Online webinar

Please join us for our next event in the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series. Speaker: Michaël Lessard (Visiting Researcher, Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and SJD candidate at the University of Toronto) All events take place on Zoom from 5-6.30pm (UK time). They are free and open to all. For more...

Please join us for our next event in the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series. Speaker: Thomas White (Conrad N Hilton Chair in Business Ethics Emeritus, Loyola Marymount University) All events take place on Zoom from 5-6.30pm (UK time). They are free and open to all. For more information about the Talking Animals...

The fourth 2022-3 session of the monthly seminar run by the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy will take place at 3:00pm on Monday, January 16th, through Zoom . The seminar will be chaired by Leroy Levy, who is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of History. For the reading he has chosen an article by...

Lecture summary: It is widely recognised that there is a dearth of women judges sitting on international courts and tribunals. In this lecture, particular attention will be paid to the question of why the lack of judicial parity matters. It will be argued that the dearth of women judges is both symptom and cause of the highly gendered way in which international law and international institutions operate. The idea of the totemic judge of international law whose male gender is rendered invisible and unremarked and who functions to enrobe the gendered norms and institutions of international law will be called forth. The female judge, conversely, is presented as a disruptive force whose very presence serves to place gender in the frame. Drawing on accounts from international courts and from the Feminist Judgments in International Law project, it will be concluded that an approach to judging that acknowledges and challenges structures of power – including gender – contains considerable transformative potential. Dr Loveday Hodson is Associate Professor at the University of Leicester. I joined Leicester Law School in 2004, since which time I have had a number of teaching and administrative roles. For the past few years I have taught on the International Law undergraduate module as well as convening the Feminist Perspectives on International Law and Legal Responses to Global Injustice postgraduate modules. During my time at Leicester I also contribute to the teaching of Constitutional and Administrative Law. I am currently the School's Deputy PRG Tutor (admissions) and Research Ethics Officer. The Lauterpacht Centre Friday lecture series is kindly supported by Cambridge University Press

The fifth 2022-3 session of the monthly seminar run by the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy will take place at 3:00pm on Thursday, February 16th, through Zoom . The session will be chaired by Agnes Lindberg, who is a PhD student in the Law Faculty. As the reading for the session, she has chosen an...

Register online Lecture summary: United Nations (UN) and several UN Agencies have started to use behavioural sciences in order to achieve their policy goals, including for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While it is to be appreciated that insights on actual behavior inform policy making of international actors, they raise scientific and normative considerations warranting caution. First, for those considerations it matters, who the acting and the targeted actors are, that is, where and for what behavioral sciences are used (inter-state or targeting citizens). Behavioural interventions come in many facets and warrant a differentiated view – a finely built roadmap is thus desirable. Second, there are concerns about the internal and external validity of experimental research on which behavioural sciences largely, but not solely, draws. Third, taking a differentiated view on behavioral sciences also allows for a more finely grained view on normative concerns underlying the operations of the United Nations. This contribution spells out those considerations while still advocating for the approach as such. Anne van Aaken (Dr. iur. and MA Economics) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg.

Title: 'Merger Deregulation, Wages, and Inequality: Evidence from the U.S. Banking Industry' Speakers: Professors Abhay Aneja (Berkeley) and Prasad Krishnamurthy (Berkeley) To register your interest for this event please contact Professor Oke Odudu ( oo201@cam.ac.uk )

(Rescheduled from 25 November 2022) This lecture is now online. Lecture summary: It is alleged that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) embodied the victory of Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice’s preference to interpret treaties based on the “ordinary meaning of the words” over Sir Hersh Lauterpacht’s view that one instead should seek to ascertain the treaty parties’ “actual intentions.” But is that so? If, as VCLT Article 31(1) provides, the focus is to be on “the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose,” and if that “ordinary meaning” is not, as per Article 32, “ambiguous,” “obscure,” “manifestly absurd or unreasonable,” then why should resort to “Supplementary Means of Interpretation” be appropriate at all “in order to confirm the meaning resulting from the application of article 31”? If, as many believe, the VCLT is hierarchical, shouldn’t interpretation be complete when an “ordinary meaning” is established that is “unambiguous,” not “obscure,” and “neither manifestly absurd or unreasonable”? Did those preferring to determine the treaty parties “actual intentions” in fact sneak into the VLCT’s text that provision for supplementary “confirmation” of a clear “ordinary meaning”? Is to that extent the VCLT in fact, as is said of treaties generally, “an agreement to disagree”? In reality, given the sequential submissions in international arbitrations, as well as before international courts and tribunals, each party, beginning with the Applicant’s or Claimant’s Memorial, followed by Respondent’s Counter-Memorial, the Reply Memorial etc., from the start places before the adjudicator all of its arguments under Section 3. of the VCLT (Articles 31-33). Judge Charles N Brower’s career has been divided between private law practice, first with White & Case LLP in New York City and Washington, D.C., since 2001 as an Arbitrator Member of Twenty Essex Chambers in London, and public service, first with the Office of The Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State (1969-73)(successively as Assistant Legal Adviser for European Affairs, Deputy Legal Adviser and Acting Legal Adviser), as Judge of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal (1983-present), as sub-Cabinet rank Deputy Special Counsellor to the President of the United States dealing with the Iran-Contra affair (1987), as Judge ad hoc of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (1999-2002)(appointed by Bolivia), and the most -appointed of the only five Americans ever to be appointed Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice (2014-2022) (appointed by Colombia (1 case) and the United States (2 cases)).

Title: 'Inflation, Market Failures, and Algorithms' Speaker: Professors Rory Van Loo, Boston University To register your interest for this event please contact Professor Oke Odudu ( oo201@cam.ac.uk )

Please join us for our next event in the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series. Speaker: Peter Niesen (University of Hamburg) All events take place on Zoom from 5-6.30pm (UK time). They are free and open to all. For more information about the Talking Animals series and to register for the events, visit www...