Lecture summary: 20 years after the events of 9/11 and as we assess the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban fundamental questions about the scope, success and future of counter-terrorism need to be asked and answered. What have the last 20 years of a global architecture of counter-terrorism delivered, what have been the costs, and how can those costs help us better understand the recent events in Afghanistan. This lecture will trace the evolution of counter-terrorism over the past 20 years, with a particular focus on the rule of law and human rights costs of global counter-terrorism practice and reflect on what may happen next.

LCIL International Law Seminar Series

LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Where does Counter-Terrorism go next, 20 years after 9/11?' - Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain, University of Minnesota Law School

Lecture summary: Dame Sally will explore global governance for health using the two pandemics of COVID 19 and Antimicrobial Resistance as exemplars highlighting the importance of data and innovation. Dame Sally Davies is the 40th Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, the UK Government’s Special Envoy on AMR and the chair of The Trinity Challenge, which she set up in May 2020. Before this, from March 2011 to September 2019, she was Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government. Dame Sally was a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board 2014-2016 and led delegations to a range of WHO summits and forums since 2004. Dame Sally advocates globally on AMR: for three years, Dame Sally was the chair of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on AMR and later co-convener of the UN Inter-Agency Co-ordination Group on AMR, set up in response to the AMR declaration made at UNGA 2016. Dame Sally is a member of the UN Global Leaders Group on AMR, since 2020, serving alongside Heads of State, Ministers and prominent figures from around the world. Dame Sally is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US Academy of Science. In the 2020 New Year’s Honours, Dame Sally was appointed Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) for services to public health and research, having received her DBE in 2009.

The Eli Lauterpacht Lecture 2021: 'Global Governance for Health – why has it failed?' - Dame Sally Davies

Speakers: Can Yeginsu – Barrister, 4 New Square Dr Hayk Kupelyants – Associate, Dechert

CUArb/LCIL Lecture Series: 'Multiple courts and tribunals: forum competition, fragmentation or complementarily'

Cambridge Arbitration Society, CUArb, was established in 2019 as a registered society at the University of Cambridge. The establishment of the society was a response to Cambridge students’ demands to have exposure to the current arbitration scene. The CUArb aims at promoting the study of international commercial and investment arbitration amongst students, academics, alumni and law practitioners. It seeks to serve as both an educational and networking platform to facilitate discussions on emerging topics in international arbitration and connect students with practitioners. The CUArb runs a few projects including annual conferences, annual lectures series, preparatory seminars for the Vis Moot competition, educational workshops on arbitration and an arbitration lap. Membership of the CUArb is open to all members at the University of Cambridge and individuals interested in the study and practice of international commercial and investment arbitration. Speakers: Samaa Haridi – Partner, Hogan Lovells Prof Anne Marie Whitesell – Professor, Georgetown University

CUArb/LCIL Lecture Series: 'Soft Law and International Arbitration: an Interactive Q&A on the Key Instruments and Developments'

This lecture will be based on my recently edited book, The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change, (OUP, 2020). The central claim made in the book is that Africa’s international courts have important impacts that have so far been underemphasized or are entirely ignored in the scholarship on international courts. This book departs from approaches that measure the performance of Africa's international courts based on compliance with or effectiveness of their judgments. The book does so by putting the users of Africa’s international courts and their broader strategies at the center of the analysis. It adopts an-depth case study approach that focuses on how the litigation process in these courts is used by litigants to advance and promote their commitment to their ideals. It delves into the messy world of legal, social and political mobilization. It examines the choices made by activists, litigants, and opposition parties who bring cases before these international courts against those in control of dominant and authoritarian party regimes. In doing so, the book complements the attention to legal and doctrinal questions as well as the challenges of compliance with decisions of these courts that the first generation of scholarship on Africa’s international courts emphasized. James T. Gathii is the Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since July 2012.

LCIL Friday Lecture: 'The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change' - Prof James T. Gathii, Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Speakers: Dr Giorgio Risso – Associate, Cleary Gottlieb Agnieszka Zarówna – Associate, White & Case

CUArb/LCIL Lecture Series: 'Investment Structuring (and Re-structuring) and Treaty Protection'

A series of conversations on international legal scholarship, political engagement and the transformative potential of academia. Each conversation is chaired by Francisco José Quintana and Marina Veličković and centres around a theme, concept or a method and their relationship to political movements, struggles and margins from which they have emerged and within (and for) which they have emancipatory potential. The event will start at 6:30 p.m. (BST).

