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About
Susan Marks joined LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights. Susan is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Research
Research Interests
I am interested in the concepts and ideas that intersect with international law and human rights. To date, this has led to studies on themes that include democracy, poverty, terrorism, exploitation, apology and dignity. I am also interested in the history of thinking about international law and human rights, and in the language commonly used to talk about the world. I like to draw on an eclectic array of material which encompasses literary texts and visual imagery.
Publications
Trucanini's Stare: Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
An expanded version of my Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures (2021), this book takes dignity in everyday life (‘dignified care’, ‘dignity at work’, etc.) as a starting-point for reconsidering the history and politics of dignity. Emphasis is laid on the character of dignity as a set of embodied and relational practices.
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A False Tree of Liberty (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Writing in 1796, Thomas Spence denounced the rights of man for setting up a ‘false tree of liberty’. This book revisits the debate in which Spence was taking part, and considers its significance for the critique of human rights today.
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International Law on the Left: Re-Examining Marxist Legacies (editor) (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
This book brings together essays which consider the contemporary relevance of Marxist thought for the study of international law, along with the history of efforts to analyse international law in Marxist terms.
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International Human Rights Lexicon (with Andrew Clapham) (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Arranged thematically in alphabetical format, this book surveys the significance and limits of international human rights law on topics that range from arms control to work. The book was written with the support of a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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The Riddle of All Constitutions (Oxford University Press, 2000)
This book explores the ideas about democracy that inform international legal thought. In doing so, it considers the operation of these ideas as ideology, at the same time offering some general observations about pertinence of ideology critique in the international legal field. A Chinese translation of the book appeared in 2005.
- 'If the World Is a Family, What Kind of Family Is It?' European Journal of International Law (2025)
- 'The Right to Live: Response to the Commentators' 9 London Review of International Law (2022) 445-456
- 'The Corporation and Three Cokes' 8 London Review of International Law (2020) 177-181
- 'Three Liberty Trees' London Review of International Law (November 2019) 7 (3) 295–319
- 'Even the dead will not be safe: international law and the struggle over tradition'. In: Werner, Wouter, de Hoon, Marieke and Galán, Alexis, (eds.) The Law of International Lawyers. Reading Martti Koskenniemi (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (with Andrew Lang)
- 'The War against Cliché: Dispatches from the International Legal Front' in Baetens and Chinkin (eds.) Sovereignty, Statehood and State Responsibility: Essays in Honour of James Crawford (Cambridge 2015) (with Karen Knop)
- 'People with Projects: Writing the Lives of International Lawyers', 27 Temple International and Comparative Law Journal (2014) 437-453 (with Andrew Lang)
- 'Backlash: the undeclared war against human rights' European Human Rights Law Review 2014, 4, pp.319-327
- 'Four Human Rights Myths' in Kinley, Sadurski, Walton (eds.) Human Rights: Old Problems, New Possibilities (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013)
- 'Law and the production of superfluity' Transnational Legal Theory (2011) 2(1) pp.1-24
- 'What has become of the emerging right to democratic governance?' Eur J Int Law(2011) 22 (2): 507-524
- 'Human rights and root causes' Modern Law Review 2011, 74(1), 57-78
Teaching
Engagement and impact
Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures
In 2021, Professor Susan Marks delivered the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures, a long-running lecture series organised by the Cambridge University Law Department, featuring leading scholars in the field of international law.
Click below to view Professor Marks's three lectures, 'On Dignity':