We learned of a call for papers
for a conference on "Jewish International Lawyers and New World Orders”.
The conference will take place party or fully online on 24-25 May 2021. Here
the call:
The first half of the 20th
century featured two dramatic attempts to construct New World Orders following
the two World Wars. These attempts included the establishment of ambitious
international governance frameworks in the form of the League of Nations, the
Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labor
Organization after the First World War and the United Nations Organization, the
International Court of Justice and the Bretton Woods System after the Second
World War. In parallel with these developments, landmark agreements were
reached resulting in a radical transformation of the Westphalian state system,
and, in particular, with regard to the relationship between states, individuals
and groups. These agreements included other major instruments such as the
post-World War One minority treaties, the Slavery Convention (1926), the
Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949, the London
Charter (1945), the Genocide Convention (1948), the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (1948) and the Refugees Convention (1951). It can be argued that the
norms and institutions established in this dramatic period revolutionized
international law in diverse fields, ranging from international human rights
law, through international criminal law and international humanitarian law, to
international economic law.
Recent years have seen a sharp
increase in historical research describing the unique contribution of prominent
Jewish international lawyers to the development of modern international law.
Among the prominent publications belonging to this genre one can mention
Philippe Sands’ "East West Street", focusing on the life and work of
Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht (2017), Gilad Ben-Nun’s book on the
Fourth Geneva Convention which highlights the contribution of Georg Cohn,
Georges Cahen-Salvador and Nissim Mevorah (2020), James Leoffler and Moria
Paz’s edited volume on the Law of Strangers (2019), James Loeffler’s
"Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century"
(2018), Nathan Kurz’s "Jewish Internationalism and Human Rights after the
Holocaust" (2020) and Rotem Giladi’s publications on Israel and the
Refugees and Genocide Convention (2015). A number of earlier works also touched
upon multiple dimensions of the topic, including the contributions of prominent
Jewish international lawyers, such as Hans Kelsen and Jacob Robinson, and on
the relationship between the experience of being uprooted and interest in
international law.
The conference seeks to invite
lawyers, historian and academics from other relevant disciplines to take stock
of this growing literature, that analyzes the contribution of Jewish
international lawyers to the major developments in international law noted
above, and to address the following questions: Can one truly speak of a “Jewish
school” in international law? Or can one allude to a number of “Jewish schools”
speaking in different voices? Can the contributions of Jewish international
lawyers be distinguished from other contemporary trends shaped by migration
and/or attachment to cosmopolitan ideals? If so, what are the main contours of
this Jewish school(s)? How is it related to Jewish thought and experience
generally or to the collective interests of the Jewish people in the relevant
period? Does anything remain of this tradition in the 21st century? Has this
tradition affected the approach to international law of Israel and
international Jewish institutions? To what extent does the categorization of
certain authors as “Jewish” do injustice to their own self- identification as
individuals or as nationals of specific countries? To what extent has the
Jewish stance(s) toward international law changed since the creation of the
State of Israel (and to what extent is there a Jewish-Israeli School (or
schools) that are distinct from the Jewish school(s)(? In particular, how may
these questions be related to what some have seen as Israel’s skeptical stance
towards many of the universal or cosmopolitan values articulated in the
post-World War eras. Finally, can any contemporary lessons be drawn from this
phenomenon and, if so, what are they?
Understanding the historic
experience represented by the contribution of Jewish international lawyers in
the period in question may also help researchers better understand contemporary
attitudes towards international law as well as the feasibility of changing
them.
The Call
Researchers interested in
addressing issues related to the themes of the conference are invited to
respond to this call for papers with a 1-2-page proposal for an article and
presentation, along with a brief CV. Proposals should be submitted by email to
Mr. Tal Mimran, the coordinator of the International Law Forum
(tal.mimran(at)mail.huji.ac.il) no later than 15 November 2020.
Applicants should be notified of
the committee's decision by 15 December 2020. Written contributions (of approx.
10-25 pages) based on the selected proposals should be submitted by 1 May 2021.
The Israel Law Review (a Cambridge University Press publication) has expressed
interest in publishing selected full length papers based on conference
presentations, subject to its standard review and editing procedures.
Conference Academic Committee:
Eyal Benvenisti, Cambridge
University/Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tomer Broude, Hebrew University
of Jerusalem
Dan Diner, Jabob Robinson Institute, Hebrew
University
Elisabeth Gallas, Dubnow
Institute
Rotem Giladi, Dubnow Institute
Philipp Graf, Dubnow Institute
Guy Harpaz, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem
Moshe Hirsch, Hebrew University
of Jerusalem
Yaël Ronen, Israel Law Review,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yuval Shany, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem
Malcolm Shaw, Essex Court
Chambers/Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yfaat Weiss, Dubnow Institute
More info here
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