International Law and Political Engagement (ILPE) series: In Conversation with Prof Michael Fakhri: International Law Between Critique and Praxis

Offshore exploitation of oil and gas started in the 1930s and thousands of installations are distributed around the world. Offshore installations threaten the environment, not only when it comes to oil spills, which are most visible but admittedly rare, but also in relation to their contribution to marine debris, pollution by dumping and greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the construction, operation and decommissioning of offshore installations, in the energy sector and beyond, is one of the maritime economic activities that has not yet been comprehensively regulated at the global level. The relevant international legal framework consists of a plethora of instruments adopted at the global, regional and supranational level, which have developed in different institutional settings and following different formats. The result is that, first, there is no specialised framework convention and consequently, the legal framework is fragmented at the sectoral, institutional, geographical and issue-related level. Second, the legal framework is weak because of the non-binding nature of many of the instruments that are the outcome of unconventional lawmaking1 processes. Third, the lawmaking processes in this field seem to be industry-led because of the important role the industry plays in unconventional lawmaking, both within and outside conventional fora.

LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Unconventional Lawmaking in the Offshore Energy Sector: Flexibilities and Weaknesses of the International Legal Framework' - Prof Seline Trevisanut, Utrecht University

The distinctive vocabulary and broad principles of the modern laws of war developed within a broader project that from early modernity spelled out the nature and powers of state sovereignty. This lecture focuses on the Enlightenment theorists of “regular war.” It shows how their project of limiting war through law was anchored in a capacious conception of sovereign power, in which reason of state appeared as a restraining force through the vehicle of the law of nations. This Enlightenment project of regular war is contrasted with late-19th century humanitarianism, which had serious misgivings about reason of state and sovereignty itself. Restraint through humanitarian action was possible only with state support, but it resulted from neutral rescue action and moral condemnation. The lecture shows how these two conflicting conceptions of restraint came together in the first codified instruments of the laws of war, and how they are still present in the law of armed conflict. It concludes by discussing some implications of this genealogical analysis for contemporary debates on the convergence of international humanitarian, human rights, and criminal law. Pablo Kalmanovitz is research professor and head of the International Studies Division at CIDE, in Mexico City, and general editor of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law. He has held permanent or visiting positions at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, the European University Institute, Yale University, McGill University, and the University of Ulster. His research focuses on historical and theoretical aspects of the international regulation of armed force, on which he has published numerous articles and book chapters. His book The Laws of War in International Thought was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Regular War, Humanitarianism, and the Difference Sovereignty Makes' - Prof Pablo Kalmanovitz, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, División de Estudios Internacionales, Mexico City

A series of conversations on international legal scholarship, political engagement and the transformative potential of academia. Each conversation is chaired by Francisco José Quintana and Marina Veličković and centres around a theme, concept or a method and their relationship to political movements, struggles and margins from which they have emerged and within (and for) which they have emancipatory potential. This conversation will explore the significance, possibilities, and limits of researching international law from a “history and theory” approach. The distinctiveness of international legal analysis to understand crucial developments from decolonization to neoliberalism, and the political nature and economic foundations of legal form and legal formalism will serve as our starting points. The event will last one hour. Marina and Francisco will lead the conversation for ~40 minutes after which they will pass the pleasure and responsibility on to the audience. Umut Özsu is Associate Professor at the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. He is a scholar of public international law, the history and theory of international law, and Marxist critiques of law, rights, and the state. He is the author of Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers (Oxford University Press, 2015), and is currently finalizing Completing Humanity: The International Law of Decolonization, 1960–82 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is also co-editor of the Research Handbook on Law and Marxism (Edward Elgar, forthcoming) and The Extraterritoriality of Law: History, Theory, Politics (Routledge, 2019), as well as several journal symposia.

International Law and Political Engagement (ILPE) series: In Conversation with Prof Umut Özsu: 'On History, Theory, and International Law'

Lecture summary: This talk uses the novel coronavirus pandemic as an entry point to explore the intersections between race and global health. The pandemic is simultaneously reviving stereotypical colonial imaginations about disease directionality, but also challenging racialized hierarchies of diseases. This lecture illuminates how the racialization of diseases is reflected in historic and ongoing United States’ public health law policy as well as the global health law regime. By demonstrating the close relationship between often separately treated areas this lecture clarifies underlying currents in global health and public health law and policy that stem from fears of the racialized other. Rendering these intersections visible creates avenues for rethinking and reshaping both theory and praxis toward anti-subordination efforts. Matiangai Sirleaf is the Nathan Patz Professor of Law at the University of Maryland School of Law. Professor Sirleaf writes and teaches in the areas of global public health law, public international law, international human rights law, international criminal law, post-conflict and transitional justice and criminal law. She recently joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Law as a professor of law. Professor Sirleaf previously served as an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, as an assistant professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and as a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Race & COVID-19' - Professor Matiangai Sirleaf, University of Maryland

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture will be given by Professor Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics. 6 pm Tuesday 2 March (Part 1): 'Dignity as a Worldly Concept' 6 pm Wednesday 3 March (Part 2): 'The Idea of Human Dignity' 6 pm Thursday 4 March (Part 3): 'Dignity and Indignity in the South African Toilet Wars' Lecture summary: These lectures explore dignity as a worldly phenomenon that is not just an idea, but also a social practice and lived experience. We say that dignity is a right, or a foundational concept for human rights, yet we know that, in reality, it is a privilege enjoyed by some of us more than others and all of us at some times of our lives more than at others. How are we to understand asymmetries in the distribution of dignity? What can we learn by approaching dignity from the perspective of the presumptively undignified? When dignity is not simply denied but refused, can we then make out a different, defiant dignity with a different relationship to indignity? Professor Susan Marks joined the LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights.

