In recent years, headlines have repeatedly raised the question of whether international law is dead. Violations of the prohibition on the use of force, withdrawals from treaties, and sanctions against the judges of the International Criminal Court have all fuelled the doubt.
In this #EUIUpFront conversation, Sarah Nouwen and Arnulf Becker Lorca, both professors in the EUI Department of Law, take up a question they have each been asked many times: Are they teaching a subject that no longer exists?
Their starting point is to ask who is actually pronouncing it dead. As Nouwen notes, the people most failed by international law, from Gaza to Afghanistan, Sudan, and the small island states threatened by climate change, are not the ones declaring it finished. They continue to invoke it, bring cases, and rally around its institutions. It is more often those who violate international law who are quickest to declare its death.
The conversation also asks whether the language of crisis can be put to better use. Returning to the older meaning of crisis as a moment of reflection, judgment, and repair, the two consider what it would mean to confront the deep inequalities the present system sustains. Becker Lorca relates this to his forthcoming work on withdrawal from the United Nations, which uses the idea of withdrawal not to dismantle the institution but to reimagine world order and reclaim the Charter's promise to "the peoples" of the United Nations.
Watch the full video on the EUI YouTube channel.
The #EUIUpFront conversation series brings together EUI scholars to discuss the most pressing topics of our time from diverse perspectives.
Watch all #EUIUpFront videos on the EUI YouTube channel.
Sarah Nouwen is a Full-time Professor in the EUI Department of Law and Co-Director of the Academy of European Law. Her research works at the intersection of law and politics, war and peace, and justice and the rule of law, with particular attention to how international law plays out in concrete situations. She is also an Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of International Law.
Arnulf Becker Lorca is Chair in Public International Law in the EUI Department of Law and Co-Director of the Academy of European Law. A historian of international law, his research examines how international law has enabled both colonialism and resistance to it, and how scholars and states beyond the West have shaped its development.