Theory Talks Archive

19th January -15.30-17.30

In Memoriam Karen Knop

Please join us to honour the work and legacy of Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen’s scholarship has made an indelible contribution to the study of international law in numerous fields, but above all on self-determination and sovereignty, foreign relations law, public/private international law, and feminist approaches to international law. We’re delighted to be joined by four speakers, Prof. Anne Peters, Prof. Jutta Brunnée, Prof. Aoife O’Donoghue, and Prof. Martti Koskenniemi, each of whom will briefly reflect on Karen’s contribution to international legal academia, followed by a general discussion.

Readings:

‘Here and There: International Law in Domestic Courts’, (2000) 32 New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 501;
‘Re/Statements: Feminism and State Sovereignty in International Law’, (1993) 3 Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems 293;
‘Gender and the Lost Private Side of International law’ in Brett, Donaldson & Koskenniemi, History, Politics, Law: Thinking through the International (CUP 2021), 357;
‘Eunomia is a Woman: Philip Allott and Feminism’ (2005) 16 European Journal of International Law 315;
Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law (CUP 2002), Chapter 8 & Conclusions (pp. 358-381).

15th June - 15.30-17.30

Karen Knop

Re-curating the Past: Canon, Archive and Gender in International Law

“Why has gender not been an issue in this discipline?” Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin and Shelley Wright asked about international law in their revolutionary 1991 article. A wealth of feminist approaches to international law followed, but left relatively untouched the “where are the women?” question that had been an early wedge in the door in the humanities. Correspondingly, while there are important initiatives to expand the “canon” in international law, international lawyers have not intensively theorized or critiqued the idea of a canon, unlike in art or literature. “Canon building is empire building. Canon defense is national defense,” novelist Toni Morrison famously stated, “And all of the interests are vested.” As Aleida Assmann has written, the selections reflected in a “canon” exist against the accumulation retrievable from the “archive.” In international law, the back issues of the discipline’s oldest and best-known journals constitute one such archive and a comparatively accessible one. Each journal has a findable first woman-authored article. Why and how should we re-read these firsts? This Theory Talk focuses that question on the first full-length article by a woman, C Luella Gettys, in the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) in 1927. In addition to critical approaches to the idea of a canon in other disciplines, the readings include Gettys article, some background on Gettys and women in AJIL, and a recent feminist article reflecting on the contributions of a female internationalist contemporary of Gettys.

Readings

Aleida Assmann, “Canon and Archive” in Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (eds) with Sara B Young, Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Walter de Gruyter, 2008) 97-107
Toni Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature” (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at the University of Michigan, 7 October 1988) 123 at 123-136
John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) at 15-28, 56 (excerpts)
Valeska Huber, Tamson Pietsch and Katharina Rietzler, “Women’s International Thought and the New Professions, 1900-1940” (2021) 18 Modern Intellectual History 121 at 121-122, 125-127, 138-144 (excerpts)
C Luella Gettys, “The Effect of Changes of Sovereignty on Nationality” (1927) 21 AJIL 268-278
Victoria Schuck, “Luella Gettys Key (Mrs. V.O. Key, Jr.)” (1976) 9:1 PS: Political Science and Politics 89 at 89
Alona E Evans and Carol Per Lee Plumb, “Women and the American Society of International Law” (1974) 68 AJIL 290 at 295

28th April - 15.30-17.30

Inge Van Hulle

Pan-Africanism and the History of International Law

The writings of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century African scholars who reflected on questions of international law, international relations and their historical roots were embedded in and influenced by Pan-Africanist thought as a narrative register and political project. Also after decolonisation, the Pan-African movement represented African efforts to forge a new international legal order. In this theory talk I would like to invite readers to consider whether and how Pan-Africanism can be used as a lens through which to view African authors’ attitudes towards European international law prior to the emergence of formally independent African states. In spite of the historical and continued importance for subsequent generations of African and Black intellectuals, Pan-Africanism has not received the attention that it deserves within the history of international law. With regard to African scholars from the pre-1945 era or scholars from the Black diaspora, path-breaking work was conducted for Abdulqawi Yusuf’s Pan-Africanism and International Law, which was based on a series of lectures which he presented for the Hague Academy of International Law in the summer of 2012. New and excellent literature especially in the field of political theory, has shown how after the Second World War many African and black anticolonial critics envisaged a new egalitarian world order, recasting anticolonial nationalism as ‘world-making’, which also entailed a different vision of international law. Even so, only a handful of scholars have engaged with the historical contribution of Pan-Africanists or of Pan-African thought to international legal theory, certainly before the period of decolonisation.

Mandatory readings

Inge Van Hulle, ‘The Historiography of International Law in Sub-Saharan Africa’, in Randall Lesaffer and Anne Peters (eds.), The Cambridge History of International Law, Ed. Randall Lesaffer, Vol. 1, Part 2: The Historiography of International Law: Regional Traditions (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023)
Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire. The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton University Press, 2019), chapter 2 ‘The Counterrevolutionary Moment. Preserving Racial Hierarchy in the League of Nations’
Joseph Casely Hayford, The Truth about the West African Land Question (CM Phillips, 1913), chapter 5, ‘The Legal Aspects of the Matter’.
WEB Du Bois, ‘To the Nations of the World’, in David Levering Lewis (ed.), WEB Du Bois: A Reader (Henry Holt, 1995) and ‘The African Roots of the War’, The Atlantic (1915).

