How much faith should we have in international law after Gaza and Ukraine?
And, in particular, what are we to make of the enthusiasm for international courts as the ICJ continues its hearings in the South Africa v Israel litigation and in the advisory proceedings concerning the legal consequences of the occupation of the West Bank? Is this a moment of renewal? A fresh round of impotence? A novel recombination of law and politics?
Meet our speakers and chair
Catriona Drew teaches public international law in the School of Law and the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS. She holds a LLB from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from LSE. She is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the study of Colonialism, Empire and International Law at SOAS, and co-founder and Managing Editor of the London Review of International Law.
Mark Drumbl is a Professor at Washington and Lee University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the University's Transnational Law Institute. He has held visiting appointments and has taught intensive courses at law schools world-wide.
Devika Hovell (@DCHovell) is Associate Professor in Public International Law. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and a Master of Laws from New York University, where she was awarded the George Colin Award. Devika graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours. She served as an Associate to Justice Kenneth Hayne at the High Court of Australia.
Vidya Kumar is a senior lecturer in law at the School of Law, Gender and Media at SOAS, University of London. She is Co-Director of the Centre of the Study of Colonialism and International Law and is a faculty member of the Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) at Harvard Law School (Cambridge, USA). Her teaching and research is interdisciplinary in nature, traversing the fields of international law, legal history, public/constitutional law, international human and labour rights, philosophy of law and critical space law. She is currently writing a monograph revolution, history and international law, and has published work on the concept of revolutionaries in public international law, on the 1965 Rhodesian Revolution decolonisation crisis, and on Grenada as a Revolutionary Caribbean Subject in Cold War International Law.
Gerry Simpson is Professor of Public International Law at LSE. He is the author of Great Powers and Outlaw States, War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law, and The Sentimental Life of International Law: Literature, Language and Longing in Global Politics. Gerry is now writing a book on nuclearism entitled: The Atomics: My Nuclear Family at the End of the Earth. Gerry is a Fellow of the British Academy.
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