Law and War: Paradoxes of a Civilizing Project

Abstract

The lecture examines the effort to govern war by law from its 19th century beginnings to the 21st century emergence of “lawfare”, the integration of law as an aspect of the strategies of States at war. Why has it been impossible to declare all war as “illegal”? Efforts to restrain the conduct of hostilities have coexisted with ever increasing numbers of civilian victims? Why? The talk will focus both on the difficulties of legal pacifism and just war (ius ad bellum) as well as the consequences of modern “humanization” and simultaneous perpetuation of war (ius in bello).

Speaker

Martti Koskenniemi - 

University of Helsinki

Bio

Martti Koskenniemi is Professor Emeritus of International law at the University of Helsinki. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has worked as diplomat with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and was a member of the International Law Commission (UN) in 2002-2006. He has held several visiting professorships across the world. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala, McGill, Frankfurt, Tartu, Brussels (VUB) and the European University Institute (EUI, Florence). His main publications include From Apology to Utopia; The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989/2005), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2001) and To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power 1300-1870 (2021). His most recent publication is a joint work with Professor David Kennedy (Harvard), Of Law and the World. Critical Conversations on Power, History and Political Economy (2023).

Joint Event

The event is organized in collaboration with "Voices from Contemporary Philosophy/2", in the context of which the Master Class for MA and PhD students will be held at 10:00 AM in Room 1