17th March - 15.30-17.30

Antoine Vauchez

Neoliberalism, Public Law and the Transformations of the State

The talk will address the following questions: how did the encounter between neoliberalism and Western states impact on public law, and what are the consequences of such encounter? How can we assess these transformations empirically? While many studies so far have analyzed this encounter in terms of "privatization" of the State and weakening of public law, the presentation will offer a different account, one that points at the rapid expansion of "public-private" legal expertise in-between States and Markets. In this regard, the case of France with its strong statist tradition and its influential Conseil d'État offers a magnifying glass. It also suggests a research strategy to empirically assess these transformations, one that focuses on the legal field and its actors themselves. The presentation will give particular attention to the rise of law firms as State experts, the development of bodies of legal knowledge cutting across the public-private dividing line (regulatory law, droit public des affaires, etc.), and the progressive repositioning of the Conseil d'État in French regulatory State.

Readings:

A. Vauchez, The Neoliberal Republic. Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private Finance, foreword; introduction and Chapter 1; pp. 102-115 in chapter 3.

Optional readings:

Symposia on The Neoliberal Republic, on the Law and Political Economy Blog (LPE Project): https://lpeproject.org/symposia/neoliberal-republic/

26th January - 15.30-17.30

Francesca Iurlaro

Poetry and International Law

What does poetry have to do with international law? Recent scholarship has emphasised the historical importance played by poetry in the development of early modern international law, i.e. ius gentium. Lawyers from the past, such as Alberico Gentili or Hugo Grotius, massively relied on poetic sources to construct their legal arguments, generate new legal solutions, or repurposing the validity of ancient ones. Some of these authors were also actively reflecting on the role of poetry as an authentic source of meaning - for example, Gentili published a defence of poetry in 1593. What is the role of poetry, and what has law got to do with it?

In this session, I would like to present some readings that help us think of poems as ‘units of legal order’. Poems are constructed based on specific rules of composition; in doing so, poets engage into a conversation with a pre-existing tradition, thus creating new rules in conversation with old ones. The poem's rhythmical structure has the power of re-fashioning materials from reality by turning them into a persuasive fictional incantation. As such, fiction can be thought of as a generator of poetic justice, suggesting to the reader some behaviours or truths that can be taken as normative standards. Here I suggest that we interpret 'poetic justice' as a specific form of legal order. Doing so calls into question the moral validity of such justice - poetic truths are double-edged swords that can be used to voice humanitarian purposes as much as they can be misconstrued to justify oppression and violence.

Ultimately, the session will be an occasion for us to reflect on whether international law can rely on the imaginative power of poetry to address its many contemporary problems. Can the cultural situatedness of poetry help us de-construct and de-canonize international law?

Mandatory Readings:

Thomas S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1982), 19 Perspecta (pp. 36-42).
James Boyd White, ‘The Judicial Opinion and the Poem: Ways of Reading, Ways of Life’ (1984), 82/7 Michigan Law Review (specifically: pp. 1679-99)
Jay Surdukowski, ‘The Sword and the Shield: The Uses of Poetry at the War Crimes Trial of Radovan Karadžić, the Poet-Warrior’ (2019), Law and Literature (pp. 1-24).

25th of November - 15.30-17.30

Hilâl Şarbak

The Carrier Bag Theory” of Law: Rethinking the Human in Law

Ursula K. Le Guin's 1986 essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction presents a feminist approach to fiction. Borrowing anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher's concept of the “Carrier Bag Theory of Human Evolution” —where Fisher argues that the earliest cultural device was probably a receiver (a container for holding harvested goods) rather than a knife or spear—, Le Guin invites us to rethink the “human story”. For those who never felt belonging in the story of humanity, in which being “fully” human is bashing, thrusting, and killing, she suggests a leeway: We can change the story! The “killing story” is neither the sole, nor the accurate story of the humanity. We can, in fact, write a “life story”.

In this theory talk, inspired by Le Guin, I would like to discuss whether we can (or we should) reimagine law in such a way that non-human animals are also the subjects of rights. In doing so, however, I propose to take a somewhat peculiar path: Instead of questioning “how to fit the animal into the theory of (human) rights”, I would like to problematise the very concept of (human) rights itself. In this regard, I would like to ask: Who are the subjects of rights? Are they only humans? If so, who are welcome in the sphere of human? Does the term human, for instance, inherently include women or people of colour? And in case we cannot provide affirmative answers to these questions, what could this tell us about the question of animal rights? If human is indeed nothing but a normative convention, can we have room for animals in the theory of rights? Yes, the law we were taught is established upon a monochrome anthropocentric epistemology where the sole measure is human. But I encourage us to ponder: Can we rewrite the story? Can we propose a “carrier bag theory” of law?

