Lauterpacht Centre for International Law

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome. Lecture summary: Cultural rights have been invisible in the human rights discussions. They are the main absent from discussions on SDGs and the achievement of social justice. The lecture will explore the main reasons for this. It will argue that unfortunately culture and cultural heritage are still discussed in really restrictive ways, pushing aside their transformational natures. I will discuss the main issues where in my view cultural rights are needed but not fully used; they include gender equality, sustainable development, and the right to science. The main argument is that leaving no one behind, a well-known phrase of the United Nations, cannot really be materialise without the implementation of cultural rights. Alexandra Xanthaki was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights in October 2021. She is Professor of Laws at Brunel University London, United Kingdom. Alexandra has published on cultural rights of minorities and indigenous peoples, cultural diversity, cultural heritage, balancing cultural rights with other rights and interests, and multicultural aspects of international human rights law. She holds a law degree from Athens University, a masters degree in 'Human Rights and Emergency Law' from Queen's University, Belfast and a PhD from Keele University, on the 'Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations' that she did under the supervision of Patrick Thornberry. Alexandra is a member of the Summer Human Rights Faculty in Oxford University.

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome. Lecture summary: Lecture summary: At the most recent UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, the fight over a fossil fuel phase-out took centre stage, resulting in a decision calling on countries to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels. In this lecture, I will first examine why there have been growing calls for a fossil fuel phase-out, and why international law should play a role in governing the transition away from fossil fuels. Next, I will show what kind of arguments about phasing out fossil fuels can be made with reference to three different bodies of public international law, namely climate change law, human rights law, and investment law. Lastly, I will explore options for reform, including through the international climate change regime as well as through a proposed fossil fuel treaty. Harro van Asselt holds the Hatton Professorship in Climate Law at the University of Cambridge.

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome. Lecture summary: From European colonialism to the ‘post’colonial constellation, modern international law has developed in parallel with the changing legal forms of industrialised countries’ access to the natural resources of the global South. Following this development, we can see how imperial environmentalism was translated to the transnational law of natural resources. The historic perspective also highlights that the specific ambivalence of colonial and postcolonial environmental protection (exploitation vs. protection) is an ambivalence built into international law itself. In accordance with its colonial origins, international law has institutionalised a specific path to economic growth and development that presupposes and stabilises a world order supported by the industrialised countries of the North. At the same time, with the principle of equal sovereignty and self-determination, it recognises difference from the dominant economic and industrial culture as a political principle. Analysing international law’s approach to natural resources also directs our attention to changing ideas of nature and to the heart of international law's anthropocentrism, questioning its efficacy in tackling the ecological crisis. What we see here is an extractivist rationality that is intrinsically linked to the commodification of natural resources and green economy approaches in international environmental law. Last not least, a natural resource perspective highlights the fact that the legal concepts devised to determine how we share the world’s resources entail distributive processes among humans themselves. Sigrid Boysen is Professor of International Law at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg and a Judge at the Hamburg State Constitutional Court.

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome. Lecture summary: This lecture considers what Josef Kunz termed “swings of the pendulum” in international monetary and financial law and the formal and informal institutions in these related fields. International monetary law exploded in importance after the Second World War with the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a global system of managed exchange rates. With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and a decline in capital controls, the IMF evolved from a dominant institution into a peer of central banks and private markets, providing surveillance of the “non-system” of floating exchange rates and assisting in responses to financial crises. By contrast, international financial law, which was of limited importance during the Bretton Woods era, has become a major soft law force in the global financial sector since the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was created in 1974. The dichotomy between profit maximization and systemic risk at the core of global finance today is overseen and guided by the technocrats of the Basel Committee, the Financial Stability Board and other institutions of international financial law. Today, the pendulums of international monetary and financial law may be reversing again. Armed conflict, rising authoritarianism, growing fragmentation of the global financial system, and a revival of capital controls and other restrictions on capital flows could reinvigorate international monetary law and the IMF. This institution has reimagined itself multiple times already while staying true to its original mandate of safeguarding monetary stability. Michael Waibel is a professor of international law at the University of Vienna.

