Credit: Edinburgh Law School

In recent years the International Court of Justice has been drawn or dragged – by applicants, intervening states, and UN organs – into matters sitting at the apex of the contemporary “polycrisis”. 

These include interstate war framed through atrocity-prevention treaties, the legal governance of catastrophic climate risk, and conflicts whose humanitarian and geopolitical stakes are enormous. The resulting docket looks, at first sight, like a rule-of-law success story. The Court is busier; cases are larger; third-state participation on an unprecedented scale signals the participation of the global community in the discussion of shared interests and values.

This inaugural lecture assesses what this surge in mega-dispute litigation reveals about the role of international law under conditions of systemic stress.

Register here