Mandatory Readings:

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, 1986
Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal Thought at the End of the Century, Oxford, Hart, 2000, pp. 240-245
Paola Cavalieri, “Are Human Rights Human?”, The Animal Ethics Reader, Ed. by Susan J. Armstrong & Richard G. Botzler, 3rd Ed., New York, London, Routledge, 2017, pp. 26-31
Jacques Derrida, "But as for me, who am I (following)?", The Animal That Therefore I Am, Ed. by. Marie-Luise Mallet, New York, Fordham University Press, 2008, pp. 52-118 (MANDATORY ONLY: pp. 87-92)
Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, London, New York, Routledge, 1994, pp. 19-40

Optional Reading:

Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, Cambridge, Polity, 2013, pp. 13-54 (for the purposes of this session, especially pp.26-30)

28th of October - 15.30-17.30

Aurélien Godefroy

Pierre Bourdieu's concept of field and the study of international law

Throughout his career, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has formulated a general theory of social relations aimed to explain why social agents, embroiled in specific social contexts, act the way they do. According to Bourdieu, the social world is made up of an infinite number of “fields”, i.e. relatively autonomous social spaces in which agents struggle over a certain kind of power. All these fields, whatever their specific object – art, science, law, religion, politics, etc. – share certain common characteristics. That is why Pierre Bourdieu speaks of a “general field theory”.

It has been argued that the concept of “field” sheds new light on legal theory, and may open a new research agenda for the study of international law. Indeed, understanding the international legal world as a “field” allows us to see that “law” is the object of a struggle between competing legal agents – not necessarily “lawyers”. In other words, the international legal field is the site of a continuous struggle over the authority to determine what the law is. Field Theory gives us the necessary tools to reconstruct that struggle historically and, from a critical perspective, to understand why things are as they are.

Mandatory Readings:

P. Bourdieu, 'The Author's Point of View: Some General Properties of Fields of Cultural Production', in P. Bourdieu, The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (1996), pp. 214-277.

Optional Reading:

P. Bourdieu, 'Questions of Method', in P. Bourdieu, The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (1996), pp. 177-208.

23rd of September - 15.30-17.30

Berihun Adugna Gebeye

Discussing a Theory of African Constitutionalism

The major scholarly and policy discussions on African constitutionalism revolve around two main theoretical frameworks: legal centralism and legal pluralism. Legal centralists explain the idea and practice of African constitutionalism through the prism of liberal constitutionalism, focusing primarily on written constitutions. From the perspective of the legal centralists, the performance of African constitutionalism has been a tragic failure, at worst, and very disappointing, at best. In contrast, legal pluralists understand and explain African constitutionalism from two distinct vantage points: the first is through the lens of the state and the second is through the lens of society. Inherent in this view is the bifurcation of the public sphere. For legal pluralists, this state of affairs not only distinguishes African constitutionalism from the liberal constitutional systems of Western states, but it also renders the liberal constitutional project in Africa simply a chimera. A Theory of African Constitutionalism rejects the legal centralist and legal pluralist views of constitutionalism and offers an alternative: a legal syncretic view. Legal syncretism captures and explains both the processes and dynamics of African constitutional change and transformation from precolonial times to the present and the attendant constitutional designs and practices ranging from the nature of the state to government structures to constitutional rights. Additionally, it offers novel theoretical and practical tools for improving and assessing African constitutionalism on its own terms.

Mandatory Readings:

Berihun Adugna Gebeye, A Theory of African Constitutionalism (Oxford University Press 2021), Chapters 1 and 3

Optional Readings:

HWO Okoth-Ogendo, ‘Constitutions without Constitutionalism: Reflections on an African Political Paradox’ in Douglass Greenberg and others (eds), Constitutionalism and Democracy: Transitions in the Contemporary World (Oxford University Press 1993) 65–80.
Peter P. Ekeh, ‘Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement’ (1975) 17 Comparative Studies in Society and History 1: 91-112.
Wale Adebanwi, ‘Africa’s two publics: Colonialism and governmentality’ (2017) 34 Theory, Culture & Society 4: 65–87.
Participants are highly encouraged to read further Chapters from A Theory of African Constitutionalism , especially Chapters 2 and 7.

29th July - 15.30-17.30

Başak Etkin

Open-texture, Implicature and Law

In trying to explain the changes in treaty content through interpretation and practice over time, H.L.A. Hart talks about the open-texture of law and language to explain this phenomenon. Open-texture signifies the inherent vagueness to natural languages that makes them open to interpretation and contradicts formalism, understood as immanent intelligibility of legal arguments and therefore adjudicative neutrality. Treaties are maybe the most formalistic instrument in international law and are characterised as agreements to disagree further (Allott, 1999 and Besson, 2016), therefore content shouldn’t evolve beyond consent. This suggests that developments of the content of a treaty obligation might be unexpected and undesirable for state parties. In this talk, I will propose a study of the language of treaty through logician Paul Grice’s work on pragmatics and his theory of implicature, which is “the act of meaning or implying one thing by saying something else”.

Mandatory Readings:

Brian Bix, Law, Language, and Legal determinacy (Oxford 2004) 7-35.
H. Paul Grice ‘Logic and Conversation’ in Cole and Morgan (eds), Speech Acts, Syntax and Semantics vol. 3, (Academic Press 1975) 41–58.

Optional Reading:

H.L.A. Hart, ‘Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals’ (1958) 71:4 Harvard Law Review, 593-629 (only section 3, pages 606 to 615).

11th June - 15.00-17.00

Nehal Bhuta

The State Theory of Grotius

Hugo Grotius’s account of the state draws a picture of the relationship between political and legal ordering, and history, in which the interrelationship of the political and the legal allows a range of adaptive and adaptable state-forms. State authority is made possible and accountable under a system of natural legal right, even as its constitution is a historical achievement that should not readily be disturbed and in which a large range of freedom and unfreedom is lawful and should be accepted. Understood in this way, the State Theory of Grotius is not only modern, but provides in its methods and insights, a potential answer to one of the key conceptual dead ends of modern theories of sovereignty: the idea that sovereign power must be perpetually concentrated in one organ or entity if it is to retain what makes it sovereign.

