AU Washington College of Law Hosts International Law Conference

WASHINGTON, DC - International Law After the Age of Three Worlds: Comparative and Historical Perspectives


Event: September 15, 2006, 10:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
American University, Washington College of Law
Room 528, 4801 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC

International law originated as the “public law of Europe,” yet its subsequent history has been a story about its increasingly universal reach. It has overcome (at least formally) the global split first between sovereign Western states and colonized non-Western states, and then the Cold War division between capitalism and communism. What is the status of international law after the age of Three Worlds? What does the (putative) disappearance of the Second World mean for the First-Third World relationship? In what ways is international law not only a system for regulating relations among states but also a technology that brings into being certain conceptions of the world and forecloses others? On what ideas of time, space, and subjectivity is international law premised, and how has it sought to standardize those ideas globally? At the same time, what are the ongoing legacies of various other “worlds” and “times” that are no longer legally or politically salient, and what is their contemporary significance? This conference will bring historical and comparative perspectives to consider these and related questions at the heart of international law.

Participants include Lama Abu-Odeh (Georgetown Law School), Padideh Ala’i (Washington College of Law), Kenneth Anderson (Washington College of Law), Arnulf Becker (Harvard Law School), Nathaniel Berman (Brooklyn Law School), Dan Danielsen (Northeastern Law School), Claudio Grossman (Washington College of Law), David Kennedy (Harvard Law School), Pierre Legrand (Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne), Ugo Mattei (University of Turin/Hastings College of the Law), Ralf Michaels (Duke Law School), Fernanda Nicola (Washington College of Law), Ileana Porras (Arizona State University), Annelise Riles (Cornell Law School), Mathias Reimann (University of Michigan), Ezra Rosser (Washington Collge of Law), Ruti Teitel (New York Law School), and Robert Wai (York University). The conference is co-sponsored by the Dean’s Office, the International Legal Studies Program, and the Women and the Law Program at Washington College of Law.

For more information, contact Professor Teemu Ruskola, truskola@wcl.american.edu, or the Office of Special Events & Continuing Legal Education, secle@wcl.american.edu, phone 202.274.4075, fax 202.274.4079, or go to www.wcl.american.edu/secle , click on registration.

Contact Information

Professor Teemu Ruskola

Professor of Law

Washington College of Law at American University

Contact via E-mail