This seminar focuses on framing mercenary violence in the context of the use of force, taking up Judith Butler’s call to treat the frames of war as ‘politically saturated’, and as ‘operations of power’. First, it traces the dominant and hidden narratives of mercenary violence from 1945 to the present day, arguing that these narratives entail specific framing choices that are themselves operations of power concerned with privileges in war. Next, it addresses the productive effects of the various framing choices. Finally, it traces the ways in which the framing of commercial violence in civil war and revolution has helped to shift broader contests over the permissible and impermissible recourse to force, blurring the boundaries between armed conflict and policing, or war and humanitarianism. It shows that the framing of mercenarism goes to the very heart of modern contests over the legitimacy of the recourse to violence in international law.

John Locke’s (1632-1704) theory of property rights has had a profound impact in understandings of property worldwide. In the Two Treatises of Government, the great late-seventeenth century English philosopher gave a twofold explanation of what property rights are: dividing them into natural and consensual. This division loosely corresponded with the state of nature of those states: those that have not entered into leagues and agreements and those states that had done so, having consented ‘to the use of money’. A few years after the anonymous publication of his book on political theory, the country saw some radical changes in the political and economic system, such as the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the rise of the London Stock Market with the birth of significant companies such as the Bank of England and the new East India Company. In this seminar I contextualize Locke’s legal and economic theory on property rights in this momentous period of British history and try to interpret his ambivalent commitment to nature and capital.

Increasingly, there is interest in the ‘making’ of international law by legal scholars. These pieces don’t necessarily question the distinction between the creation and application of law. They do suggest, however, that at the very least scholars’ ‘doings’ are contributing ‘something’ to the construction of international law. In this seminar I seek to make this ‘doing something’ tangible. I do so by analysing metadiscourse in five scholarly pieces written on the US election hack in 2016. The assumption underlying this seminar is that by means of an analysis of metadiscourse, it becomes possible to point out where exactly a writer is ‘doing something’ to construct international legal knowledge, steering the reader’s thoughts in a particular direction and laying claim to ‘what the law is’. In so doing my aim is to make the writers of international law visible in their own texts.

This seminar traces the shift from international refugee protection to a model of externalized protection, examining how countries in the Global South are seen as the primary source of refugee protection, and protection measures are reoriented towards an increased openness towards, and dependence on, private non-state actors. The seminar will present some conclusions on the legal and governance implications of this externalization and financialization of international protection.

In the aftermaths of the 2011 Egyptian uprisings, the Egyptian Human Rights movement was struck by an ambivalence that took over the spirits of the uprisings. This ambivalence manifested itself through the loss of the movement’s capacity to function. This seminar traces this loss through analyzing the western psyche on resistance that reduces the 2011 Egyptian uprisings to an instantiated act that seeks more human rights.

This seminar draws on feminist posthuman theory to argue that the crisis around autonomous weapons systems (AWS) has detracted attention from the increase in human-machine life/death decision making in conflict via the use of an array of military technologies which are not defined as AWS.

Through an engagement with the Haitian Revolution plays and historical biographies penned by the Martinique anti-colonial playwright, poet, activist and politician, Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), this seminar attempts to make a case for (and draw out lessons in) the writing/staging of ‘theatrical histories’ by international lawyers. Register here.

This seminar follows a trail of legal and diplomatic documents from World War I to the establishment of the mandate system that still influence political discourse in the Middle East today. It uncovers in them a forgotten regional moment of international law in the Middle East, a moment in which ‘the region’ was not yet divided into separate jurisdictions behaving according to the prediction of a realist theory of international law.

This seminar explored the rise and fall of the classical doctrine of civil war during its ‘second coming’ from the 1890s to the 1960s, in the context laid out in Martti Koskenniemi’s monograph ‘The Gentle Civilizer of Nations’. This presentation examined the project of a series of scholars and their works that sought to codify and to reinforce a formal legal framework for civil war and insurgency under international law.

This seminar reflected on the broader potential effects of the category of ‘collateral damage’ on the milieu in which resort to force is debated. Among the project’s main questions are: what does the use of international humanitarian law’s categories tell us about our relationship with the use of force; and does the diffusion of this language change that relationship?

This seminar explored Sweden's current feminist foreign policy. It aimed to highlight not only the lines of continuity with the Swedish activist foreign policies of yesteryears but also the discontinuities: what is distinctive about the current feminist foreign policy compared to previous Swedish efforts? What vision of change fuelled the ‘old’ activist foreign policy and which vision is driving the present one?

The notion of the ‘unwilling or unable state’ has recently lived through a renaissance in international law and international relations discourse. In this  seminar, Paulina Starski sketched how this notion is employed, critically assessed how it fits into the scheme of existing international legal rules and highlighted its potential dangers.

This event placed Markus Gunneflo in conversation with the Laureate Program in International Law's Ntina Tzouvala to discuss his recently published book, Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History, and its implications for international law and political discourse.

During this seminar, Pål Wrange discussed the implications of the legal inequality between rebels, who can be criminally liable for actions in war under domestic law, and state actors, who have a monopoly on legitimate violence. He will examine the different options available to international humanitarian lawyers and the practical and theoretical implications of the current approach.

In this seminar, Matilda Arvidsson revisited the occupation of Iraq in 2003–2004 to ask about the use of the 19th century Lieber Code during this time. Why did an antiquated American Civil War code resurface in the wake of the international armed conflict in Iraq, and to what effect?

In this seminar, Scott Newton discussed the legal-institutional project of mature Stalinism and its post-liberal legality through a shared toolkit of legal concepts, processes and approaches with other 20th century post-liberal legalities. He argued that Stalinism stands as a monument to the Soviet legal imaginary in its radical scope and Promethean ambitions, notwithstanding its limitations and flaws.

In this seminar, Dr Robert Knox examined recurring accusations of hypocrisy and their significance for international law. Rather than being merely political and extra-legal, he argued that these accusations are integral to international law and that they have played varying roles throughout history. Are these accusations politically fruitful, or do they reaffirm the wider system in which they are made? 

In this seminar, Maj Grasten explored the way in which the rule of law is deployed in order to justify and sustain international interventions. She used a multi-sited ethnography in order to trace the inscription of meaning by international lawyers into the rule of law in post-conflict situations, and to reveal the politics of legal translation inherent in humanitarian practices.

In this seminar, Maria Varaki outlined the debate on emerging norms of sovereign responsibility for human security. Through linking human security to forced displacement,  she proposed an expansion of current understandings of human security, and an agenda for further research.