We are cohosting the session with our resident Grotians from the DFG funded Heisenberg Project 'The Unseen History of International Law: A Census Bibliography of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis, directed by Dr. Mark Somos and hosted here at the MPI.

Mandatory Readings:

Nehal Bhuta, 'The State Theory of Grotius', 73 Current Legal Problems (2020), pp. 127-176.

Optional Readings:

Richard Tuck, The Sleeping Sovereign (OUP 2016), pp. 63-120.

20th May - 11.00-13.00

Ntina Tzouvala

Discussing Capitalism as Civilization

The “standard of civilisation” is often considered a historically important but currently irrelevant concept in international law. In this book, however, I suggest that this optimistic narrative is misguided. I argue that “civilisation” has never been a unitary concept subject to a specific definition. Rather, I approach it as the encapsulation of a much more fundamental and enduring argumentative pattern, one that constantly oscillates between two logics. One the one hand, a certain “logic of improvement” promises equal rights and duties under international law provided that non-Western political communities transform themselves according to the changing imperatives of capitalism modernity. On the other, an opposing “logic of biology” perpetually defers this promise of equal inclusion based on ideas of unbridgeable difference. Revisiting the indeterminacy thesis in international law, I argue that international law’s constant oscillation between these two logics is reflective of the fact that the discipline reflects capitalism's tendency for uneven and combined development without being able to authoritatively resolve it.

Mandatory Readings:

Ntina Tzouvala, Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020), Chapters 1 and 5.

Optional Readings:

I. Bennett Capers, ‘Reading Back, Reading Black’ (2006) 35(1) Hofstra Law Review 9.
Usha Natarajan, ‘Creating and Recreating Iraq: Legacies of the Mandate System in Contemporary Understandings of Third World Sovereignty’ (2011) 24(4) Leiden Journal of International Law 799.
Ashley Deeks, ‘“Unwilling or Unable”: Toward a Normative Framework for Extra-Territorial Self-Defense’ (2011) 52(3) Virginia Journal of International Law 483
Participants are also warmly invited to read further chapters from Capitalism as Civilisation.

8th April - 15.30-17.30

Rachel Lopez

Legal Scholarship in Conversation with Social Movements

One of the central questions often asked of academics is "who do you want to be in conversation with?" For a growing number of legal scholars, the answer to this age-old question is social movements and community activists. In a forthcoming article in the Stanford Law Review, Amna Akbar, Sameer Ashar, & Jocelyn Simonson set out the contours of this emerging field of movement law scholarship. Specifically, they describe the methodology of such scholarship as involving the co-generation of legal meaning and frameworks for critique in solidarity with social movements and communities organizing for social justice. This approach often draws from the tradition of Critical Race Theory (CRT), which at times employs storytelling to reveal alternative accounts of our social and legal realities. This talk will discuss this emerging form of legal scholarship as well as the counter-arguments that might be levied against it, such as claims that it lacks the objectivity and rigor of other legal scholarship.

Required reading:

Amna Akbar, Sameer Ashar, & Jocelyn Simonson, Movement Law, 73 STAN. L. R. (forthcoming 2021). I suggest focusing on pages 1-25 & 49-59.

Further readings:

Terrel Carter, Rachel Lopez, Kempis Ghani, Redeeming Justice, 116 NW. U. L. REV. (forthcoming 2021). I suggest focusing on pages 1- 20.
Excerpts from RICHARD DELGADO & JEAN STEFANCIC, CRITICAL RACE THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION.

18 February 2021 - 15.30-17.30

Tarek Tutunji

Afropessimism

My proposed topic for discussion is the recent book by Frank B. Wilderson III titled “Afropessimism”. The book is the latest in a substantial tradition of Afropessimist writing, but it was my first exposure to the theory. I understand that other Theory Talks sessions have had more than one text assigned for reading. In this case however, I would like to suggest that we only read excerpts from Wilderson’s book rather than read multiple pieces because there are enough claims in the text to warrant an exclusive focus on it. I would also like to recommend a youtube interview with Wilderson that helped me understand his argument. If you are short on time, I would suggest watching the youtube interview on its own as Wilderson does a great job of presenting his argument in it.

I have chosen 85 pages from Wilderson’s book that I have combined in a PDF file. This is longer than the recommended 50 pages, but the book is a blend of narrative storytelling alongside theoretical writing (an essential feature of Afropessimism as a theory is the importance of experience and embodiment) and the pages really do fly by as you read them. The key chapter in my opinion is chapter 5. Excerpts: Ch2 p90-96, 102-103; Ch4 p163-188; Ch5 p191-229; ch6 p240-252; epilogue p330-333 (85pgs)
Youtube Interview: https://youtu.be/Tug7UWedzrw

Further Reading:

There are a few reference points that might be useful for contextualizing the argument made in the book. Afropessimism traces its lineage to Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks and it builds on a Lakanian tradition of psychoanalysis, which Wilderson uses. The argument also has parallels with recent posthumanist critiques of humanism and the category of the human subject.

