Announcements: Webinar on Positivism and International Law; Multiple Legalities Conference; Webinar on State of Emergency and Immigration Detention; Asian Society of International Law Conference; Reconceptualizing International Law Session; Adjudicators in EU Trade Agreements; CfP Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

1. Webinar on ‘Positivism and International Law’. This webinar on 25 January 2021 (15:00-18:00 CET) is designed to provide for the opportunity for a conversation. Three one-hour panels will discuss questions that lie at the overlap of contemporary legal positivism and philosophy of international law. Organised by Nicolás Carrillo-Santarelli, Başak Etkin, and Kostia Gorobets, participants include Scott Shapiro, Monica Hakimi, Adil Haque and Rachel Lopez. For more details and to register see here.

2. Multiple Legalities Conference. The Graduate Institute, Geneva, and Humboldt University, Berlin, are hosting a virtual conference on “Multiple Legalities: Conflict and Entanglement in the Global Legal Order”. The conference, supported by ESIL, will take place from 13-15 January and will be live streamed here; the programme is available here. The conference focuses on multiplicity as a condition of the legal order beyond the state. It starts from the insight that multiple legal orders often overlap, intersect and enmesh; yet how exactly these different legalities interact and what kind of law emerges from this interaction is still far from understood. In our online conference, we explore how we can move beyond a simple, unitary frame to capture the relations of different legalities in the global order, bringing together scholars working in both public and private international law and transnational law, jurisprudence and legal philosophy, history and sociology of law.

3. Webinar on ‘State of Emergency and Immigration Detention: The Grey Areas of the Right to Liberty’. Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Bologna in collaboration with ‘Beyond Detention’ Research Unit’ are convening a webinar on 26 January 2021 at 3pm London time (4pm CET; 10am EST). The Webinar brings together international judges (Ksenija Turković, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights (Fionnuala Ni Aolain), and leading scholars, in order to address key legal and criminological questions arising from States’ expanded use of preventive detention, with special regard to counterterrorism and immigration control. Speakers will explore the following issues: the abuse of preventive detention as an antiterrorism measure, the ‘tensions’ between immigration detention and the international human rights standards, and the human rights implications of immigration detention at the national level. The full programme of the event and registration are available on the Event page.

4. Asian Society of International Law: What Place for International Law in the Asian Future?’ The 8^th Biennnial Asian Society of International Law conference will be held via Zoom. The Main Conference will be from 24-29 May. A Ph.D student workshop will be held on 20-21 of May. The deadline for applying for both events is 15 February 2021. Please see the conference link for details on how to apply.

5. Reconceptualizing International Law Session 2 – Transforming the Future: The Making of International Law. This series features academics and practitioners who will engage in critical thinking across the core topics of public international law to conceptualize practical measures and mechanisms to convert and transform normative foundations of justice into procedural and substantive realities for today’s world. In the second session to be held at 10am EST on 13 January, they will explore the obstacles which prevent equal participation and equal impact of all peoples across the globe in the making of international law, reviewing both formal settings such as treaty conferences or expert bodies, and informal law creating through the day-to-day decisions that affect the development of customary international law and general principles of international law. This session seeks to tackle the key questions of who gets to shape international law, what needs to change to allow international law to incorporate the views of all people, and what can change. This series is co-organized by Independent International Legal Advocates, International Arbitration Group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and the TWAIL Seminar at UCLA Law. Registration for the webinar can be found here.

6. Candidates for Adjudicators in EU Trade Agreements. On 18 December 2020 the European Commission and the EU’s Member States initiated a call for candidates to be appointed as adjudicators in EU trade agreements. The aim is to establish a pool of highly qualified individuals from which to draw persons to act as adjudicators in particular state-to-state dispute settlement proceedings or to appoint them to rosters of adjudicators. The EU is seeking both 3rd country nationals to act as chairpersons and persons with the nationality of an EU Member State. This initial call covers arbitrators for State-to-state dispute settlement and for panellists in trade and sustainable development disputes. A call will be made at a later date for adjudicators for investor-state disputes. For more information, including on how to apply, see here. 

7. Call for Papers: Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of the American University Washington College of Law, U.S.A. Submissions are invited to the 2021 Human Rights Essay Award Competition. The Human Rights Essay Award, sponsored by the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the American University Washington College of Law, seeks to stimulate the production of scholarly work in international human rights law. The topic of the 2021 competition is Human Rights and States of Emergency: Unexpected Crisis and New Challenges. Participants may choose any subject related to this topic, however the scope of the submission must directly relate to this year’s topic. In addition, we would note that international human rights law will be understood to include international humanitarian law and international criminal law. We will award two winners — one for submissions in English and one for submissions in Spanish — with a full scholarship (including lodging and transportation to and from Washington, D.C.) to complete the Certificate of Attendance or Diploma in the 2021 Program of Advanced Studies on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law which will take place from May 31 – June 18 2021. The deadline for submissions is 1 February 2021. Only participants with a law degree are eligible to enter this competition. If you would like additional information or have any questions, email humanrightsessay@wcl.american.edu.