This lecture is a hybrid event and will not be recorded. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome. Lecture summary: Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) has aspirations to transform the tools and institutions of international law — which have served for centuries to construct, enact, and extend Western exploitation and domination — into tools and institutions for Global South empowerment, agency, and freedom. Characterizing itself as an intellectual and political movement, TWAIL promises to pave a path forward through a combination of scholarship and politics to achieve radical change. In this Article, I argue that TWAIL’s promise is unfulfilled — and that, if TWAIL’s current trajectory continues, its promise is likely to be unfulfillable. I first sketch TWAIL’s origin and key successes, including bringing awareness to the colonial roots and neo-imperial present of international law. Yet I contend that TWAIL’s diverse critical insights have not led to cohesive conceptual, doctrinal, or political positions, which would serve as tools to empower Global South-based actors. I argue that this is, at least partly, due to TWAIL’s ambivalence towards the Third World state, its absence of a theory of legitimate political violence in international law, its failure to identify a methodology of representing the ‘voices’ of the Global South, and to the growing influence of an academic ethos I call ‘critique-as-wellness.’ For those motivated by TWAIL’s ambitions, I suggest three possible directions to take: the construction of a grassroots-centered campaign in the service of Global South peoples; the formation of a movement focused on empowering Global South states; or a coalition originating from the Global North aimed at reshaping Western attitudes and actions towards the Global South. Naz K. Modirzadeh is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School.

This lecture is a hybrid event. There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome. Lecture summary: This research examines international law’s longstanding entanglement with communications infrastructure. There is increasing concern regarding the rise of private global power in the form of global digital platforms and their model of information capitalism. This paper responds by focusing on historical connections between international law and infrastructure as a means of examining their relationship in the global communications context. This reveals a longer trajectory to current interest in information capitalism’s effects on international life. Dr Daniel Joyce is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney.

Time: 09:30 hrs - 17:30 hrs Programme This is an in-person event only. Registration Participants Daniel Bahar, Managing Director, Rock Creek Global Advisors; former USTR official Lorand Bartels MBE, Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge; Chair, UK Trade and Agriculture Commission Eyal Benvenisti, Whewell...

Speaker: Kojo Koram (Birkbeck) From 2pm to 3.30 pm (followed by drinks and snacks) at the Finley/Berkovitz lecture room, Lauterpacth Centre for International Law, 5 Cranmer Road, Cambridge CB3 9BL. Pre-lecture reading material: 'The Legalization of Cannabis and the Question of Reparations' This event has been organised by Rishabh Bajoria and Raja Venkata Krishna Dandamudi, PhD Candidates at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge.

Speaker: Megan Donaldson (UCL) From 2pm to 3.30 pm (followed by drinks and snacks) at the Finley/Berkovitz lecture room, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, 5 Cranmer Road, Cambridge CB3 9BL. Please email Raja Dandamudi rvkd2@cam.ac.uk for a copy of the pre-lecture reading material. Organised by Raja Venkata Krishna Dandamudi, B.A., LL. B (Hons.) (Jindal Global Law School), LLM (Legal Theory), New York University School of Law PhD Candidate in Law, St. Catharine's College, University of Cambridge.

Time: 5.00 pm - 7.00 pm Drinks and canapés served after the event. At this evening seminar focusing on space law, practice area experts will discuss scenarios involving potential private commercial activity in space and explore recent technological and business developments in the sector, as well as examine how international and national governance frameworks may or may not sufficiently address such activities. The panel will also analyse other key areas of interest in space law, including environmental and liability issues regarding space debris, and matters involving tax, intangibles, investment protection, sharing of benefits and disputes. Speakers: Dr Gershon Hasin (Yale), Karl-Kane Collery (UK Space Agency), Stephen Plant (UK Space Agency), Erika Isabella Scuderi (WU Wien), Prof Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan (Cambridge, LCIL), Dr Brendan Plant (Cambridge, LCIL), James Anderson (Skadden), Kate Davies KC (Skadden), & Alex Rigby (Skadden)