Public Lectures from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Lecture 2: 'Exploring Nexus'

A series of three lectures by Dr. B.S.Chimni, Distinguished Professor of International Law, O.P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he was for over three decades Professor of International Law, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Between 2004-2006 he was the Vice Chancellor of the W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has been a Visiting Professor at Brown and Tokyo universities, the Graduate Institute, Geneva and the American University of Cairo, and has been visiting fellow at Harvard, Minnesota, and York (Canada) universities and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Nantes. He is an associate member of Institut de Droit International, and Member, Academic Council, Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP), Harvard Law School. He is former Vice-President Asian Society of International law and at present Member of its Advisory Council. He is a member of the editorial board of American Journal of International Law and also the former Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of International Law. In 2022 he was honored by the American Society of International Law with its Honorary Membership. The University of London has instituted a scholarship in his name for the MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies by distance-learning. He has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is the author of International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches. He is closely associated with the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement.

Lecture 1: 'Mapping the Terrain'

A series of three lectures by Dr. B.S.Chimni, Distinguished Professor of International Law, O.P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he was for over three decades Professor of International Law, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Between 2004-2006 he was the Vice Chancellor of the W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has been a Visiting Professor at Brown and Tokyo universities, the Graduate Institute, Geneva and the American University of Cairo, and has been visiting fellow at Harvard, Minnesota, and York (Canada) universities and the Institute of Advanced Studies, Nantes. He is an associate member of Institut de Droit International, and Member, Academic Council, Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP), Harvard Law School. He is former Vice-President Asian Society of International law and at present Member of its Advisory Council. He is a member of the editorial board of American Journal of International Law and also the former Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of International Law. In 2022 he was honored by the American Society of International Law with its Honorary Membership. The University of London has instituted a scholarship in his name for the MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies by distance-learning. He has also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is the author of International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches. He is closely associated with the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement.

Speaker: Professor Jens Binder (University of Tübingen)

3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.

For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website at http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Speaker: Professor Reinhard Bork (University of Hamburg)

3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.

For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website at http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Lecture summary: International economic law binds the state in relation to markets – most prominently with respect to cross-border trade in goods and services (trade) and the cross-border flow of capital (investment). The core tension to be managed in treaty design involves the balance between economic disciplines and the sovereign’s reserved regulatory authority – between liberalization and policy space. The trade regime has been fairly successful in striking this balance, while the investment regime has been less so. As a result, a natural tendency among reformers has been to look to trade for lessons and solutions to the challenges of investment treaties. This lecture considers why mechanisms that have worked in the former context have proven unworkable in the latter, and what that means for design going forward.

Both the trade and investment regimes preserve policy space through a process of justification at the dispute settlement stage. Policy justification is built into most trade agreements (and some investment treaties) through formal exceptions clauses. Even in the absence of such clauses, exceptions-style justification has informally penetrated both regimes through adjudicative reasoning and borrowing. This "exceptions paradigm" of justification has worked well in trade treaties, where it has been especially key to securing a workable balance in the WTO/GATT context – in a coherent way, on which actors can plan ex ante. But, where tried, the exceptions paradigm has not worked out in the investment regime. I argue that the difference lies in the institutions within which trade and investment rules and exceptions are embedded. This lecture compares the trade and investment regimes across three institutional nodes: (1) the nature of the right of action (public vs private); (2) the degree of judicial centralization (court system vs ad hoc arbitration); and (3) the available remedies (prospective injunctive relief vs retrospective damages). I suggest that it is trade law's public-oriented institutions that have made the exceptions clause workable – not the other way around. By contrast, investment law's private-oriented institutions make that system particularly inhospitable to exceptions-style justification.

Julian Arato is a professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School. His scholarly expertise spans the areas of public international law, international economic law, and private law. Arato serves as a member of the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law. He is active in the governance of the American Society of International Law, having recently served on the executive council and as co-chair of the international economic law interest group. He also serves as chair of the Academic Forum on Investor-State Dispute Settlement and as a member of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration Academic Council. Since 2018, Arato has served as an observer delegate to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Working Group III (ISDS Reform).

On 10 March 2023 Lord Philip Sales delivered the 2023 Cambridge Freshfields Lecture entitled "Constitutional values in the common law of obligations".

Philip James Sales, Lord Sales became a Justice of the Supreme Court in January 2019. Lord Sales was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, before reading law at both Churchill College, Cambridge, and Worcester College, Oxford.

He was called to the Bar of England and Wales at Lincoln's Inn in 1985 and was appointed First Treasury Junior Counsel in 1997. He was an Assistant Recorder from 1999 to 2001, Recorder from 2001 and 2008, and Deputy High Court Judge from 2004 and 2008. Lord Sales became a Queen's Counsel in 2006 and continued to act in the re-named post of First Treasury Counsel Common Law until his appointment to the High Court, Chancery Division in 2008. He was a member of the Competition Appeal Tribunal between 2008 and 2015, and Vice-President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal between 2014 and 2015. Between 2009 and 2014 Lord Sales served as Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for England. He was appointed as a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2014.

Timings:

• Professor Lionel Smith Introduction: 00:00
• Professor Pippa Rogerson Introduction: 07:46
• Lord Sales: 11:46
• Professor Graham Virgo Thanks: 56:17

The Cambridge Freshfields Lecture is an annual address delivered by a guest of the Cambridge Private Law Centre, and the event is sponsored by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

More information about this lecture, including photographs from the event, is available from the Private Law Centre website:

https://www.privatelaw.law.cam.ac.uk/events/special-events

Speaker: Dr Emmanuel Oke, Edinburgh Law School

Biography: Emmanuel Oke is a Senior Lecturer in International Intellectual Property Law at Edinburgh Law School. His research interests include international and comparative aspects of intellectual property law. Specifically, his research explores the interface between intellectual property and other branches of international law such as international trade law, international investment law, and international human rights law. He is equally interested in the relationship between intellectual property and development.

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Speaker: Professor Wolfgang Wurmnest

Biography: Wolfgang Wurmnest is a full professor of law at the University of Hamburg since 2021. Previously he served as a full professor at the Universities of Augsburg (2013–2021) and Hanover (2009–2013), and as a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Private International and Comparative Law, Hamburg (2004–2008). He was a visiting scholar in Foggia, Lyon, Hanoi and (from September 2022 onwards) Cambridge. His main fields of research are comparative and international tort and competition law.

3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners. The Cambridge Private Law Centre acknowledges with gratitude the generous financial support of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and of South Square: https://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/centre-activities

For more information about CELS see: https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series