Lecture summary: After 1945, the United Nations – and international organizations (IOs) more generally – were widely embraced as the ideal, democratic means to resolve international conflicts and promote global welfare. Sharing this almost feverish enthusiasm, a Western-controlled International Court of Justice adopted a deferential attitude toward IOs. The law it developed exuded confidence in the impartiality of IOs, premised on an unquestioning assumption that their subjection to legal discipline and judicial review would be unnecessary and even counterproductive. I propose that the time has come to concede that the utopian premises upon which the international law relating to IOs is based are flawed and outline a new course for the international law on IOs, one that addresses the inherent flaws of collective decision-making and can assist IOs to achieve their stated goals.

Professor Eyal Benvenisti is Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law, Columbia Law School (2022). He is the Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, CC Ng Fellow in Law at Jesus College, and the Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the Global Visiting Faculty of New York University School of Law. He is Member of the Institut de droit international and of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities. A Co-Editor of the British Yearbook of International Law, he served on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of International Law (2009-18). He was Project Director of the “GlobalTrust – Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity” research project, funded by an ERC Advanced Grant (2013-18). He previously was a Visiting Professor at the law schools at Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Toronto and Yale. He gave special courses at The Hague Academy of International Law (2013) and the Xiamen Academy of International Law (2017). Benvenisti will deliver the General Course in International Law at The Hague Academy of International Law in 2024.

Lecture summary: It is widely recognised that there is a dearth of women judges sitting on international courts and tribunals. In this lecture, particular attention will be paid to the question of why the lack of judicial parity matters. It will be argued that the dearth of women judges is both symptom and cause of the highly gendered way in which international law and international institutions operate. The idea of the totemic judge of international law whose male gender is rendered invisible and unremarked and who functions to enrobe the gendered norms and institutions of international law will be called forth. The female judge, conversely, is presented as a disruptive force whose very presence serves to place gender in the frame. Drawing on accounts from international courts and from the Feminist Judgments in International Law project, it will be concluded that an approach to judging that acknowledges and challenges structures of power – including gender – contains considerable transformative potential.

Dr Loveday Hodson is Associate Professor at the University of Leicester.

I joined Leicester Law School in 2004, since which time I have had a number of teaching and administrative roles. For the past few years I have taught on the International Law undergraduate module as well as convening the Feminist Perspectives on International Law and Legal Responses to Global Injustice postgraduate modules. During my time at Leicester I also contribute to the teaching of Constitutional and Administrative Law. I am currently the School's Deputy PRG Tutor (admissions) and Research Ethics Officer.

Lecture summary: The lecture will explore the extent to which key normative and institutional responses to the challenges raised by the digital age are compatible with, or interact with, changes in key features of the existing international human rights law (IHRL) framework. Furthermore, it will be claimed that the IHRL framework is already changing, partly due to its interaction with digital human rights. This moving normative landscape creates new opportunities for promoting human rights in the digital age, but might also raise new concerns about the political acceptability of IHRL.

Professor Yuval Shany is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law and former Dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee from 2013 to 2020 and served for one year during that time as Chair of the Committee. He serves, at present, as a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and as the head of the CyberLaw program of the Hebrew University CyberSecurity Research Center. He is also serving this years as the co-director of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies at King’s College, London.

The Eli Lauterpacht Lecture was established after Sir Eli's death in 2017 to celebrate his life and work. This lecture takes place on the first Friday lecture of the Centre at the start of the Michaelmas Term in any academic year. The Eli Lauterpacht Lecture for 2022 will be delivered by Professor Noah Feldman.

Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chairman of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and religion, and the history of legal ideas.

A policy & public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Feldman also writes for The New York Review of Books and was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine for nearly a decade. He hosts the Deep Background podcast, an interview show that explores the historical, scientific, legal and cultural context behind the biggest stories in the news.

Through his consultancy, Ethical Compass, Feldman advises clients like Facebook & eBay on how to improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. In this capacity, he conceived and architected the Facebook Oversight Board, and continues to advise the company on ethics and governance issues.

Further information: https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/noah-r-feldman/