Jared Sexton (2016): “Afro-Pessimism: The Unclear Word” in Rhizomes (A very useful and readable entry point into Afropessimism. If you are interested in learning more about Afropessimism, this is a good first overview.)
Douglass, Terrefe, and Wilderson 2018, “Afro-Pessimism” Oxford Bibliography of African American Studies (A Bibliography of Afropessimist texts with brief definitions of key components of Afropessimism)
Franz Fanon (1967) (original French in 1952): Black Skin White Masks, Ch5 “The Lived-Experience of the Black Man” (and possibly 6) (A classic work that touches on the psychological impact of colonialism and racism)

10 December 2020 - 15.30-17.30

Joshua Jowitt

Natural Law and Animal Rights

In analysing the effectiveness of law that purports to protect the interests of nonhuman animals, we too often begin from an unacknowledged foundation of legal positivism that supposes that legal rights or other protections are entirely at the discretion of the legislator. Assuming this discretion makes greater protection of animal interests more difficult to realise when they are perceived to be legally incommensurable with our own. This talk will suggest that a Natural Law approach that expressly connects the moral worth of the individual with the validity of legal norms is better able to shed a light on the position the positive law should adopt with regards to our fellow creatures. The theory endorsed here will be the agent-based ethical rationalism of Alan Gewirth, and both soft-natural law/inclusive positivist and strong natural law positions based on this theory will be presented.

The presenter has suggested the following readings for discussion & preparation:

Readings:

Christine K. Korsgaard, “Kantian Ethics, Animals and the Law”, 33 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 4 (2013) 629-648
Annabel Brett, “Rights of and over Animals in the Ius Naturae et Gentium (16th and 17th centuries)”, AJIL Unbound (2017) 257-261

Closer to the date, we will also circulate a short overview on the argument by Alan Gewirth, summarized by Josh.

5 November 2020 - 15.30-17.30

Nehal Bhuta & Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi

Dangerous Proportions: Means and Ends in Non-Finite War

Mandatory reading:

A draft text by the authors on the topic

6 February 2020 - 15.30-17.30

Gunther Teubner

Social Theory and Legal Doctrine: Transversal Paradoxes

Required reading

"Law & Social Theory: Three Problems", 1 Asian Journal of Law and Society 2 (2014) 235-254

Optional reading

"Quod omnes tangit: Transnational Constitutions without Democracy?", 57 Der Staat 2 (2018) 171-194
"Regime-Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law", 25 Michigan Journal of International Law 4 (2004) 999-1046 (zusammen mit Andreas Fischer-Lescano)

Background reading

"Matrix Reloaded: Kritik der staatszentrischen Drittwirkung der Grundrechte am Beispiel des Publication Bias", 47 Kritische Justiz (2014) 150-168 (zusammen mit Isabell Hensel)

23 January 2020 - 15.30-17.30

Raphael Oidtmann

The “Geographical Pivot of History” Revisited – On the Interplay of Geopolitics and International Law

Geopolitics has (re-)emerged as both an explanatory pattern and analytical framework in contemporary international relations over the last years: phenomena such as shrinking ice masses in the Arctic or processes like gradual desertification have hence revived deliberations on the role and effects of (geographical) space(s) within international politics more broadly.
The interplay between geopolitics and international law, however, has oftentimes been neglected in this context: how can power-based “classical” geopolitics thus be reconciled with (international) legal reasoning? What answers does international law hold for fundamental geopolitical categories, such as frontiers, space(s) or spheres of influence? And how could it be possible to harmonize these sometimes-contradictory intellectual planes?
The required readings for the session are supposed to fulfil two broad objectives: in a first step, the notion of geopolitics as originally conceptualized by authors such as Mackinder will be introduced (while acknowledging its distinct historical context) before the second reading expounds some points of contact between geopolitical and international legal reasoning, which will subsequently form the basis for the plenary discussion.

Required Reading:

Mackinder, Halford (1904): The Geographical Pivot of History, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 23(4), 421-444 (reprinted in The Geographical Journal, Vol. 170(4), 298-321).
Orakhelashvili, Alexander (2008): International Law and Geopolitics: One Object, Conflicting Legitimacies?, Netherland Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 39, 155-204 (in particular subsections VI and VII).

21 November 2019 - 15.30-17.30

Pierfrancesco Rossi

National Courts: Guardians of the International Rule of Law?

Mandatory readings:

Benedetto Conforti, International Law and the Role of Domestic Legal Systems (Nijhoff 1993) 3-10.
André Nollkaemper, National Courts and the International Rule of Law (OUP 2011) 1-10.
Eyal Benvenisti, ‘Comments on the Systemic Vision of National Courts as part of an International Rule of Law’ (2012) 4 Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies 42, 42-49.
Joseph G. Starke, ‘Monism and Dualism in the Theory of International Law’ (1936) 17 British Yearbook of International Law 66, 66-75.
Giorgio Gaja, ‘Dualism – A Review’, in Nijman and Nollkaemper (eds.), New Perspectives on the Divide Between National and International Law (OUP 2007) 52, 52-62.

31 October 2019 - 15.30-17.30

Angelo Jr. Golia and Theodor Shulman

Nomos and Narrative

Mandatory readings

Robert M. Cover, ‘Forward: Nomos and Narrative’ (1983) 97 Harvard Law Review 4-68.
Jeffrey L. Dunoff, ‘A New Approach to Regime Interaction’, in M. A. Young (ed.), Regime Interaction in International Law: Facing Fragmentation (CUP 2012), 136-174.

