The Push and Pull of Fairness
Theoretical Approaches to Fairness in International Law
ESIL 2023 Conference, Aix-en-Provence, France
Aix Marseille University, 30 August - 2 September, 2023
The ESIL Interest Group on International Legal Theory and Philosophy (IGILTP) aims to explore different theoretical approaches to fairness in international law to create space for re-imagining fairness fitting for the 21st century.
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Fairness is both a catalyst for change (the push) and a necessary condition for a just and stable international legal order (the pull). From a political perspective, the former poses a set of questions related to redistribution of resources and opportunities among States. From a legal perspective, the inquiry is narrower. It pertains to substantive and procedural aspects of international law that push towards compliance through the authority of normative prescriptions. Some argue this narrower inquiry is tainted because international law is associated with unfairness of the past that created it, and presently creates unfairness. Others consider that a thorough discourse on fairness necessitates looking at the content of contemporary international law to appraise it afresh on compliance or lack of compliance. If we all aspire to fairness in international law and hope to re-imagine it for the 21st century, what are the criteria and parameters for determining fairness?
The ESIL Interest Group on International Legal Theory and Philosophy (IGILTP) aims to explore different theoretical approaches to fairness in international law to create space for re-imagining fairness fitting for the 21st century. The following key questions need to be addressed: what is fairness; whether international law can be fair; and what criteria should be used to determine the fairness of international law. A thorough theoretical starting point enables us to determine the differing perspectives on what the international legal order stands for and how/whether fairness manifests or should manifest. Notwithstanding the proliferation of theoretical debates, to date there has not been a systematic appraisal of fairness in different theories of international law addressing these key questions. Hence, this would be a novel contribution to the field anchoring discussions in a normative and theoretical context with a common goal of achieving fairness in international law.
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Abstracts due 23 January 2023
Selected participants notified by 14 April 2023
Draft papers due 1 August 2023
Conference presentations, 30 August to 2 September, 2023.
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Ozlem Ulgen (University of Nottingham, UK), Andrea Carcano (UniMore, Italy), Kevin Crow (Asia School of Business/MIT, Malaysia and USA)
GVCs and International Law
Perceptions, Boundaries, and Overlapping Legal Imaginaries of Commodity Production
Eafit University, Medellín, Colombia, 2023 - 2024
First Meeting, Eafit University, Medellín, Colombia, 17 July 2023
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An international collaboration that seeks to follow the ‘legal experience’ of particular commodities as they travel through global value chains / global supply chains, and as they interact with a wide spectrum of legal terrains (e.g., public, private, digital, physical, illicit, legitimate, etc.).
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Phase 1: Conceptual Workshop (invitation only), Eafit University, 17 July 2023
Phase 2: International Conference, Call for Papers will be made available in early 2024. Event planned for Summer 2024, Eafit University
Phase 3: Follow-up Meeting (if needed), Asia School of Business, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, late 2024
Book publication with leading academic press anticipated by 2026.
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Kevin Crow (ASB/MIT, Malaysia and USA); Lina Lorenzoni Escobar (Eafit University, Colombia).
Second Meeting info to follow later in 2023
Sponsored by the Asia School of Business, Malaysia & Eafit University Law School, Colombia
Leaving Meaning
The Material, the Natural, and the Absurd in International Law
This event will build upon the themes explored at ‘The Natural’ in International Law, University of Amsterdam, 8-9 September 2022 (see below)
Individual invitations and Call for Papers tentatively planned for late 2023
Event tentatively planned for Winter 2024 at ASB in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Collaborators TBD
‘The Natural’
in International Law
8-9 September 2022
University of Amsterdam (UvA), Netherlands
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What is ‘natural’ in international law and who decides what is ‘natural’? In this workshop we will not only explore what international law represents as ‘the natural’, but also where ideas of what is natural come from, how international law naturalizes certain conditions and how it responds to changes of what social systems perceive to be ‘the natural’. We will also discuss whether appeals to the natural are productive and under what circumstances they should be used, or if they should be used at all in law and legal reasoning. In tackling these questions, we will build on scholarly work exploring how international law reflects and reproduces social conditions, how it transforms historical contingencies into inevitabilities and how it solidifies social hierarchies by naturalizing them. We will focus our attention on three primary subject areas, namely the environment, the economy, and social order.
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Submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a bio of 200-300 words through this form by 6 May 2022. Selected participants will be notified by 20 May 2022 and invited to submit a 3,000- to 5,000-word draft paper by 15 August 2022.
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Kevin Crow (ASB & MIT); Eliana Cusato (UvA); Lys Kulamadayil (Graduate Institute & UvA).
Asia School of Business / Global Governance Institute, Graduate Institute, Geneva / Amersterdam Center for International Law
