What is ‘natural’ in international law and who decides what is ‘natural’?
This workshop aims to explore what international law represents as ‘the natural’ and where ideas of what is natural come from. It will delve into how international law naturalises certain conditions and how it responds to changes of what social systems perceive as ‘the natural’.
In this workshop, we will also discuss whether appeals to the natural are productive and under what circumstances they should be used, or if they should be used at all in law and legal reasoning.
We invite contributions that explore, or relate to, some of the following questions:
- What is ‘the natural’ in international law?
- Where does ‘the natural’ in international law come from?
- Who decides what is ‘natural’ in international law?
- How are human – nature relationships ‘naturalized’ by international law?
- How do assumptions about what is ‘natural’ translate into international law responses to climate change and the ecological ‘crisis’?
- How do perceptions of what is ‘natural’ in international law relate to what is ‘just’?
- What if we did not ‘naturally’ distinguish between the disciplines of public and private international law?
- How do questions of what is and is not ‘natural’ influence how international law disciplines financial products?
- How do naturalizations of social order operate in international law?
- When have assumptions about ‘natural’ social order informed international law-making?
The full call for papers can be found here. Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a bio of 200-300 words should be submitted by the 6th of May.
The workshop will be held in person on 8 and 9 September 2022 at the University of Amsterdam.
More information can be found on the University of Amsterdam website.
This is a joint event by Asia School of Business, the Amsterdam Center for International Law and the Graduate Institute Global Governance Centre. Convenors: Kevin Crow, Eliana Cusato & Lys Kulamadayil.