Those who wish to delve deeper into the subject may also wish to consult (optional):

Paul S. Berman, ‘Jurisgenerative Constitutionalism: Procedural Principles for Managing Global Legal Pluralism’ (2013) 20 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 665-695.
Sanne Taekema, ‘Between or Beyond Legal Orders: Questioning the Concept of Legal Order’, in J. Klabbers and G. Palombella (eds.), The Challenge of Inter-Legality (CUP 2019) 69-88

19 September 2019 – 15.30-17.30

Alexander Somek

Sources of Law and the Legal Relation

Required readings:

We will focus on two excerpts from Professor Somek’s latest book The Legal Relation: Legal Theory after Legal Positivism.
As background reading, Professor Somek recommends an excerpt from his latest German language book Wissen des Rechts (with commentaries by Andreas Funke and Thomas Vesting, Tübingen: Mohr, 2018)

Room 037

22 August 2019 – 15.30-17.30

Elena Evangelidis and Tom Sparks

Reconceptualising Law in an Era of Environmental Change: Earth Jurisprudence and the Idea of Property

Required readings:

Glen Wright, ‘Climate Regulations as If the Planet Mattered : the Earth Jurisprudence Approach to Climate Change’, (2013) 3 Environmental and Earth Law Journal 33-57.
Jeremy Waldron, ‘Property and Ownership’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (2004), available via https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/.
Peter D. Burdon, Earth Jurisprudence: Private Property and the Environment (Routledge 2015), Chapter 5: Private Property Revisited (101-134).

Optional readings:

Louis Kotzé, Global Environmental Constitutionalism in the Anthropocene (Hart 2016), Introduction (1-20).
Anna Grear, ‘The Vulnerable Living Order: Human Rights and the Environment in a Critical and Philosophical Perspective’ (2011) 2(1) Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 23-44.
Surabhi Ranganathan, ‘Global Commons’ (2016) 27(3) European Journal of International Law 693-717.
Judith E. Koons, ‘What is Earth Jurisprudence? Key Principles to Transform Law for the Health of the Planet’ (2009) 18(1) Penn State Environmental Law Review 47-70.

Room 037

25 July 2019 - 15.30-17.30

Maria Angélica Prada-Uribe

The Spatial turn in legal scholarship: is it always law and geography or what are we talking about?

Required readings:

Irus Braverman, et al. (2014) “Introduction. Expanding Spaces of Law”, in Irus Braverman, et al. (eds) The Expanding Spaces of Law. A Timely Legal Geography. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1-18.
Barney Warf and Santa Arias (2009) “Introduction: the insertion of space into social sciences and humanities”, in Barney Warf and Santa Arias (eds.) The Spatial Turn. Interdisciplinary perspectives. New York: Routledge, pp. 1-6.

Choose at least one of the following case studies:

Sara Keenan (2019) “A prison around your ankle and a border in every street: Theorising law, space and the subject”, in Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory. New York: Routledge, pp. 71-87.
Nicholas Blomley (2005) "Flowers in the bathtub: boundary crossings at the public–private divide", Geoforum 36, no. 3, 281-296

Optional readings:

Franz von Benda-Beckmann and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann (2014) “Places that come and go: a legal anthropological perspective on the temporalities of space in plural legal societies”, in Irus Braverman, et al. (eds) The Expanding Spaces of Law. A Timely Legal Geography. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 30-47.
David Harvey (1989) “Reinventing geography: An interview with the editors of New Left Review”, New Left Review.
Doreen Massey (1992) "Politics and space/time", New Left Review.
Henri Lefebvre (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 26-59.

Room 037

27 June 2019 - 15.30-17.00

Kanad Bagchi

Challenging the Narrative of European International Law: A Glimpse into the Life and Work of Professor Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902–75)

Required readings:

David Armitage and Jennifer Pitts, ‘This Modern Grotius: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of C.H. Alexandrowicz’, in C.H. Alexandrowicz, The Law of Nations in Global History (D. Armitage and J. Pitts (eds.), Oxford University Press 2017), 1-31.
C.H. Alexandrowicz, ‘Kautilyan Principles and the Law of Nations (1965-66)’, in C.H. Alexandrowicz, The Law of Nations in Global History (D. Armitage and J. Pitts (eds.), Oxford University Press 2017), 35-51.

Optional readings:

C.H. Alexandrowicz, ‘Mogul Sovereignty and the Law of Nations (1955)’, in C.H. Alexandrowicz, The Law of Nations in Global History (D. Armitage and J. Pitts (eds.), Oxford University Press 2017), 62-68.
C.H. Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (Clarendon Press 1967), Chapter IV: ‘Capitulations’, 97-123 (part I).
C.H. Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (Clarendon Press 1967), Chapter IV: ‘Capitulations’, 124-127 (part II).
R.P. Anand, ‘Role of the “New” Asian-African Countries in the Present International Order’ (1962) 56(2) American Journal of International Law 383-406/

Room 037

04 April 2019 - 15.30-17.00

Kristina Cufar

Subject, actor, sovereign: The doer behind the deed?

Readings:

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International(Routledge 1994), 77-87. [Those interested to explore the subject further may wish to read the entirety of Chapter 2, pages 61-95.]
Friedrich Nietzche, ‘The Greek State’ in Keith Ansell Pearson (ed.), On the Genealogy of Morality (2nd edn., CUP 2011), 164-173.

