Online webinar

Register online Lecture summary: The talk will draw upon my recent report submitted to the UNHRC earlier this year. 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. 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.

Register online Lecture summary: The legal regime for deep seabed mining in the international seabed Area is a rare example of the international community joining forces to regulate a potential new industry in the interests of humankind as a whole. As set forth under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the international seabed Area and its mineral resources are the “common heritage of mankind”, on whose behalf the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an autonomous organization established under UNCLOS, is to act. The mandate comes with concomitant obligations for the equitable sharing of financial and other economic benefits and adoption of the necessary measures to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment from the harmful effects of deep-sea mining. Kristina M. Gjerde, J.D., is Senior High Seas Advisor to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Global Marine and Polar Programme. Chaired by: Dr Markus Gehring

Register online Lecture summary: The Geneva Conventions were adopted more than 70 years ago. How has their interpretation evolved over time? This lecture will look at the application of the rules on treaty interpretation to ‘older’ treaties, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It draws upon the experience the speaker has gained in updating the commentaries on the Geneva Conventions. Jean-Marie Henckaerts is head of the ICRC project to update the Commentaries on the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977. He and his team are currently updating the ICRC Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention. Prior to this, he was the head of the ICRC’s project on customary international humanitarian law. He holds the degrees of Doctor of Juridical Science from The George Washington University Law School, Master of Laws from the University of Georgia School of Law and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Brussels. This lecture has been rescheduled from Friday 18 February 2022 to Friday 6 May 2022 due to strike action.

Lecture summary: In December 2020, the UK and five partners signed the 'Agile Nations Charter', reflecting its participants commitment to 'a more agile approach to rule-making ... to unlock the potential of innovation.' Around the same time, the World Economic Forum published a toolkit on 'Agile Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution'. The aspiration for regulatory agility is everywhere. This lecture charts the ways in which the 'agility agenda' has emerged across a range of spaces of governance, including the OECD, new generation FTAs, and regulator-to-regulator agreements, and asks how this agenda is reshaping regulatory governance at the global level. What is meant by 'agility', and how is it produced? What international legal forms and techniques are amenable to agility? What questions should we be asking, to guide research into, and thinking about, regulatory agility at the global level? Professor Andrew Lang joined the Edinburgh School of Law in 2017 as the Chair in International Law and Global Governance. Prior to that, he was Professor of Law at the London School of Economics. He is an expert in Public International Law, with a specialty in International Economic Law and the Law of the World Trade Organization. He has a combined BA/LLB from the University of Sydney, where he was a double University Medallist, and his PhD is from the University of Cambridge. Register online

Speaker: Louis Kaplow, Harvard University and National Bureau of Economic Research Title: Replacing the Structural Presumption Abstract: Horizontal mergers are a focus of competition regulation throughout the world. In the United States, the so-called structural presumption—under which anticompetitive effects are presumed...

Register online Lecture summary: As the future of international law has become a growing site of struggle within and between powerful states, debates over the history of international law have become increasingly heated. In this lecture discussing her new book 'International Law and the Politics of History', Anne Orford explores the ideological, political, and material stakes of apparently technical disputes over how the legal past should be studied and understood. Drawing on a deep knowledge of the history, theory, and practice of international law, she argues that there can be no impartial accounts of international law's past and its relation to empire and capitalism. Rather than looking to history in a doomed attempt to find a new ground for formalist interpretations of what past legal texts really mean or what international regimes are really for, she urges lawyers and historians to embrace the creative role they play in making rather than finding the meaning of international law. Anne Orford is Melbourne Laureate Professor and Michael D Kirby Chair of International Law at Melbourne Law School, and Visiting Professor of Law and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer in World Organizations at Harvard Law School.

Register online - PLEASE NOTE: THIS LECTURE IS AT 12 NOON Lecture summary: The history of corporate human rights abuses is much older than the history of international human rights law. The activities of colonial corporations are a case in point. However, the relation between the state and corporations has changed significantly over the years. Unlike colonial corporations deriving their powers from the Royal Charters, transnational corporations (TNCs) of today are self-generating powers to take decisions affecting people, political outcomes or the planet. For example, decisions made by Facebook or its Oversight Board could impact not only the human rights of billions of people but also shape election outcomes and international crimes. In some cases, remedial mechanisms established by TNCs require affected rights holders to waive their right to seek remedies through state-based judicial or non-judicial mechanisms. Surya Deva is a Professor at the Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University, Sydney The Lauterpacht Centre Friday lecture series is kindly supported by Cambridge University Press

Dr Christina Voigt is Professor of Law at the University of Oslo, Norway. She is an internationally renowned expert in international environmental law and teaches, speaks and publishes widely on legal issues of climate change, environmental multilateralism and sustainability. From 2009-2018, she worked as principal legal adviser for the Government of Norway in the UN climate negotiations and negotiated the Paris Agreement and its Rulebook. Professor Voigt is Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and Co-chair of the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee.

The first Lent Term 2022 session of the monthly seminar run by the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy will take place on Thursday, January 20th, at 3:00pm, through Zoom . The session will be chaired by Agnes Lindberg, who is currently a PhD student in the Law Faculty. For the reading, she has chosen...

Register online Lecture summary: Dissent has a long and controversial history in international adjudication. This lecture excavates a now-forgotten history of debate over dissent, and identifies competing claims regarding dissent’s effect on judicial legitimacy, independence, and legal doctrine. To evaluate these claims, I undertake a comparative study of dissent practices across three leading international tribunals, the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Court of Justice. Surprisingly, this comparative inquiry reveals that that each of the central claims in long-standing debates over dissent at international courts is misleading – and each in a different way. Challenging conventional wisdom, we find that the presence of dissenting opinions has little systematic impact on legitimacy; the key factor instead is patterns of dissent that suggest geopolitical bias among international judges. Turning to independence, we find that the effects of dissent on judicial independence are mediated by a third factor, namely the length and renewability of judicial terms of office, which vary across international courts. Finally, turning to legal doctrine, we find considerable support for the view that dissents promote the dynamic development of law, but at best limited support for the more heroic claim that today’s dissents form the basis for future majority rulings. Jeffrey L. Dunoff is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. His research focuses on public international law, international regulatory regimes, international courts, and interdisciplinary approaches to international law.