Public Lectures from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

On Tuesday 17th November the Rt. Hon. Professor Shirley Williams delivered the 2009 Alcuin lecture at the Law Faculty, discussing the future of the European Union after the Lisbon Treaty.

Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, was one of the 'Gang of Four' moderate Labour politicians who in 1981 founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which merged with the Liberal Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats.

Baroness Williams was first elected as an MP in the 1964 General Election to represent the Labour Party in the constituency of Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She rapidly rose to a junior ministerial position and subsequently served as Shadow Home Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection, Secretary of State for Education, and Paymaster General until she lost her seat in the general election of 1979.

In 1981 she resigned from the Labour Party to form the SDP, along with Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers. Later that year she won the by-election for Crosby in Merseyside to become the first elected SDP MP. After losing her seat in 1983 she became a familiar face as a broadcaster on In conversation with Shirley Williams and has appeared on the BBC's Question Time more than any other panellist.

n 1988, Williams moved to the USA as Professor of Elective Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government until 2001. She helped draft constitutions in Russia, Ukraine and South Africa, served as a UN Special Representative to the former Yugoslavia, and has been President of Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs. With Amartya Sen, she is a director of the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, which seeks to reduce the risk of use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; and in 2007 was appointed by the Prime Minister as an independent advisor on nuclear proliferation.

The Alcuin lectures are named after the 8th century scholar Alcuin of York, who was a key advisor to the Emperor Charlemagne and a central figure in the Carolingian Renaissance. The lectures were established in 1999 with a benefaction from Lord Brittan, himself a former European Commissioner. The theme for the lecture must be some aspect of the relationship between Britain and the European Institutions. Previous speakers have included Lord Patten, Lord Hannay and Dr Carl Bildt.

Former President of the Queen's Bench Division, Sir Brian Leveson, was appointed by the government to carry out an independent review into the criminal courts. Specifically, the review considered 2 key themes, which are outlined in the Terms of Reference: 1) Reform: how the criminal courts could be reformed to ensure cases are dealt with proportionately, in light of the current pressures on the Crown Court, and 1) Efficiency: how they could operate as efficiently as possible.

On 9 July Part 1 of the report was published, dealing with reform measures. Here, Sir Leveson proposed a number of changes to reduce the pressure on the criminal justice system. What attracted the most media attention was the proposal to reduce access to trial by jury. However, there were other very interesting proposals which received less coverage and scrutiny.

In this short video Dr Jonathan Rogers explores some of the other changes proposed, and considers their likely effects.

Jonathan Rogers is Associate Professor in Criminal Justice at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He co-founded the Criminal Law Reform Now Network in 2017.

For more information about Dr Rogers, you can also refer to his staff profile.

Law in Focus is a collection of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law.

We will come together to celebrate the life and scholarship of our colleague and friend, Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen, until her untimely passing, was the Cecil A Wright Chair at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. A long-time friend of the Lauterpacht Centre, Karen was to have delivered the Centre’s 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures.

The 2025 Lectures will take place on 13 and 14 March, over four special sessions, conversing with Karen’s extraordinary body of work across the history and theory of international law, gender and feminism studies, and private and foreign relations law. Four former HLM Lecturers will deliver these lectures in conversation with three discussants, all outstanding scholars mentored by Karen.

Session IV Discussion and Q&A led by Professor Susan Marks

Chair: Professor Antony Anghie

Professor Marks will lead the discussion of the three talks, teasing out cross-cutting themes and the enduring influence of Karen Knop’s scholarship across different fields of international law scholarship.

Susan Marks is Professor of International Law at the LSE.

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures 2025: Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law: Continuing Conversations with Karen Knop

We will come together to celebrate the life and scholarship of our colleague and friend, Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen, until her untimely passing, was the Cecil A Wright Chair at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. A long-time friend of the Lauterpacht Centre, Karen was to have delivered the Centre’s 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures.

Session III Private and Foreign Relations Law

Professor Anne Peters in conversation with Dr Roxana Banu

Chair: Professor Campbell McLachlan

Professor Peters’s talk, 'Populism, Foreign Relations Law, and global order and justice', will discuss populist foreign relations law, which was Karen Knop’s last project, at the university of Helsinki and as a Max Planck fellow. This talk will make the point that ongoing transformations of the concept of law itself, of legal procedures, and of legal substance cut across the ‘levels’ of governance. And neither identitarian rhetoric, nor trade wars, nor border-fences will bring back an inter-state, Westphalian (or ‘Eastfalian’) order. We are living in conditions of global law (and transnational) law. Populist heads of state both deploy and defy this law (concluding populist treaties or deals such as the German-Turkish refugee agreements; denouncing treaties such as ICSID or the Paris Agreement; using their war powers to escape domestic critique; raising tariffs to please their voter-base, and so on). At the same time, domestic, local and transnational actors (ranging from cities to courts to Indigenous peoples, or philanthro-capitalists) activate all kinds of law to resist populism. Such global lawfare destabilises world order but also has a transformative potential. New legal forms (especially informal agreements), new legal processes (such as public interest litigation before the ICJ) and new legal principles (such as One Health; Rectification/reparation; and the exposure of double standards) are responding to the big challenges for global order and justice: the cultural, the social, and the ecological challenge.

