ESIL Lecture de la Profesora Anne Orford en la Sorbonne: Histories of International Law and Empire
abril 1, 2013
La ESIL Lecture de la profesora Anne Orford sobre “Histories of International Law and Empire” está disponible en el website de la ESIL website. En su conferencia, la profesora Orford defiende que «el pensamiento de derecho internacional debe ser anacrónico». Copio el abstract:
ESIL Lecture Series
and
CYCLE DE CONFERENCES SORBONNE-DROIT
Histories of International Law and Empire
Professor Anne Orford
Abstract
There is a growing body of international legal scholarship concerned with the question of whether and how the imperial past is relevant to the internationalist present. The exploration of this question brings international lawyers into conversation with scholars studying similar issues in world history, philosophy, politics, literature, postcolonial studies, critical geography, intellectual history, and political economy. Yet as is often the case with interdisciplinary work, the resulting discussions have been riven by conflicts and territorial disputes over the proper way to interpret, understand, and study particular texts, events, or figures. This lecture addresses some of the methodological challenges that international legal scholars face when we attempt to write histories of international law and empire.
More particularly, this lecture is a defence of the place of anachronism in international legal thinking. The claim that we might want to study the imperial past because of its implications for the present represents an implicit challenge to the approach to the history of political thought that has dominated much Anglophone scholarship over the past forty years. The contextualist Cambridge school of intellectual history has cultivated a sensitivity to anachronism amongst historians of European political thought, particularly that of early modern Europe. Historians influenced by that school argue that past texts must not be approached anachronistically in light of current debates, problems and linguistic usages, or in a search for the development of canonical themes, fundamental concepts, or timeless doctrines. The clear demarcation between past and present that underpins much modern historical research requires that everything must be placed in the context of its time, and present-day questions must not be allowed to distort our interpretation of past events, texts, or concepts. Anachronism is one of the most regularly denounced sins of historical scholarship.
This lecture argues in contrast that international legal thinking is necessarily anachronic – that is, that the operation of modern law is not governed solely by a chronological sense of time, in which events and texts are confined to their proper place in a historical progression from then to now. The past, far from being fixed and immutable, is constantly being retrieved by lawyers as a source or rationalisation of present obligation. Thus while some legal historians identify as historians, and preach against the sin of anachronism, lawyers are and must be sinners in this sense. If the self-imposed task of today’s contextualist historians is to think about concepts in their proper time and place, the task of international legal scholars is to think about how concepts move across time and space.
Para proponer una ESIL Lecture, por favor siga estas indicaciones.
Call for papers
Deadline 15 April 2013
The European Society of International Law (ESIL) Interest Group on Business and Human Rights is calling for papers for its panel on 23 May 2013 at the 5th ESIL Research Forum, Amsterdam. Following the overarching theme of the Research Forum, International Law as a Profession, we invite papers addressing contemporary issues in the field of business and human rights which consider practical challenges in this context. Papers may consider (but are not limited to) the following perspectives:
– Advocacy: how can the business and human rights agenda be promoted through lobbying for or against regulation? How does the process of evidence gathering with regard to the lack of corporate compliance with human rights take place? How do practitioners engage with state and non-state actors to move the agenda forward?
– Litigation: how may practitioners take a corporation to court? What are the legal and procedural obstacles in different jurisdictions? What is the future of US litigation after Kiobel? What are the European alternatives?
– Policy and law making: how may international rules in this context be drafted and passed through national and international institutions? Papers considering this dimension may specifically refer to the national implementation and action plans and processes for the Ruggie framework which are currently taking place in various countries.
Please submit a 300 words abstract proposal (Word or pdf format) via email to Dr. Olga Martin-Ortega (O.Martin-Ortega@greenwich.ac.uk) by 15 April 2013. Candidates are requested to include their name and affiliation in the email but not in the abstract itself.
In order to participate in the Interest Group panel speakers need to be members of ESIL. The membership can be formalised once their abstract has been accepted.
Information on the ESIL Interest Group on Business and Human Rights in available here: http://igbusinessandhumanrights.wordpress.com/
Information on the 5th ESIL Research Forum is available here: http://www.esil2013.nl/
Programme of the 2013 Research Forum of the European Society of International Law (ESIL)
febrero 16, 2013
En esta página de SSRN se pueden descargar algunos de los trabajos presentados en la 5ta Conferencia Bienal de la European Society of International Law (Valencia 2012). El artículo más descargado hasta ahora es el de Louise Fawcett (Oxford University) sobre el concepto y la historia del regionalismo. A mí me ha interesado mucho el artículo de Philipa Webb (KCL) sobre el desafío regionalista al derecho de las inmunidades jurisdiccionales y el de Liliana Obregón (Universidad de Los Andes) sobre la construcción del regionalismo y derecho internacional latinoamericano. Buena lectura.
