This episode draws together perspectives on where we are, and international law’s past and future, from the vantage points of the climate regime, global economic governance, and the architecture on the use of force. Christina Voigt (Professor in the Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo, first Co-chair of the Paris Agreement’s Compliance and Implementation Committee), Andrew Lang (Professor of International Law and Global Governance, University of Edinburgh) and Mona Ali Khalil (affiliate of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, director of her own strategic consultancy, and a former Senior Legal Officer in the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency) join Megan Donaldson to reflect on the present moment. The conversation brings out divergent senses of the history of the present; perceptions of how deep the current dissensus is; and views on the avenues open to lawyers today.
(As if to underline the rapidity of geopolitical shifts at present, the window between the start of recording and release of the podcast saw, among other things, the US initiation of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, announcements of major tariffs, and advocacy of forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza—developments which could not be addressed directly by the panellists but some of which are anticipated in the discussion).
For further reference, Christina Voigt draws on ‘The Power of the Paris Agreement in International Climate Litigation’ (RECIEL 32) (and those interested in time and temporality may also be interested in David Scott’s recent post on ‘Time and Temporality before the ICJ in the Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change’). Andrew Lang’s remarks touch on his article, ‘“Global Disordering”: Practices of Reflexivity in Global Economic Governance’ (from EJIL 35(1), February 2024) and mention Deborah Cowen’s The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade (U Minnesota Press 2014) and Peer Schouten’s Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa (CUP 2022). Mona Ali Khalil draws on arguments in Empowering the UN Security Council. Reforms to Address Modern Threats (OUP 2024), co-edited with Floriane Lavaud and co-authored with diplomats and other practitioners.
