Dr Siva Thambisetty

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Finance and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

How to apply: Priority will be given initially to LLM, MSc Regulation and MSc Law and Finance students on a first-come-first-served allocation.

Spaces permitting, requests from all other students will be processed on the same first-come-first-served allocation.

By submitting an application, students are confirming that they meet any pre-requisites specified. Providing an additional written statement will not aid a student's chances of being accepted onto a course, and statements are not read.

This course examines the role of law and process of norm-creation to address planetary challenges through treaty-making. Rather than presenting treaties as technical legal instruments to be analysed doctrinally, the course showcases treaty-making as a site of contestation over rights and interests captured in legal text. Students will be exposed to aspects of law-making that is often invisible in the text of the law – such as affective motivations (over sovereign resources for example), positioning of expertise (which experts are trusted and who decides), and agenda-setting (through timing and drafting of textual proposals) to open up the black box of Treaty-making and formation. Students will consider the meaning of ‘global governance’ and the place of Treaty-making and formation in it using theoretical approaches. A key aim is to expose students to the process of ‘authoring’ of international law through negotiation, compromise, strategic disagreements and identification of interests and positions.

The course will take a domain-specific approach to Treaty-making by examining the formation of a slew of biodiversity treaties since 2019 including the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) or Ocean Treaty (which enters into force in January 2026), the Pandemic Agreement (text agreed in 2025), the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge (Text agreed in 2024), and the Cali Fund – a multilateral mechanism set up in 2025 under the Convention on Biological Diversity. These seemingly disparate Treaty-making developments are united by the resource value of genetic material and digital sequence information, concerns for the equitable exploitation of resources and the scale of different kinds of planetary challenges that traverse sovereignty, the common heritage of mankind and intellectual property rights. Critical approaches to problem-solving and Treaty-making will consider the use of expertise, validity of representation and agenda-setting, role of state and non-state actors, processes that lead to production of the text of the law, and the role of civil society organisations.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Essay (2000 words).

• S Ratner and Anne-Marie Slaughter (eds) The Methods of International Law (ASIL 2004)
• T Gehring, ' Treaty-Making and Treaty Evolution', in D Bodansky, J Brunnée and E Hey (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Environmental Law, Oxford Handbooks 2008
• A Marketou and J Mendes (2023) ‘Laws Agency in Global Governance: Inquiries into Algorithmic Governance and Finance Transnational Legal Theory 14(4) 353-359
• S Sturdy (2025). The Commercial Roots of the Genomic Commons. Social Studies of Science, 55(5), 655-682. 
• S Thambisetty, ‘The Unfree Commons: Freedom of Marine Scientific Research and the Status of Genetic Resources beyond National Jurisdiction’ (2025) 88(2) MLR 300
• B Sherman Intangible Intangibles Cambridge University Press 2024
• J Mossop and D Freestone (Eds) The Agreement on Marine Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction: Commentary and Analysis Oxford University Press 2025
• E Morgera Fair and Equitable Benefit Sharing in International Law Oxford University Press 2024

Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period.