Popular International Law Workshop

Time: 9.00 am - 4.45 pm

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Full Programme

Please note this is an in-person event only and will not be recorded.

International law has a vibrant life as a popular and public language. From the mass protests about an ‘illegal war’ in Iraq in 2003, to the multifaceted work of Peoples’ Tribunals, to open letters on international legal issues signed by lawyers and non-lawyers, international law is used in public spaces to ground claims about injustice, atrocity, rights, reparation and more. In many ways, this form of international law – a popular international law – has become the language in which claims for a better world are made.

In this workshop, we explore contributions from scholars on popular international law, in the different ways they choose to understand that term and in a range of contexts where popular international law is or has been deployed. Our aim in this workshop is to capture a sample of what popular international law might be and how it might work. To this end, questions that we will consider include:

•    In what different ways can we think about a popular form of international law? How might this form be different from doctrinal international law?
•    Who uses popular international law? In what places and contexts? For what audiences?
•    What roles does popular international law play? Is it deployed as a language of resistance? Of emancipation? Of new imperialisms? Of injustice?
•    What are the limits and possibilities of popular international law? What do we gain and what do we lose by the ubiquity of popular international law?
•    How salient might popular international law be in possible futures of a radically transformed international system?

For further information please contact Dr Tor Krever (tkk24@cam.ac.uk)