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Email

sr496@cam.ac.uk

Faculty Contact Details

Room: 7, LCIL

Tel: 01223748772

Profile Links

Professor of International Law

BA LLB (Hons), LLM, PhD

Interests

International Law, History and Theory of International Law, Critical Approaches to International Law, Treaties, International Organisations, Global Governance, Political Economy, Politics of Knowledge, Oceans, Global Commons, Legal Geography, Maps 

 

Research centres and interest groups

CV / Biography

Surabhi Ranganathan's current work traces the co-constitution of international law and the ocean from 1945 to now, unsettling what we take as the givens in relation to the spatial zones, resource allocations and functional jurisdictions effected by the law of the sea. It extends the history and critique of international law into new areas, such as ocean depths and bottoms, global commons, marine infrastructures, and techno-utopian imaginaries, and, from the underexplored vantage point of oceanic law-making, throws new light on current preoccupations of international legal histories: statehood and territory, decolonization and the new international economic order, the Cold War, race and empire, and the emergence of new legal forms and institutions.

Her writings on the oceans, the history and politics of international law, treaties, and global governance have been published in, among others, the European Journal of International Law, the British Yearbook of International Law, the American Journal of International Law, and the Journal of the History of International Law. Ranganathan is also the author Strategically Created Treaty Conflicts and the Politics of International Law (Cambridge University Press), a study of international legal thought and practice, exploring treaty conflicts in nuclear governance, the law of the sea, and international criminal justice, which was an EJIL Editors' Choice for 2015. 

To know more about her research, you might read the interview, Garret Hardin, Arvid Pardo and the Fascinations of Interdisciplinarity (pp. 28-33); listen to Big Blue Juridical Planet on Fool's Utopia; hear the talk Unmaking the Ocean delivered at Oxford, or watch her Snyder Lecture: The Legal Construction of the Ocean at the University of Indiana. Short pieces include Techno-Utopia of the Deep on CUP's fifteeneightyfour blog; an essays The Law of the Sea (Needs a Rewrite) for The Dial Magazine, building on a prior visual essay for Visualizing Climate and Loss; and Seasteads, Land-grabs and International Law. You might also enjoy this conversation on different approaches to international law between Professor Andrea Bianchi and her, hosted by the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg. To find out more about her monograph, please look up the roundtable on the book hosted by Volkerrechtsblog, or hear this recording

She has been invited as a Hauser Global Professor at NYU, and was Visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute, Geneva (spring 2020). She was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for History and Economics, Harvard in spring 2021, and a Fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin (2022-2023). Since 2021, she is a member of the Aurora Centre at the Arctic University of Norway, Tromso.

Educated at NLSIU Bangalore, NYU (as a Vanderbilt Scholar), and Cambridge (as a Gates Scholar, and JC Hall Scholar at St. John's College), Ranganathan has clerked for the Supreme Court of India, and interned with UNHCR, UNICEF, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and the Central Empowered Committee for the Environment established by the Supreme Court of India. She is an Editor in Chief of the Leiden Journal of International Law; and has served in various editorial capacities on the Cambridge Law Journal, the European Journal of International Law, and the British Yearbook of International Law. She is one of the hosts of EJIL: The Podcast! 

Publications

 

Books

Colonial Loot and Its Restitution (Special Issue), 2/2022 Santander Art and Culture Law Review (ed), 2023)

Co-editor(s):
Evelien Campfens, Andrzej Jakubowski, Alicja Jagielska-Burduk
Published Mar 2023

Strategically Created Treaty Conflicts and the Politics of International Law, 2015)

Cambridge Companion to International Law (ed), 2012)

Co-editor(s):
James Crawford & Martti Koskenniemi
ISBN 13:
9781139035651
Published Jan 2012

Articles

"The Participatory Scope of the Common Heritage Principle " (2024) AJIL Unbound forthcoming

Citation:
(2024) AJIL Unbound forthcoming
Published: Forthcoming

"The Seabed and the South: From Stock Stories to New Histories of International Lawmaking" Journal of the History of International Law 2023 forthcoming

Citation:
Journal of the History of International Law 2023 forthcoming
Published: Forthcoming

"The Law of the Sea (Needs a Rewrite) " The Dial, Issue 4: Shipwrecks, May 2023

Citation:
The Dial, Issue 4: Shipwrecks, May 2023
Published: May 2023

"Colonial Loot and Its Restitution: Current Developments and New Prospects for Law" (2022) 2 Santander Art and Culture Law Review 12-20

Co-Author/s:
Evelien Campfens
Citation:
(2022) 2 Santander Art and Culture Law Review 12-20
Published: Mar 2023

"The ‘English School’ of International Law: Soundings via the 1972 Jubilee Essays" (2021) 80 Cambridge Law Journal S126-S153

Citation:
(2021) 80 Cambridge Law Journal S126-S153
Published: Forthcoming

"Decolonization and International Law: Putting the Ocean on the Map " (2021) 23(1) Journal of the History of International Law 161-183

Citation:
(2021) 23(1) Journal of the History of International Law 161-183
Published: Jun 2020

"The Law of the Sea: 7 Essays on the Interfaces of Land and Sea" Visualizing Climate and Loss, January 2020

Citation:
Visualizing Climate and Loss, January 2020
Published: Jan 2020

"We are Witnessing a Rediscovery of India's Republic " New York Times, 27 December 2019

Co-Author/s:
Rohit De
Citation:
New York Times, 27 December 2019
Published: Dec 2019

"Ocean Floor Grab: International Law and the Making of an Extractive Imaginary" (2019) 30:2 European Journal of International Law 573-600

