AUWCL Sponsors 21st Annual Grotius Lecture to Open ASIL Annual Meeting
March 29, 2019
On March 27, American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) sponsored the 21st Annual Grotius Lecture opening the American Society of International Law’s (ASIL) 113th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Over 700 leading and emerging voices in international legal scholarship, policy, and practice gathered to hear Martti Koskenniemi give his lecture entitled, “Enchanted by the Tools? International Law and the Enlightenment.” Anne Orford presented as Distinguished Discussant.
Koskenniemi is Professor of International Law the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. He was a member of the Finnish diplomatic service from 1978-1994 and of the International Law Commission (UN) from 2002-2006. He is member of the Institut de droit international, Fellow of the British Academy, and Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Koskenniemi’s 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 The Politics of International Law (2011). He is currently working on a history of international legal thought from the late medieval period to the 19th century.
Orford is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, Michael D Kirby Chair of International Law, and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at Melbourne Law School, and is a Visiting Professor of Law and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization at Harvard Law School. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a past President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law. Orford’s publications include International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press, 2011); Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2003); the edited collection International Law and Its Others (Cambridge University Press, 2006), and, as co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her latest book, International Law and the Politics of History, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2019.
ASIL President Sean Murphy provided welcome remarks and AUWCL Dean Camille Nelson served as moderator for the lecture.
Over 20 years ago, the International Legal Studies Program at AUWCL and ASIL launched the Grotius Lecture as an opening event for ASIL's annual meeting. The event is named after Hugo Grotius, who is considered the father of international law, and provides a forum for respected diplomats, scholars, and lawyers to present their ideas to ASIL members and the international legal community.
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