Dr Banu’s talk, 'Foreign Affairs, Self-Determination and Private International Law', begins with the point that foreign affairs questions are often thought to lie at the very edge of private international law, perhaps in the leftover corners of the historical alignment between private and public international law. Similarly, in part on the assumption that private international law settles conflicts of laws between already established states, there wouldn’t appear to be any intuitive connection between nationalist or self-determination movements and the field of private international law.

This talk will show that these assumptions are mistaken. By engaging with the historical development of the field from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the talk will show that private international law has been deeply enmeshed in major geopolitical events generally, and in nationalist and self-determination movements, in particular. This enmeshment is neither accidental, nor exclusively modern. It is the inevitable result of some of private international law’s main analytical and conceptual building blocks.

Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg (Germany), and Professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin and Basel (Switzerland).

Roxana Banu is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at the Faculty of Law and Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures 2025: Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law: Continuing Conversations with Karen Knop

We will come together to celebrate the life and scholarship of our colleague and friend, Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen, until her untimely passing, was the Cecil A Wright Chair at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. A long-time friend of the Lauterpacht Centre, Karen was to have delivered the Centre’s 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures.

Session II Gender and Feminism

Professor Christine Chinkin in conversation with Dr Mai Taha

Chair: Professor Sandesh Sivakumaran

Professor Chinkin’s talk, 'Self-determination for women through three encounters' will explore three encounters with Karen's Knop's work that illustrate how self-determination remains illusory in many instances for women and their responses that challenge the structures of international law: discriminatory laws with respect to the nationality of married women; the Tokyo Women's Tribunal; and the Greenham Common women's peace camp.

Dr Taha’s talk, ‘Ways of Seeing: On the Gendering Work of Law and Violence’ will provide comments and reflections in engagement with Professor Chinkin’s talk, and Professor Knop’s writings.

Christine Chinkin, FBA, CMG is Emerita Professor of International Law at the LSE, Visiting Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security and Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan.

Mai Taha is Assistant Professor of Human Rights in the Department of Sociology at the LSE.

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures 2025: Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law: Continuing Conversations with Karen Knop

We will come together to celebrate the life and scholarship of our colleague and friend, Professor Karen Knop (1960-2022). Karen, until her untimely passing, was the Cecil A Wright Chair at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. A long-time friend of the Lauterpacht Centre, Karen was to have delivered the Centre’s 2025 Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures.

Session I - History and Theory

Professor Martti Koskenniemi in conversation with Dr Megan Donaldson

Chair: Professor Surabhi Ranganathan

Professor Koskenniemi’ s talk, 'Narrating International Society: Management of Pluralism according to Marcel Gauchet & Karen Knop’, will first address the emergence of the theme of a “law of an international society” in the 19th century, its use in the 20th century to support a managerial view of international institutions. It will then focus on the challenges that cultural and ideological pluralism poses to received ideas about the role of law in the government of domestic and international society.

Dr Donaldson’s talk, ‘Gaze, Agency and International Society’, reads Karen Knop’s early work on self-determination as a repertoire of techniques for thinking collectivities and affiliations against and across states. The multiple and mobile perspectives she brought to bear, and the agency she glimpsed in disparate individuals and communities, pervaded much of her later work too, and remains open to, even generative of, renewed understandings of international society.

Martti Koskenniemi is Professor Emeritus of International law at the University of Helsinki.

Megan Donaldson is Associate Professor of International Law at University College London.

An online debate considering the recent Supreme Court case of 'For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers' which was handed down on 16 April featuring Aidan O’Neill KC (Scot.), KC (E&W), BL (Ireland) who appeared for For Women Scotland. In the discussion Aidan reflected on his experiences of the case, the judgment and participate in a debate of the issues it raises going forward. This was followed by a response from Dr Lena Holzer, and then a question and answer session.

For more information see: https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/activities-archive

The Cambridge Pro Bono Project (CPP) hosted the annual lecture featuring Professor Judge Leonardo Brant (International Court of Justice; Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) on Thursday 16th May 2025.