Room 037

21 March 2019 - 15.30-17.00

Tom Sparks

Law and Violence

Readings:

Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, in Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (Demetz (ed.), Jephcott (tr.), Schocken Books 1986), 277-300. [First published as Zur Kritik der Gewalt (1920/21).]
Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law. The “Mystical Foundations of Authority”’ in Cornell et al. (eds.) Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (Routledge 1992), 3-67. [Those short on time may wish to focus on pages 16-29.]
Lon Fuller, ‘Positivism and Fidelity to Law – A Reply to Professor Hart’ (1957) 71(4) Harvard Law Review 630-672. [Those short on time may wish to focus on pages 633-648; those not familiar with Fuller’s theory of law may also wish to consult the short extract from The Morality of Law listed in the optional reading.]
Jacques Derrida, ‘Admiration of Nelson Mandela, or The Laws of Reflection’ (2014) 26(1) Law & Literature 9-30 (Gelman (tr.)). [First published as Admiration de Nelson Mandela, ou Les lois de la réflexion (1986); those short on time may wish to focus on sections 2 and 3, pages 12-24.]

Optional readings (for those with the time and inclination to explore the subject further):

Alan Gewirth, ‘The Basis and Content of Human Rights’ (1978-1979) 13 Georgia Law Review 1143-1170.
John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (first published 1832; this edn: Rumble (ed.), Cambridge University Press 1995), 18-37 (‘Lecture 1’).
Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law (Yale University Press 1964) 33-44.

Room 214

14 February 2019 - 15.30-17.00

Sundhya Pahuja

Writing International Laws’ Stories: How and Why We Tell Histories of International Laws

Readings:

Upendra Baxi, ‘Some Remarks on Eurocentrism and the Law of Nations’, in RP Anand (ed.), Asian States and the Development of Universal International Law (Vikas 1972) 3-9.
Jennifer Beard, The Political Economy of Desire: International Law, Development and the Nation-State (Routledge 2007) x-xi (‘Preface’).
Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (CUP 2005) 1-12 (‘Introduction’).
Joseph Slaughter, ‘Hijacking Human Rights: Neoliberalism, the New Historiography, and the End of the Third World’ (2018) 40(4) Human Rights Quarterly 735-75.

Letters from Bandung: Encounters with Another International Law

Readings:

Sundhya Pahuja, in: Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri and Vasuki Nesia (eds.), Bandung, Global History, and International Law (CUP 2017) 552-575.

Room 037

17 January 2019 - 15.30-17.00

Guillaume Futhazar

Thinking about Science and Society: A Short Introduction to Science and Technology Studies

Readings:

Merton Robert, The Sociology of Science Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (University of Chicago Press 1973), Chapter 13: ‘The Normative Structure of Science’, p. 267-278.
Gieryn Thomas, ‘Boundary-work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists’, (1983) 48(6) American Sociological Review 781-795.
Van den Hove Sybille, ‘A rationale for Science-Policy Interfaces’, (2007) 39(7) Futures 807-826.

Room 014

6 December 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Robert Stendel

The Distinction between Public and Private: Contingent, but Useful?

Readings:

Lorenzo Casini, ‘Down the Rabbit-Hole: The Projection of the Public/Private Divide beyond the State’ (2014) 12 International Journal of Constitutional Law 402; and
Gus van Harten, ‘The Public-Private Distinction in the International Arbitration of Individual Claims against the State’ (2007) 56 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 371.

Room 014

22 November 2018 - 15.30-17.00

René Urueña

Action research: Tools of legal scholarship for social change

Readings:

J. McNiff, Action Research: Principles and Practice (Routledge 2013), 17-24.
E. Tuck and K.W. Yang, ‘R-Words: Refusing Research’, in D. Paris and M.T.Winn (eds.), Humanizing Research: Decolonising Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities (Sage Publications 2014), 223-237.
M. Zavala, ‘What Do We Mean by Decolonizing Research Strategies? Lessons from Decolonizing, Indigenous Research Projects in New Zealand and Latin America’ (2013) 2(1) Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 55-71, 55-65.

Room 037

25 October 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Alexandra Kemmerer

Reflexive We Stand: Hermeneutical Conversations, Meta-Theory, and Situatedness in International Law

Readings:

Her own chapter “Sources in the Meta-Theory of International Law: Hermeneutical Conversations”, in Besson et al., The Oxford Handbook on the Sources of International Law (Oxford University Press 2017), and
Outi Korhonen’s seminal article “New International Law: Silence, Defence or Deliverance?” (1996) 7 European Journal of International Law 1.

Room 014

20 September 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Silvia Steininger

Marxist Approaches to International Law

Readings:

B.S. Chimni, International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches (2^nd edn., Cambridge University Press 2017), Chapter 7: 440-462.
Evgeny Pashukanis, ‘International Law’, in P. Bierne and R. Sharlet (eds.) Pashukanis: Selected Writings on Marxism and Law (P. Maggs (tr.), London and New York 1980), 184 et seq.
Paul O’Connell, ‘On the Human Rights Question’ (forthcoming 2018) Human Rights Quarterly, available via https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3065757.

