The Politics of International Law

What is international law? What are its possibilities and limits in a world in which rules are pervasive and deeply institutionalised and, yet, might often seems to make right? In this lecture, Nicole Scicluna will discuss the role of law in contemporary international affairs. She will draw on examples from a number of thematic areas, including human rights, self-determination, the use of force, global environmental governance, global trade governance, and international criminal justice, in order to elucidate the deep interdependence between law and politics beyond the state. Resisting any straightforward juxtaposition of (pure) international law with (corrupted) power politics, she will suggest that international law both structures a system in which powerful actors entrench and enhance their privileges at the expense of weaker actors, and offers ways of ameliorating power differences. Ultimately, she will argue that the impact of international law on political actors and structures is both profound and constrained. This lecture is based Nicole Scicluna’s book, The Politics of International Law, which was published by Oxford University Press in February 2021.

Nicole Scicluna is a Visiting Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Hong Kong. Her research and teaching interests include the relationship between international law and international politics, EU constitutionalism, and legal and political aspects of European integration. Prior to moving to Hong Kong, she was a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Birmingham and a postdoctoral fellow at Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin. Her most recent book, The Politics of International Law was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Her first book, European Union Constitutionalism in Crisis (Routledge, 2015), assessed the impact of the euro crisis on the EU’s constitutional evolution. Her work has also been published in the European Law Journal, the International Journal of Constitutional Law, the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Common Market Studies and West European Politics.

Online seminars are organized through Zoom. Registration is required in order to receive access information. Link to the registration is available HERE.