digital technology and associated socio-technical practices. Institutional developments within the United Nations (UN) are telling. Just over ten years ago, the UN Secretary General announced the launch of the UN Global Pulse project, dedicating to enabling, showcasing and promoting the “scaled adoption of big data innovation for sustainable development and humanitarian action”. This project has since been advanced through Pulse Labs in Jakarta, Kampala and New York and one soon to be set up in Samoa. Other, cognate initiatives have been launched throughout the UN system. Prominent, international public-private collaborations aim to harness digital technology for humanitarian ends: initiatives such as the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. And more or less every major technology company across the world is investing in the humanitarian field: Facebook’s Data for Good initiative; Google.org’s Crisis Response work; and Alibaba’s collaboration with the World Food Program to develop Hunger Map LIVE are indicative examples. International humanitarianism is taking on new imperatives, protagonists, investments, techniques and objects of inquiry in connection with the expanding reach of the digital. Given the centrality of humanitarianism to the way that the international plane has been imagined, regulated, materialized and militarized throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, these shifts are worthy of close attention.This talk will present one chapter of a book project investigating this domain of ‘digital humanitarianism’ – a chapter concerned with maps and mapping. It focuses on recent shifts from two-dimensional mapping for humanitarian ends towards multi-dimensional, real-time mapping for the same purposes, associated with geographic information systems (GIS) and the generation and deployment of map cubes (multi-dimensional arrays of data values presenting cartographic visualization of each dimension). It offers a brief recollection of humanitarian mapping through “snapshots” from the practice in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries (Valentine Seaman’s yellow fever maps; Charles Booth’s poverty maps; Bangladesh flood mapping; and the FAO’s Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems). Against this background, we will consider the rise of crowd-sourcing as a digitally facilitated way of making cartographic knowledge for humanitarian governance purposes, as illustrated by the Missing Maps Project (a joint project of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team – a U.S.-registered non-profit – and three other not-for-profit organizations: American Red Cross; British Red Cross; and Médecins Sans Frontières). We will explore how this affects how particular spaces are assembled, delimited, surveyed and readied for humanitarian intervention and with what implications for international legal relations and the jurisdiction of different actors on this terrain.Fleur Johns is Professor in the Faculty of Law, working in the areas of public international law, legal theory, law and development, law and society (or socio-legal studies), and law and technology. Fleur studies emergent patterns of governance on the global plane, and their social, political and economic implications, employing an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the social sciences and humanities and combines the study of public and private law. In 2021, Fleur will commence a four-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship working on a project entitled 'Diplomatic Knowledge, Disasters and the Future of International Legal Order'. In 2021-2022, Fleur will be a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Fleur is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Lecture summary: Recent scientific information presents an alarming diagnosis of the multiple adverse consequences of climate change on the ocean: levels of ocean acidification not seen in millions of years, changes in ocean chemistry, warming temperatures and deoxygenation threating marine life, in particular coral reefs; and rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets challenging the survival of some island States and threatening existing maritime boundaries and entitlements. There are two different applicable international regimes, one for the ocean and the other for climate change. Yet neither has a clear mandate for the ocean-climate nexus. The 1982 United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea, often referred to as the Constitution for the oceans, negotiated before climate change emerged on the international agenda, makes no reference to climate change. The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with a clear mandate for atmospheric climate change, limits the role of the ocean to serving as sink or reservoir for greenhouse gases. The 2015 Paris Agreement added little more other than a preambular reference to ocean ecosystems.The lecture will examine whether and how these two principal legal regimes can meet the test for international law in providing a dialectic and evolutive response to the pressing challenges of the climate-ocean nexus.Nilüfer Oral is Director of the Centre of International Law (CIL) at the National University of Singapore and a member of the law faculty at Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. She is member of the UN International Law Commission and co-chair of the study group on sea-level rise in relation to international law. She served as climate change negotiator for the Turkish Ministry (2009 – 2016). She has also appeared before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Nilufer Oral is a Distinguished Fellow of the Law of the Sea Institute at Berkeley Law (University of California Law Berkeley); Senior Fellow of the National University of Singapore Law School; and Honorary Research Fellow at University of Dundee. Dr. Oral was elected to the Council of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (2012-2016) and served as Chair of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law (2014-2017). She is currently a member of the Steering Committee of the World Commission on Environmental Law.Dr Oral is the series editor for the International Straits of the World publications (Brill); member of the Board of Editors of the European Society of International Law Series; Board of Editors of the International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law; Associate Editor of the Research Perspectives in the Law of the Sea (Brill); and International Advisory Board, Chinese Journal of Environmental Law (Brill) She has published numerous articles edited several books, and has spoken at many international conferences.