Citation:
(2019) 30:2 European Journal of International Law 573-600
Published: Jun 2019

"International Law and Economic Exploitation in the Global Commons: Introduction" (2019) 30(2) European Journal of International Law 541-546

Co-Author/s:
Isabel Feichtner
Citation:
(2019) 30(2) European Journal of International Law 541-546
Published: Jun 2019

"Seasteads, Landgrabs and International Law: Editorial" " (2019) 32:2 Leiden Journal of International Law 1-10

Citation:
(2019) 32:2 Leiden Journal of International Law 1-10
Published: May 2019

"Nuclear Weapons and the Court" (2017) 111 American Journal of International Law Unbound 88-95

Citation:
(2017) 111 American Journal of International Law Unbound 88-95
Published: Jun 2017

"The 2015 Judicial Activity of the International Court of Justice" (2016) 110 American Journal of International Law 504-525

Citation:
(2016) 110 American Journal of International Law 504-525
Published: Oct 2016

"Global Commons" (2016) 27 European Journal of International Law 693-717

Citation:
(2016) 27 European Journal of International Law 693-717
Published: Sep 2016

"Between Philosophy and Anxiety? The Early International Law Commission, Treaty Conflict and the Project of International Law" (2012) 83 British Yearbook of International Law 82-114

Citation:
(2012) 83 British Yearbook of International Law 82-114
Published: Feb 2014

"The Value of Narratives: The India USA Nuclear Deal in terms of Fragmentation, Pluralism, Constitutionalization and Global Administrative Law" (2013) 6(1) Erasmus Law Review 16-31

Citation:
(2013) 6(1) Erasmus Law Review 16-31
Published: Jun 2013

"Visions of International Law: Lessons from the 123 Agreement" (2011) 51 Indian Journal of International Law 146-197

Citation:
(2011) 51 Indian Journal of International Law 146-197
Published: Jun 2011

"Between Complicity and Irrelevance-Industry Associations and the Challenge of Regulating Private Security Contractors" (2010) 41 Georgetown Journal of International Law 303-376

Citation:
(2010) 41 Georgetown Journal of International Law 303-376
Published: Mar 2010

"Reconceptualizing the Boundaries of Humanitarian Assistance: What's in a Name or the Importance of Being Earnest" 40(1) John Marshall Law Review 195-233

Citation:
40(1) John Marshall Law Review 195-233
Published: Dec 2006

Book Chapters

"The Vexed Liminality of Hydrothermal Vents: An Opportunity to Unmake the Law of the Sea" in Irus Braverman (ed(s)), Laws of the Sea: Interdisciplinary Currents (Routledge , 2022)

"Accountability " (with Megan Donaldson ) in Jan Klabbers (ed(s)), Cambridge Companion to International Organisations (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

"Sea Change" in Annabel Brett, Megan Donaldson, Martti Koskenniemi (ed(s)), History, Politics, Law: Thinking through the International (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Published Oct 2021

"What if Arvid Pardo had not made his famous speech? : (False) Contingency in the Making of the Law of the Sea" in Kevin Jon Heller and Ingo Venzke (ed(s)), Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (Oxford University Press , 2021)

Published Apr 2021

"The Common Heritage of Mankind: Annotations on a Battle" in Jochen von Bernstorff and Philipp Dann (ed(s)), The Battle for International Law: South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era (Oxford University Press, 2019)

"Manganese Nodules " (with Jessie Hohmann & Daniel Joyce ) in Jessie Hohmann and Daniel Joyce (ed(s)), International Law's Objects (Oxford University Press, 2018)

"The Law of the Sea and Natural Resources" in Eyal Benvenisti and Georg Nolte (ed(s)), Community Interests Across International Law (Oxford University Press , 2018), pp. 121-135

Pages:
121-135
Published May 2018

"The Nuclear Weapons Advisory Opinions (1996)" (with Eirik Bjorge and Cameron Miles), Landmark Cases in Public International Law (Hart, 2017)

Publisher:
Co-Author/s:
Eirik Bjorge and Cameron Miles
Published Dec 2017

"Industry Associations and the Regulation of Private Military and Security Companies" in Gary Schaub Jr. and Ryan Kelty (ed(s)), Private Military and Security Contractors: Controlling the Corporate Warrior (Rowman Littlefield, 2016), pp. 165-200

Pages:
165-200
Published Aug 2016

"Legality and Lawfare in Regime Implementation" in Nikolas M. Rajkovic, Tanja Aalberts and Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (ed(s)), The Power of Legality: Practices of International Law and Their Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Published Dec 2015

"Responding to Deliberately-created Treaty Conflicts" in C Tams, A Tzanakopoulos and A Zimmerman (ed(s)), Research Handbook on the Law of Treaties (Edward Elgar, 2014)

Published Jun 2014

"Constructive Constraints? Conceptual and Practical Challenges to Regulating Private Military and Security Companies" in C Ryngaert and M Noorthman (ed(s)), Human security and international law: the challenge of non-state actors (Intersentia, 2013)

Publisher:
Published Dec 2013

Book Reviews

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Travaux Préparatoires 1948–1966. Edited by Ben Saul. (2018) 77(2) CLJ 411-414

Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. By Daniel Joyner 2011 (82) BYIL 532

Published Nov 2013

Case Notes

Jadhav case (India v Pakistan), Order on Provisional Measures (ICJ, 18 May 2017) (2018) 57 International Legal Materials 1-3

The Torture Exception to Immunity from Civil Suit: Jones and others v UK (2014) 59 EHRR 1 (2015) 74(1) CLJ 16-19

Published: Apr 2015

Blog Posts