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture 2021: 'On Dignity' (Part 3): 'Dignity and Indignity in the South African Toilet Wars' - Professor Susan Marks, London School of Economics

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture will be given by Professor Susan Marks, Professor of International Law, London School of Economics. Lecture summary: These lectures explore dignity as a worldly phenomenon that is not just an idea, but also a social practice and lived experience. We say that dignity is a right, or a foundational concept for human rights, yet we know that, in reality, it is a privilege enjoyed by some of us more than others and all of us at some times of our lives more than at others. How are we to understand asymmetries in the distribution of dignity? What can we learn by approaching dignity from the perspective of the presumptively undignified? When dignity is not simply denied but refused, can we then make out a different, defiant dignity with a different relationship to indignity? Professor Susan Marks joined the LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights.

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture 2021: 'On Dignity' (Part 2): 'The Idea of Human Dignity' - Professor Susan Marks, London School of Economics

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture 2021: 'On Dignity' (Part 1): 'Dignity as a Worldly Concept' - Professor Susan Marks, London School of Economics

Lecture summary: Like many other areas of work, international humanitarian practice and thinking are being transformed by digital technology and associated socio-technical practices. Institutional developments within the United Nations (UN) are telling. Just over ten years ago, the UN Secretary General announced the launch of the UN Global Pulse project, dedicating to enabling, showcasing and promoting the “scaled adoption of big data innovation for sustainable development and humanitarian action”. This project has since been advanced through Pulse Labs in Jakarta, Kampala and New York and one soon to be set up in Samoa. Other, cognate initiatives have been launched throughout the UN system. Prominent, international public-private collaborations aim to harness digital technology for humanitarian ends: initiatives such as the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. And more or less every major technology company across the world is investing in the humanitarian field: Facebook’s Data for Good initiative; Google.org’s Crisis Response work; and Alibaba’s collaboration with the World Food Program to develop Hunger Map LIVE are indicative examples. International humanitarianism is taking on new imperatives, protagonists, investments, techniques and objects of inquiry in connection with the expanding reach of the digital. Given the centrality of humanitarianism to the way that the international plane has been imagined, regulated, materialized and militarized throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, these shifts are worthy of close attention. This talk will present one chapter of a book project investigating this domain of ‘digital humanitarianism’ – a chapter concerned with maps and mapping. It focuses on recent shifts from two-dimensional mapping for humanitarian ends towards multi-dimensional, real-time mapping for the same purposes, associated with geographic information systems (GIS) and the generation and deployment of map cubes (multi-dimensional arrays of data values presenting cartographic visualization of each dimension). It offers a brief recollection of humanitarian mapping through “snapshots” from the practice in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries (Valentine Seaman’s yellow fever maps; Charles Booth’s poverty maps; Bangladesh flood mapping; and the FAO’s Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems). Against this background, we will consider the rise of crowd-sourcing as a digitally facilitated way of making cartographic knowledge for humanitarian governance purposes, as illustrated by the Missing Maps Project (a joint project of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team – a U.S.-registered non-profit – and three other not-for-profit organizations: American Red Cross; British Red Cross; and Médecins Sans Frontières). We will explore how this affects how particular spaces are assembled, delimited, surveyed and readied for humanitarian intervention and with what implications for international legal relations and the jurisdiction of different actors on this terrain. Fleur Johns is Professor in the Faculty of Law, working in the areas of public international law, legal theory, law and development, law and society (or socio-legal studies), and law and technology. Fleur studies emergent patterns of governance on the global plane, and their social, political and economic implications, employing an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the social sciences and humanities and combines the study of public and private law. In 2021, Fleur will commence a four-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship working on a project entitled 'Diplomatic Knowledge, Disasters and the Future of International Legal Order'. In 2021-2022, Fleur will be a Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Fleur is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

LCIL Friday Lecture: ‘#HELP: Digital Humanitarian Mapping and New Cartographies of Governability’ - Prof Fleur Johns, UNSW

The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law is the scholarly home of International law at the University of Cambridge. The Centre, founded by Sir Elihu Lauterpacht QC in 1983, serves as a forum for the discussion and development of international law and is one of the specialist law centres of the Faculty of Law. The Centre holds weekly lectures on topical issues of international law by leading practitioners and academics. For more information see the LCIL website at http://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/

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LCIL International Law Seminar Series

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