Comparative International Law
Organised by Robert Schütze and Mathias Siems (European University Institute)

The idea that there is not one but many conceptions of international law and that there may even be many distinct international legal orders has a long pedigree.

During the long nineteenth century, we thus see the gradual consolidation of a “European” international law as well as the beginnings of a (Latin) American conception of international law; and for much of the twentieth century, a distinct socialist approach to international law has competed with that of the Western (capitalist) world. For a long time, the world and international law were indeed “deeply divided”; yet with the decline of the “Second Word” (and despite a rise in “Third World” approaches to international law), this plurality of international law conceptions appears to have been overshadowed by post-1989 claims of universalism.

In today’s conceptual world, the combination of international and comparative law has therefore increasingly come to “sound like an oxymoron”. And yet remnants of the previously intimate relationship can still be found aplenty today. What, then, are the relationships between international and comparative law?

Organised by the Global Policy Institute (Durham) in cooperation with the European University Institute (Florence), this two-half-day workshop will explore some older and newer relationships between the disciplines of international and comparative law. Apart from revisiting the idea of regional approaches or “ideologies” of international law, we will also examine the “comparativist” idea of legal transplants within international across both a “vertical” and “horizontal” dimension. A vertical “transfer” may here take place from the national law(s) to the international legal order(s) and such transfers will thereby often involve private and public law analogies. Horizontal comparisons, by contrast, may take place through diachronic comparisons through time in which a particular “epoch” of international law is compared with another; or, they can be done across different branches of contemporary international law.

Comparative International Law Programme