LCIL International Law Centre Podcast

The Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIL) and the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS) held an online Rapid Response Seminar on the War in Ukraine on 7 March 2022. On the 24 February 2022 Russian troops launched a fully-fledged invasion of Ukraine after force had been used between the two countries in February 2014 with the annexing of Crimea by Russia. The UN General Assembly in its...

Lecture summary: The history of corporate human rights abuses is much older than the history of international human rights law. The activities of colonial corporations are a case in point. However, the relation between the state and corporations has changed significantly over the years. Unlike colonial corporations deriving their powers from the Royal Charters, transnational corporations (TNCs) of...

Lecture summary: In December 2020, the UK and five partners signed the 'Agile Nations Charter', reflecting its participants commitment to 'a more agile approach to rule-making ... to unlock the potential of innovation.' Around the same time, the World Economic Forum published a toolkit on 'Agile Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution'. The aspiration for regulatory agility is everywhere....

Lecture summary: The legal regime for deep seabed mining in the international seabed Area is a rare example of the international community joining forces to regulate a potential new industry in the interests of humankind as a whole. As set forth under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the international seabed Area and its mineral resources are the “common heritage...

Lecture summary: The talk will draw upon my recent report submitted to the UNHRC earlier this year. See: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/Pages/CFI_20years_SR_adequate_housing.aspx Balakrishnan Rajagopal is currently a Professor of Law and Development at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). A lawyer by training, he is an expert on many...

Lecture summary: From 1995, when he arrived in Cambridge, to 2014, when he left, Roger O'Keefe witnessed first hand the evolution and expansion of the small, somewhat homespun Research Centre for International Law into the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, one of the world's leading centres for the research, teaching, and discussion of public international law. He was also privileged to wo...

This lecture is part of the Cambridge Arbitration Society (CUArb)/Lauterpacht Centre for International Law lecture series.

Lecture summary: This lecture puts forward the conceptual argument that the transformative goals of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against (CEDAW), which require states to eradicate root causes of injustice, can be made more effective not only through legislation and policy, as commonly argued, but through the judiciary. It highlights the need to develop the content and scope...

Lecture summary: International law is in constant movement, and any proper account of the international legal order needs to place this movement at the centre. “The course of international law needs to be understood if international law is to be understood,” says James Crawford in the opening of his general course at the Hague Academy in 2013. Yet rarely do we find focused and systematic attention...

Lecture summary: In a series of recent decisions related to same-sex relationships, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has stated that the American Convention on Human Rights does not advance a singular notion or closed conception of family. A 2017 Advisory Opinion from the Inter-American Court also concluded that the American Convention demands that same sex couples have equal access to de...

Thursday, 28 October 2021 - 5.45pm This lecture is part of the Cambridge Arbitration Society (CUArb)/Lauterpacht Centre for International Law lecture series. Speakers: Iain Mckenny, Profile Investment & Louis Young, Augusta Ventures Chair: Ibrahim Alturki

Lecture summary: International law still struggles with an understanding of an “international community” that has legally cognizable interests distinguishable from those of individual sovereign States. This international community is imagined variously as the collectivity of sovereign states, an abstract concept of all human beings, an international body or a nongovernmental organization tasked wi...

Lecture summary: Globalization has lifted millions out of poverty. Globalization is a weapon the rich use to exploit the poor. Globalization builds bridges across national boundaries. Globalization fuels the populism and great-power competition that is tearing the world apart. When it comes to the politics of free trade and open borders, the camps are dug in, producing a kaleidoscope of claims and...

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 A...

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 thi...

Ian Gaunt – Arbitrator, LMAA Past President Clive Aston – Arbitrator, LMAA Past President

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

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....

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...

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

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 emancipato...

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, ope...

This lecture is is part of the Art, Architecture and International Law seminar series which is being launched this academic year. The series is designed to bridge the worlds of art, architecture and international law. It explores the different ways in which art and architecture and international law intersect. It also demonstrates that international law exists well beyond the written word. Lecture...

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...

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 emancipato...