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POSTS BY Hannah Birkenkötter
10 July 2024

The Rule of Law and the United Nations Summit of the Future

Is the rule of law an unwritten principle for the UN system? Today, rule of law language has been gradually replaced by a new paradigm of ‘inclusivity’. The rule of law debate within the UN was centered on a thick understanding of the rule of law, highlighting substantive values rather than procedural guarantees. Absent a consented definition of the term, the rule of law was never considered to be an unwritten principle for the UN system. Continue reading >>
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25 March 2024

Why Today’s UN Security Council Resolution Demanding an Immediate Ceasefire Is Legally Binding

Today, the Security Council adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan as a first step to a “lasting sustainable ceasefire”. This comes after a months-long impasse and a total of five vetoes on the matter. The resolution is – despite statements to the contrary – legally binding and creates a legally binding request for an immediate ceasefire during Ramadan and a legally binding request to immediately release all hostages. Continue reading >>
24 February 2023

On the Side of International Law

This Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly resumed its Emergency Special Session on Ukraine, amidst a turbulent week that witnessed US President Biden’s surprise trip to Kyiv, Russian withdrawal from the New START Treaty, and Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi’s visit to Moscow, amongst other things. On Thursday, the Assembly adopted resolution ES-11/6 (draft here) with 141 votes in favor, seven against, 32 abstentions and 13 countries not voting. If the Russian aggression last year was a watershed moment for the United Nations, then the organ to watch these days is the General Assembly, and not the Security Council. Continue reading >>
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12 January 2021
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Conference Programme

Multiple legalities: a high-profile online conference on conflict and entanglement in the global legal order will be live-streamed on Verfassungsblog next week. Continue reading >>
12 January 2021
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Multiple Legalities: Conflict and Entanglement in the Global Legal Order

Whether a bureaucrat in an environmental ministry tries to keep track of the various reporting duties she needs to comply with, or an investor seeks to understand the law of international financial transactions; whether a human rights defender faces a multi-level system of domestic and international human rights institutions with which to engage, or a professional athlete competes in a setting where rules from various entities – states, professional associations, the competition conveners – apply, there are today few (if any) situations that are governed by only one single regulatory framework. Multiplicity, it is now widely agreed, is a condition of the law beyond and increasingly also within the state. Continue reading >>
12 January 2021
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Navigating Multiplicity in Law

How do different actors navigate law’s multiplicity? This panel will bring together perspectives from law, critical theory and legal anthropology to discuss how actors’ engagements with legal norms shifts our understanding of law as a unitary order. Continue reading >>
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12 January 2021
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Transnational Law’s Multiple Legalities

Almost seventy years after Philip Jessup coined the term “transnational law” as “all law which regulates actions or events that transcend national frontiers…both public and private international law”, the public-private law dichotomy is still deeply entrenched in legal thought. This panel brings together scholars who have regularly transcended this dichotomy in their work to discuss how legal multiplicity is impacting on our understanding of transnational law today. Continue reading >>
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12 January 2021
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Overlapping Spheres of Authority and Interface Conflicts in the Global Order

The Conference on Multiple Legalities is organized as part of the interdisciplinary research group “Overlapping Spheres of Authority and Interface Conflicts in the Global Order”. Three research groups present their main insights from this multi-year collaborative endeavor in conversation with Jeffrey L. Dunoff. Some research results can be found in a Global Constitutionalism Special Issue. Continue reading >>
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12 January 2021
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Images of Multiplicity: Spaces, Entanglement, Hybridity

When attempting to analyse multiple legalities, various conceptualizations have been and continue to be offered to capture this phenomenon. These different conceptualizations rest on different images of multiplicity. How do we arrive at such diverging conceptualizations, and what are the reasons behind them? This panel presents and discusses three different images of multiplicity. Continue reading >>
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12 January 2021
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Closing Roundtable

In closing, we aim to take stock of the two-day conference and our attempt to bring into conversation scholars from different backgrounds to understand the implications of multiplicity for the theory and practice of law beyond the state. Continue reading >>
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