On 12 and 13 June 2015, the Graduate Institute hosted an academic conference on the topic of “International Law and Time”. The event, organised by the Graduate Institute’s International Law Department and supported by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, welcomed over a hundred scholars and practitioners from around the world to Villa Barton.
In addition to the 18 speakers invited on the basis of a competitive call for papers, many of the Graduate Institute’s past and present Professors of International Law took part, including Andrea Bianchi, Andrew Clapham, Marcelo Kohen, Nico Krisch, Joost Pauwelyn, Zachary Douglas, Eric Wyler, Thomas Schultz, Gian Luca Burci, Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Georges Abi-Saab and Peter Haggenmacher. PhD candidates and Teaching Assistants in International Law Klara Polackova Van der Ploeg, Luca Pasquet and León Castellanos-Jankiewicz convened the conference to provide an opportunity to discuss and revisit some of the basic concepts and premises of contemporary international law.
The conference addressed three interrelated themes to tackle the problems of time and international law. The first focused on the perspectives, perceptions and manipulations of time that result in different legal interpretations or particular normative outcomes. The second involved how change and stability can assess the resilience of international law. The third explored ideas, methods and values that disappear over time and the techniques employed to restore them. The programme opened with a roundtable, where the faculty of the International Law Department discussed time-related legal problems they encounter in their work. The conference continued with six different panels tackling a range of specific issues, including the perception of time for international lawyers, the impact of time in the creation and operation of legal norms, international law between change and stability, the way in which international lawyers deal with the past and the appearance, disappearance and reappearance of legal concepts over time. In each panel, speakers presented their papers and a commentator gave a brief reflection on the theme.
Much like legal scholars, academics of other disciplines have experienced a renewed interest in the concept of time. Historians are increasingly aware of the quandaries of presentism, while cosmologists wrestle with different models of time and their implications. Yet, despite their topical relevance for science today, these questions are not new. In Physics, Aristotle questioned the very existence of time, suggesting it was merely a human construct. Centuries later, Newton affirmed that time was absolute, and Einstein more recently demonstrated the relativity of time. Although these perplexities remain, this conference has raised awareness about the temporal trajectory of contexts, perceptions and ideas in the discipline of international law.
To view a collection of photos from the conference, please click here.