Lecture summary: How does international law change? Must international law await change by external political intervention from outside the legal system? Or does international law provide reasons for its own development to those empowered to develop it? To address these questions, we should draw on an unlikely source. Joseph Raz was one of the greatest legal philosophers of all time. But he wrote relatively little about international law until the last decade of his life. Nevertheless, we should draw on Raz’s ideas to illuminate three pathways of international legal change: in the law of treaties, in customary international law, and in international adjudication.

Adil Ahmad Haque is a Professor of Law and Judge Jon O Newman Scholar at Rutgers Law School. Professor Haque writes on the law and ethics of armed conflict, and the philosophy of international law. His first book, Law and Morality at War, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Chair: Dr Federica Paddeu