Lauterpacht Centre for International Law

In-person event only. Decisions of the UN Security Council are among the most frequently cited ‘non-traditional’ sources of international law — a term that may be taken to refer to sources not expressly mentioned in Article 38(1) of the ICJ Statute. The Council is said to be engaged in ‘law making’ for all States, and its enforcement action has normative effects that go beyond the specific issue it is dealing with. These normative rules are formulated in a body with limited participation and a particular status for its permanent members. The obligations contained therein are said to be an example of rules of international law that do not fit squarely within the ‘traditional’ sources listed in Article 38(1), but fall somewhere ‘in between’. Furthermore, Security Council decisions are ‘obligations under the Charter’, which under Article 103 prevail over other international obligations of UN Member States, and are thus higher in the hierarchy of sources of law. Thus, it is important for States and other subjects of international law to understand the nature of the Security Council and its decisions. How do we interpret the resolutions of the Security Council? How do we know when the Council has imposed binding obligations and on whom? Beyond clearly binding obligations, what is the legal significance of Security Council action or inaction, or views expressed by Security Council members? Eran Sthoeger is a Litigator and Consultant in public international law, an Adjunct Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School and Lecturer at Columbia University School of Professional Studies. Eran Sthoeger is a New York based litigator, consultant and advisor on matters of public international law. He has vast experience in litigating and advising on complex legal matters such as land and maritime boundaries, the law of the sea, treaty law, investment law, the law of international organizations, human rights law and the use of force and humanitarian law issues. Eran has appeared before international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Eran is also an expert on the workings of the United Nations, particularly the United Nations Security Council, after having worked for a decade at Security Council Report. He is co-author of the book “The UN Security Council and International Law” (CUP, 2022), together with Sir Michael Wood. Chair: Dr Fernando Lusa Bordin , Centre Fellow

This is an in-person event. Speaker: Audley Sheppard KC, Twenty Essex Cambridge University Arbitration Society (CUArb) was established in 2019 as a Registered Society at the University of Cambridge. It aims at promoting the study of international arbitration among students, academics, alumni, and law practitioners in the field. This lecture is part of the CUArb/LCIL Lecture series.

This is an in-person event. Speaker: Sachin Trikha , Partner, Clifford Chance Cambridge University Arbitration Society (CUArb) was established in 2019 as a Registered Society at the University of Cambridge. It aims at promoting the study of international arbitration among students, academics, alumni, and law practitioners in the field. This lecture is part of the CUArb/LCIL Lecture series.

Time: 5.30 pm - 6.30 pm (followed by a drinks reception in the Old Library) In-person event only You never forget your first… international law textbook. Most of us have an emotional, even if not loving, relationship to those tomes that initiated us into the discipline (Koskenniemi M, ‘Book Review Brownlie’s Principles of Public International Law’ (2014) 83 BYIL 137, 137). Yet textbooks receive limited attention as scholarship. Cast as training tools that do not encapsulate original insights by virtue of their genre, we tend to miss how their comprehensiveness paints a broad and nuanced picture of international law and its place in world making. I propose in this lecture that we analyse textbooks as artefacts that help us better understand our discipline and profession. In particular, I will be discussing the insights gained by empirical analysis of the ten main international law textbooks in Brazil undertaken by myself and Fabio Morosini over the last four years (Pereira LLS and Morosini FC, ‘Textbooks as Markers and Makers of International Law: A Brazilian Case Study’ (2024) 35 European Journal of International Law 1). We examined the themes these volumes explore, the materials they cite, and the biographies of their authors. The results we obtained provide not only a unique window into the content of Brazilian textbooks themselves but also a complex, historically and socially situated picture of international law as a field in Brazil. I will then talk about our ongoing project to expand our analysis of textbooks beyond Brazil. In the last year, we have invited others to join our enterprise to study textbooks from other regions (Africa, Asia, the Arab World, and certain specific jurisdictions), and other sub-disciplines of international law (Human Rights, International Economic Law, International Environmental Law, to name a few). We also interviewed textbook authors from diverse nationalities, backgrounds, and methodological persuasions, and invited scholars to bend the academic genre and write short essays engaging with the textbook theme in a creative way. What we hope to achieve in this project is to revisit textbooks and their function beyond training materials, unveiling their analytical, political and social possibilities. This research project is funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). Dr Luíza Leão Soares Pereira is a Brazilian international lawyer, trained at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil) and the University of Cambridge. She was a Lecturer at the University of Sheffield (2020-2022), and is now a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). She is considers herself a generalist, but her work uses varied methodologies (empirical, historical, sociological, feminist, critical) to better understand the international legal discipline and profession, broadly construed. Her work has been published in the European Journal of International Law, the Leiden Journal of International Law, and edited volumes published by Oxford University Press (1, 2) and Manchester University Press.