History of International Law Archives

Media
Völkerrechtspodcast

#48: Geschichten des Völkerrechts: Von Grotius zu kritischen Ansätzen

04.07.2025

Hendrik Simon Erik Tuchtfeld

1625, also vor exakt 400 Jahren, veröffentlichte Hugo Grotius sein wichtigstes Werk, De Iure Belli ac Pacis libri tres, zu Deutsch: Drei Bücher über das Recht des Krieges und...

Symposium
International Law and the Political

The Politics of Reception

24.06.2025

Edward Jones Corredera Mark Somos Hendrik Simon

400 years ago, Hugo Grotius published his most important work, De iure belli ac pacis (IBP). The work made Grotius famous and earned him the title of father of modern...

Interview
Symposium
International Law and the Political

The Private is Political

30.09.2024

León Castellanos-Jankiewicz Hendrik Simon

Despite its enormous growth in importance over the last 20 years or so, the History of International Law as an academic sub-discipline has so far widely neglected private international law....

Interview
Symposium
International Law and the Political

Between War and Peace – On the Logic and Language of Imperial Violence. An Interview with Lauren Benton

13.09.2024

Lauren Benton Hendrik Simon

The differentiation between war and peace is central to the historiography of international relations and international law. In her new book “They Called it Peace”, Lauren Benton shows how violence...

Symposium
Interview
International Law and the Political

Towards Realistic Universalism?, or: Provincializing Realism! An Interview with Matthew Specter

11.09.2024

Matthew G. Specter Hendrik Simon

In his book The Atlantic Realists, Matthew Specter presents a genealogy of modern realism as a discourse between US-American and German intellectuals. An interview about the origins of the central...

Article

(Re-)Discoveries in a ‘Lost’ Text

04.06.2024

Robert Stendel

“Problems of international law in particular are still all too often discussed within national circles. The contributors and staff of journals normally come from more or less the same State....

Interview
Symposium
International Law and the Political

Global Histories of International Law’s Practice in Wartime

04.06.2024

Boyd van Dijk Hendrik Simon

While we talked about the making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions in Part I of our interview with Boyd van Dijk, the second part is about more global histories of...

Interview
Symposium
International Law and the Political

Ordering the Power to Protect and Destroy Civilian Lives

03.06.2024

Boyd van Dijk Hendrik Simon

The four 1949 Geneva Conventions – the most important rules ever formulated for regulating warfare – were shaped by liberal humanitarianism and the idea of progress through international law. In...

Symposium
Blögiversary: Celebrating Ten Years of Völkerrechtsblog

Debating Cosmopolitan Law – 9 Years On

30.04.2024

Christoph Brendel

When this esteemed blog was still in its infancy, I contributed a fictional conversation with two giants of philosophy and international law: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georg Friedrich von Martens...

Symposium
Interview
International Law and the Political

Fetishizing the State: Gentili and the Myth of the Modern Laws of War

21.11.2023

Claire Vergerio Hendrik Simon

According to international humanitarian law, the answer to the question of who is considered a legitimate actor of force is primarily the following: sovereign states. This state-centred answer is often...

Article

#MPIL100

14.11.2023

Philipp Glahé Alexandra Kemmerer

Science often begins with a coincidence. Or more precisely: a moment of serendipity, that happy opportunity that enables and produces knowledge in the seemingly unintentional coincidence of constellation and event....

Symposium
Progress and International Law: A Cursed Relationship?

Visions of Progress and International Law in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

18.09.2023

Tania Ixchel Atilano

The concept of progress in international legal scholarship and practice has been explored over time. The narratives of progress in international law are conventionally drawn from the European or North...

Article

The Last World: 150 Years of Franz Josef Land

14.07.2023

Miloš Vec

This is an English version of Vec's original German article, translated by the editorial team with the author's consent. The title of Christoph Ransmayr's novel, "The Last World," fits...

Article

Die letzte Welt: 150 Jahre Franz-Josef-Land

13.07.2023

Miloš Vec

Für die Geschichte der Entdeckung des Franz-Josef-Lands vor 150 Jahren würde auch ein anderer Romantitel von Christoph Ransmayr passen: „Die letzte Welt“. Das Franz-Josef-Land, ein Archipel von rund 200 Inseln,...

Article

Reflections on Learning under Sands’ Tutelage

02.11.2022

Ankit Malhotra

Since 1923, scores of doctoral students, diplomats and international legal professionals from different nationalities have attended the Academy’s Courses. This has also included artists who attended, according to Judge Hilary...