The Cambridge Pro Bono Project is a research centre that draws on the subject-matter expertise of graduate researchers and Faculty experts to produce reports on a wide range of public interest matters. Every year, we invite distinguished speakers to address our researchers, staff, and students at the University of Cambridge.

For more information about the Cambridge Pro Bono Project, see https://www.cpp.law.cam.ac.uk/ Twitter (https://twitter.com/Cam_ProBono) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/CamProBono).

Lady Rose visited Cambridge on 3rd February 2025 at Newnham College, as a guest on the Cambridge University Law Society (CULS) Speaker programme. She spoke to CULS about her career, the landmark decisions she has contributed to since her appointment to the Supreme Court in 2021, and the functioning and evolving role of the Supreme Court.

Lady Rose was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1984. She practised as a barrister for ten years before joining the Government Legal Service. She served in HM Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and the Office of Counsel to the Speaker of the House of Commons. In 2006 she was appointed to her first judicial role as a fee-paid Chairman of the Competition Appeal Tribunal. She was appointed to further tribunal posts and became a Recorder in the Crown Court, Criminal jurisdiction in 2010. In May 2013 Dame Vivien was sworn in as a High Court Judge in the Chancery Division where she sat for over five years. She was appointed to the Court of Appeal in January 2019 and to the Supreme Court in April 2021.

In her role as a Justice of the Supreme Court, Lady Rose has been involved in a number of important cases across the range of the Court’s work from public law challenges concerning human rights and Scottish devolution issues, to tax cases and common law contract and tort cases.

Our introductory speakers in this episode are Joyce Mau (CULS President 2024-2025) and Kai Zhen Tek (CULS Speakers Secretary 2024-2025), who also organised the event.

The following cases are mentioned in this talk:

• Hassam and Another v Rabot and Another [2024] UKSC 11
• Independent Workers Union of Great Britain v Central Arbitration Committee and Another [2023] UKSC 43
• R (on the application of O v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 3
• In the matter of an application by Rosaleen Dalton for Judicial Review (Northern Ireland) [2023] UKSC 36
• McCulloch v Forth Valley Health Board [2023] UKSC 26
• R (on the application of Elan-Cane) (Art 8 male/female passports) [2021] UKSC 56
• Reference by the Lord Advocate of devolution issues under paragraph 34 of Schedule 6 to the Scotland Act 1998 (the “indyref2” case) [2022] UKSC 31
• Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland -Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Northern Ireland) Bill [2022] UKSC 32

This episode was edited by Jiwon Heo (CULS Publicity Secretary 2024-2025).

In the mare liberum, seafarers are protected by the age-old maritime duty to rescue anyone in distress at sea. This principle has also been codified in various treaties, including the 1974 Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention. This convention was adopted in response to the Titanic disaster and mainly focuses on safety on board of commercial ships. But the most vulnerable people at sea nowadays clearly are irregular migrants, sailing by rubber boats rather than cruise ships. Formally, these migrants are also protected by the non-refoulement principle under refugee and human rights law. Yet in practice, they are subject to a politics of protection which operates through an intermeshing of different legal regimes. Moreover, the rubber boats play a crucial role in this politics of protection, and ultimately preclude the irregular migrants from the protection of the non-refoulement principle. Through the case of the rubber boat, as a transnational legal encounter of people, rules and objects, I investigate the uneven geographies and temporalities of international law as an everyday practice. Moreover, by paying critical attention to how objects participate in actualising certain sets of relations and potentials over others, the concept of transnational legal encounters enables us to critically re-think the production of meanings, legalities and politics, layering complexities to law’s work in and to the world.

Tanja Aalberts is Professor of Law and Politics at the department of Transnational Legal Studies, VU Amsterdam. She is the author of 'Constructing Sovereignty between Politics and Law' (Routledge, 2012), co-author of 'The Changing Practices of International Law' (CUP, 2018) and co-edited 'The Power of Legality. Practices of International Law and their Politics' (CUP, 2016). Her work on the interplay between politics and law within global governance, misrecognition, colonial treaties and interdisciplinarity has been published in various journals and handbooks in International Law and International Relations. She was a founding board member of the European International Studies Association, and editor of the Leiden Journal of International Law. She currently is series editor for Voices in IR with Oxford University Press and member of the Advisory Council International Affairs for the Dutch government. Her current research focuses on transnational legal encounters and the aesthetics of international law. She is also doing archival research and writing a book on the Peace Palace as the first building of the international community.

https://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/press/events/2025/05/friday-lecture-rubber-boats-transnational-legal-encounters-mediterranean-prof-tanja-aalberts-vu