Global Crises and International Law (LAWS90349)

Today, international law and its institutions are being called upon to respond to and redress multiple, intersecting global crises, including climate change and its manifold consequences; global instability and conflict, including amongst nuclear powers; ‘trade wars’; rising inequality between and within states; and new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence. 

Understanding these developments requires knowledge in and across various distinct  domains of international law, including the peaceful settlement of disputes; international environmental law, the use of force and the laws of war; international economic law; law and development; international migration law; and global health law. 

This subject considers these crises, and their mutual imbrications, examining the role of international law in addressing them by drawing on these distinct but related subject legal domains. It aims to think across these crises and domains to identify points of contact, co-constitution and rupture, and to consider both the potential and limitations of international law. 

At the same time, international law remains deeply implicated in the very social problems and transformations that imperil humankind and the planet – and that threaten to make this century its last. As a mode of thought and governance, ‘crisis’ is not new to international law. As Judge Hilary Charlesworth famously observed, international law is a ‘discipline of crisis’: throughout its history ‘crises’ have both empowered and shaped and the field -  giving it purpose, while also limiting its imagination and capacity for reflexivity.  

This subject critically examines the historical and theoretical role that global crises – real and imagined – have played in the formation, development and functioning of international law. 

Indicative list of principal topics: 

• Global Crises and International Law: A history 
• Thinking through crises 
• Climate change and ‘just transition’ 
• Global Conflict 
• The new New International Economic Order 
• Migration and/as Decolonisation 
• Pandemics 
• Technological transformation 
• The Geographies of ‘crises’: for whom, where?