Public International Law
 

Public international law is a central component of teaching and research at the LSE. We teach popular undergraduate options in general public international law and the international protection of human rights, together with a wide range of LLM options. While that range varies slightly from year to year, LLM offerings always include an advanced public international law course (currently ‘Rethinking International Law’) and a series of specialised courses, which in recent years have encompassed international economic law, international human rights law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, international law and the use of force, international refugee and migration law, international dispute resolution, world poverty and human rights, the human rights of women, international and European environmental law, investment treaty law, and the international law of self-determination.

Alongside these taught programmes, we are privileged to supervise the research of a large number of doctoral students working on topics that implicate public international law in a huge variety of ways. The focus of some recent and current projects has been on particular international legal norms and principles, such as sovereign immunity or self-defence. In the case of other projects, enquiry has revolved instead around international legal processes and institutions – law-making in the WTO, for instance, or the role of the UN in transitional and post-conflict justice. Yet other projects have moved to the arena of metadisciplinary concerns, with students tracing the significance of international law in public justificatory discourse or investigating the interrelation of Third World approaches to international law and the Marxist critique of imperialism.

Faculty members are all engaged in their own ongoing research and writing, and are also active participants in scholarly networks, holders of mandates to undertake work for the UN and other organisations, and members of international commissions of enquiry, national advisory committees, and the editorial boards of academic journals. Interests and approaches are again highly diverse, but what we all share is an ambition to link the study of international law to the practical contexts of collective life, and especially to the realities of poverty, violence, oppression and inequality and the struggles being waged to end them. Our aim, as teachers, supervisors and researchers, is to foster and develop forms of critical analysis that will advance understanding of the place of law in global affairs.

 

Faculty Click on name for biography and research interests: Dr Chaloka Beyani Professor Christine Chinkin Dr Devika Hovell Dr Stephen Humphreys Prof Martti Koskenniemi (Centennial Professor) Prof Andrew Lang Professor Susan Marks Dr Margot Salomon (Centre for the Study of Human Rights) Professor Gerry Simpson Mr Chris Thomas Dr Emmanuel Voyiakis              Research Students Irene Claeys Martin Clark Tor Krever Sroyon Mukherjee Rafael Lima Sakr Sally-Anne Way