The Promises of International Law and Society

This week, the LSI will become the gathering ground for one of the largest meetings of socio-legal researchers on the continent to date: More than 300 legal sociologists, anthropologists, ethnologists and other researchers will come together at Humboldt University for what is likely the closest match on the European continent to the annual “Law and Society” meeting in the US. Growing out of associations of legal sociologists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the conference “Promises of the Law” will cover topics as diverse as empirical studies into law and asylum, law and development, transitional justice, constitutional adjudication, indigenous peoples’ rights and the biopolitics of reproductive rights.

Völkerrechtsblog will accompany the conference with a special symposium on “The Promises of International Law and Society”. Presenters from the conference will give us a virtual taste of their arguments and discuss them not only with their audience in Berlin, but also with the readers here on the blog. Readers are invited to join the debate and discuss the many ways in which social context shapes the law, and vice versa. Diverse as the topics will be, socio-legal perspectives are sure to bring home one common point: law’s got a lot to do with it.