1917 was nothing if not eventful. The October Revolution and the revolutionary Mexican Constitution shook the foundations of the international order and international law in profound, unprecedented and lasting ways. One hundred years later, living again through eventful times, we propose to revisit 1917 as an international legal event and to examine its multidimensional impact on the discipline of international law. More specifically, we are interested in analysing the importance of these revolutions for various international legal fields, including the law of armed intervention, the laws of state succession, state responsibility and state immunity as well as international investment law or the rules governing statehood for the purposes of international law.
This conference will draw together a range of scholars and disciplines in order to explore the place of revolution in the international legal order. How did or does international law conceptualise or juridify revolution? What different mechanisms did international law employ in response to the various challenges posed by revolution to particular interests, regimes or paradigms (of property, peace, or politics)? What different forms of intervention (through the laws of war, of expropriation, or of restitution) did they prompt? In the wake of a revolutionary event, should we speak of international law, or rather of rival international laws? Is international law’s structure a means of countering or containing revolution?
24th-25th August 2017-Melbourne Law School
Organisers: Ms Kathryn Greenman, Professor Anne Orford, Ms Anna Saunders, Dr Ntina Tzouvala – Laureate Program in International Law ‘Civil War, Intervention and International Law’
Email abstract submission to konstantina.tzouvala@unimelb.edu.au by 1 May 2017. Successful applicants will be notified by mid-May 2017.
