The KNVIR (Koninklijke Vereniging voor Internationaal Recht) Spring Lecture will explore international law’s complicated relationship with nationalism in light of contemporary global predicaments. It will examine three critical junctures – the Second World War, the era of decolonization, and the end of the Cold War – each marked by ambitious politico-legal projects of worldmaking that aimed to transcend nationalism in pursuit of just futures. Each time they failed. The lecture revisits those moments for the legal imagination they summoned, for the unfulfilled potentials they contain, and to draw critical lessons from their failures. The further we move back, the more clearly the linkages emerge between peace, social justice, and progressive visions of international law – and the more urgently contemporary claims to defend or rebuild the international rule of law must be interrogated.

Prof. Ingo Venzke, Professor for International Law and Social Justice, University of Amsterdam, will give the lecture. ‘Dr. Luca Pasquet, Utrecht University, and Dr. Misha Plagis, Leiden University,’ will comment on the topic from a contemporary perspective after which the floor is opened for discussion with the audience. The meeting is followed by drinks.

Register by Wednesday the 30th of May