Entrevista a Bruno Simma
enero 20, 2013
Ya está disponible en la red la entrevista de la profesora Christina Voigt (Universidad de Oslo, Noruega) al antiguo Juez de la Corte Internacional de Justicia Bruno Simma. La entrevista se encuadra dentro de las conferencias de la ESIL (ESIL Lectures series), que comenzaron el año pasado con Daniel Goldhagen, David Kennedy y Armin von Bogdandy. La entrevista es excelente y sirve como un recorrido por los grandes temas recientes de la jurisprudencia de la Corte Internacional de Justicia. Es un poco larga, pero muy recomendable. La próxima conferencia ESIL es el miércoles próximo en La Sorbonna, París, y estará a cargo de la profesora Ann Orford (Universidad de Melbourne), que hablará sobre ‘Histories of International Law and Empire’.
Call for Papers: 5th ESIL Research Forum on «International Law as a Profession»
septiembre 18, 2012
The society is delighted to announce that the 5th ESIL Research Forum will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on Thursday 23 – Saturday 25 May 2013, hosted by the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Department of Transnational Legal Studies, VU University Amsterdam (VU). The theme of the Research Forum is ‘International Law as a Profession’ and the Forum will allow the professional community to gain new insights into how to address the new challenges facing international law in the globalized environment of the second decade of the 21st century.
Updated information about the event can be found at all times on the Research Forum website.
The Call for Papers and Panel Proposals is now open, and the deadline for submission of abstracts and panel proposals is Thursday 15 November 2012. All ESIL members are encouraged to submit abstracts and proposals for panels. Please forward this email to any colleagues who may also be interested.
On Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-finding Mechanisms
By Rob Grace and Claude Bruderlein
A simple glance at recent news headlines reveals the growing prevalence of international missions tasked to monitor and report on potential violations of international law. In the past few months alone, the United Nations (UN) dispatched a team to monitor the ceasefire in Syria, and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) mandated a commission of inquiry to examine Israeli settlements in the West Bank, extended the mandate of the International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, and mandated a new Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment. These missions are part of a rapidly growing trend. The international community — imbued, since the end of the Cold War, with a new sense of responsibility for international legal accountability and civilian protection — has increasingly employed monitoring, reporting, and fact-finding (MRF) mechanisms to collect information on the vulnerabilities of civilian populations and investigate potential violations of international law.
But the recent proliferation of MRF mechanisms has outpaced endeavors of MRF policymakers to reflect on past practice. As a consequence, MRF actors have struggled — and continue to struggle — with a paucity of sufficient resources and guidance. ThisReflection contemplates how this state of affairs arose, examines the key challenges that result, and ponders possible pathways forward.
ESIL tiene un nuevo website
junio 25, 2012
El nuevo website de la ESIL se puede consultar aquí. El cambio es grande y tiene un montón de recursos nuevos, incluyendo una
nueva publicación llamada ESIL Reflections, cuya primera entrega está firmada por el profesor Laurence Helfer con un análisis de la reunión de Brighton sobre el futuro de la jurisdicción europea de derechos humanos: ‘The Burdens and Benefits of Brighton’.
La inscripción a precios reducidos para la Conferencia Bienal de la ESIL, que se celebrará en Valencia los días 13 a 15 de septiembre, termina el 30 de abril. Después de esa fecha es bastante más caro y empiezan los problemas de espacio. La inscripción se hace online en el website se la conferencia.
This year’s ESIL-SEDI Biennial Conference will be held in Valencia on 13-15 September. The subject of the conference is Regionalism and International Law and you can find the programme of the event on the conference website. As you can see from the programme, the topic will be explored through eight fora and eight agorae and there will be two keynote sessions. All members of the society are cordially invited to join in the debates.
Registration is now open and the ‘Early Bird’ registration period is until 30 April. Everyone wishing to attend the conference −whether as a delegate or as a speaker – needs to register using the online registration system on the conference website. The number of places at the conference is limited and registrations will be handled on a “first come, first served” basis so please register now rather than waiting until later.
aquiescencia 