Essex Public International Law Lecture: Systemic Integration Revisited

About the Lecture 

What explains the persistence of the idea of international law’s systematicity in view of its decentralised nature, constantly dependent upon the shifting consent of states and the vagaries of political will? To what extent can its systemic character endure and adapt as the tectonic plates of geo-politics shift? In this lecture, Campbell McLachlan critically re-examines the evidence for the impulse to integrate the various specialised sub-fields of international legal cooperation into a coherent system: the impulse that underpins the principle of systemic integration. He does so in light of the practice of states and international tribunals, which has deepened over the last fifteen years since his research on the principle for the ILC Fragmentation Study Group in 2005. He tests the fruits of this internal analytical perspective against both an increasing scholarly critique and the external disintegrative pressures that the system currently faces––pressures that appear to challenge the very value of global cooperation under law that underpins the idea of systematicity.

About the Speaker

Campbell McLachlan QC is Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington. In October 2021, he will take up the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professorship of Legal Science in the University of Cambridge. He is author of Foreign Relations Law (CUP 2014) and International Investment Arbitration: Substantive Principles (2nd edn, OUP 2017). He is currently writing a book for OUP on The Principle of Systemic Integration in International Law.

Elected to the Institut de Droit International in 2015, he served as Rapporteur of its 18th Commission on ‘The equality of the parties before international investment tribunals’, whose resolution was adopted in 2019. He has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge, All Souls College Oxford, NYU and Berlin. He gave a special course at The Hague Academy of International Law on Lis Pendens in International Law in 2008 and has been invited to deliver the General Course in 2024. He is an associate member of Essex Court Chambers and Bankside Chambers and currently serves as president of a number of international arbitral tribunals.

About the Essex Public International Law Lecture Series

The Essex Public International Law lecture series is founded, hosted and co-chaired by Dr Meagan Wong and Dr Emily Jones based in the School of Law. This is a weekly lecture series featuring judges of international courts and tribunals, leading academics, and practitioners of international law from governmental service, international organizations, and private practice from across the globe. The series prides itself on building on two important intellectual traditions of international law: formalism and international legal practice, and international legal theory including postcolonial and feminist perspectives. 

We welcome all students, academics, practitioners and legal advisors to join us.

How to register

You can register here for the event which will be held on zoom.

For further information

Please contact Dr Meagan Wong, meagan.wong@essex.ac.uk and Dr Emily Jones, e.jones@essex.ac.uk.