Roger O’Keefe at ESIL

As a fitting follow-up to Frederic and Alexandra’s fabulous fable on the rise and fall of Eunomia, readers might be interested in Roger O’Keefe extraordinary performance at ESIL in Cambridge this September. To much hilarity among the audience, Roger spun a tale about gaps in the law that featured a stellar cast, including a bespectacled and boyish Finnish professor, a mercurial French ILC rapporteur, and EJIL’s own Joseph Weiler, who reminded everyone, as the ‘Talmud long ago taught us’, ‘that even contradictory conclusions can both be the living word of God’.

Roger’s speech – which is not only extremely funny but has something truly useful to say – is now available on the Cambridge conference website (h/t to the new blawg written by Nottingham PhD students). As good as the speech itself was, it was Roger’s delivery that made it truly great. Easily one of the most entertaining (not to mention non-soporific) academic performances that I’ve ever seen; regrettably, no Youtube clip survives. Too bad if you weren’t there, but please do read the speech itself!