Room 014

16 August 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Raphael Schäfer

The Past as Tragedy, the Present as Farce? International Law's Historiographical Turn and the Reading of History

Readings:

Andreas Thier, ' Time, Law, and Legal History - Some Observations and Considerations'. 25 Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History (2017) 20
Tilmann Altwicker/Oliver Diggelmann, 'How is Progress Constructed in International Legal Scholarship?', 25 European Journal of International Law (2014) 427
Thomas Kleinlein, 'International Legal Thought. Creation of a Tradition and the Potential of Disciplinary Self-Reflection', 16 The Global Community Yearbook of International Law and Jurisprudence 2016 (2017)

Room 014

19 July 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Justin Krahé and Peter McLaughlin

Law and Science

Readings:

Stephen Toulmin, 'Discovery', in Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science - An Introduction (1953);
Julius von Kirchmann, Die Wertlosigkeit der Jurisprudenz als Wissenschaft - ein Vortrag (1948);
Michael Freeman, 'Nature of Jurisprudence', in Lloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence (1985)

Room 014

21 June 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Marius Hildebrand

Die Sitzung des Gesprächskreises wird sich mit dem Thema "Integration durch Hegemonie. Verfassungen als hegemoniale Institutionen politischer Gemeinschaften" beschäftigen. Dazu finden Sie angehängt zwei klassische Texte zur vorbereitenden Lektüre. Zum einen ein Text des deutschen Politikwissenschaftlers Hans Vorländer zu „Deutungsmacht – die Macht der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit“, zum anderen ein Ausschnitt aus dem Werk des italienischen Philosophen Antonio Gramsci.

Both texts and the introducing presentation will be in German. Discussion will be held both in English and German.

Raum 214

17 May 2018 - 15.30-17.00

Mark Somos

In Search of (Lost) Usable Legal History

Readings:

Dr Somos has assembled a bibliography of short extracts as suggested reading for the seminar, divided into four sections. If you are unable to read all suggested texts, please read at least one item from each section. If you would like to receive a combined .pdf document containing the extracts, please contact the organisers.

Status Quo and Rival proposals for a Future International Legal Historiography
1. Randall Lesaffer, 'International Law and its History: the Story of an Unrequited Love' in Craven et al (eds.), Time, History and International Law (Leiden, 2007), 27-41.
2. Anne Orford, 'International Law and the Limits of History' in Werner et al. (eds), The Law of International Lawyers: Reading Martti Koskenniemi (Cambridge, 2017), 311-2.
3. Stefan Collini, 'The Identity of Intellectual History' in Whatmore and Young (eds.), A Companion of Intellectual History (Wiley, 2016), 12.
Useable Legal History: Praxis, Advocacy, and/or Art
1. Friedrich Carl von Savigny, System of the Modern Roman Law (1840, En. tr. 1867), I.i-v.
2. Constantin Fasolt, 'History, Law and Justice: Empirical Method and Conceptual Confusion in the History of Law' (2015) 5 UC Irvine Law Review 413, 456-462.
3. Martti Koskenniemi, 'Law, Teleology and International Relations: an Essay in Counterdisciplinarity' (2011) 26(1) International Relations 3, 19-23.
4. Anne Peters and Bardo Fassbender, 'Prospects and Limits of a Global History of International Law: a Brief Rejoinder' (2014) 25(1) The European Journal of International Law 337, 339.
5. David A. Sklansky, 'What Evidence Scholars can Learn from the Work of Stephen Yeazell: History, Rulemaking, and the Lawyer's Fundamental Conflict' (2013) 61 UCLA Law Review 152, 154-6.
When Did Legal History Begin? When Did International Law Begin?
1. John Selden, 'Notes on Fortescue' in De laudibus legum Angliae... (London 1616), 16-18.
2. Ian Hunter, 'About the Dialectical Historiography of International Law' (2016) 1(1) Global Intellectual History 1, 1-3.
An Illustration: Applying Westphalia
1. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 'The Peace of Westphalia as a Model for Reflection on the Middle East', Osnabrück Peace Forum, 12 July 2016.
2. Mark Somos, Secularisation and the Leiden Circle (Leiden 2011), 12-14 & 439-445.
3. Mark Somos, 'Selden's Mare clausum: the Secularisation of International Law and the Rise of Soft Imperialism' (2012) 14 Journal of the History of International Law 287, 327-330.

Room 014

The discussion will take place in English.

19 April 2018

Dana Schmalz

Distant Claimants: Law, Politics and the Conditions of Co-Presence

Readings:

Dana Schmalz, Draft Article: 'Distant Claimants: Law, Politics and the Conditions of Co-Presence'
Etienne Balibar, Equalibity (Duke University Press 2014), Chapter 12: 'Towards Co-Citizenship'

22 March 2018

B.S. Chimni

Third World Approaches to International Law

Readings:

B.S. Chimni, 'International Institutions Today: An Imperial Global State in the Making' (2004) 15(1) European Journal of International Law 1.
Andrea Bianchi, International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking (Oxford University Press 2016), Chapter 10: 'Third World Approaches'.

15 February 2018

Why Study Theory?

Silvia Steininger and Tom Sparks

Readings:

Lon Fuller, 'The Case of the Speluncean Explorers' (1949) 62(4) Harvard Law Review 616;
Anne Peters, 'There is Nothing more Practical than a Good Theory: An Overview of Contemporary Approaches to International Law' (2001) 44 German Yearbook of International Law 25;
Roberto Mangaberia Unger, Interview with Social Science Bites, 2014 via: www.socialsciencebites.com.