International Law and Emotions: Recovering Universality?

Wednesday 25th - Friday 27th February 2026

Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg

Conference theme

The current international order is in a turmoil. Resistance against breaches of international law is weak, not the least because of widespread contempt for this law. At the same time, the use and manipulation of emotions by political leaders is growing, as are their attacks on international law. This subversion concerns especially the aspiration for a law that is not only applied across the globe but also shared by all populations and is in that sense "universal".

The conference seeks to explore how, whose, and which emotions contribute to the current erosion of effectiveness and credibility of international law. How is the construction of emotions shaped across time, place, and culture? Can we identify emotions that contribute to strengthening and weakening international law's claim to universality?

The conference seeks to develop "International Law and Emotions" as a new research field: International law is a law in "e-motion"; a legal system and a legal discipline oscillating between the fears of "coexistence", the hopes of "cooperation", and the "sense of belonging" in a universal global society.

Convenors: professor Anne Peters, Dr Elia Alexiou, Bernadette Lumbela and Caroline Schaeffer.

Speakers and participants from law, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, history, literature, and computational linguistics.

Selected papers will be published in an edited volume.

Date and venue

Thursday and Friday, 26-27 February 2026: Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg.

Wednesday evening, 25 February 2026: public launch event, DAI (Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut), Heidelberg.

"Collision". Artist: Ismail Noh

Ismail Noh is a painter and former refugee, currently based in Metz, France. After fleeing persecution in Iraq because of his Yazidi religion, Ismail has lived in a refugee camp in Greece for over a year. Together with his two brothers, Jason and Salam, they started painting on tree leaves in the refugee camp and, later, they founded Brotherly ART in order to create art and raise funds in support of displaced people worldwide.

Source: UNHCR

The painting has been acquired by the MPIL and is now displayed on the Institute’s premises.