Lecture by Martti Koskenniemi

To the Uttermost parts of the Earth: Transformations of Natural Law 1661-1873 (and beyond)

This lecture takes its starting-point in Martti Koskenniemi’s recent book To the Uttermost parts of the Earth. Legal Imagination and International Power 1300-1870”. It will  focus on the last chapters of that work by examining, in the German context, the transformations of the idiom of natural law into an early modern political science, national economy, "social art", philosophy and, eventually, “public international law”. It suggests that far from being over, natural law lives today within many of our inherited political and legal vocabularies.       

After the lecture there will be a reception in 'Pejsestuen' (7A-0-16) right next to the Flexroom.

Speaker bio

Martti Koskenniemi is Professor Emeritus of International law at the University of Helsinki. He has been member of the Finnish diplomatic service and of the International Law Commission (UN). He is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has worked as diplomat with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (1978-1994) and been a judge with the Administrative Tribunal of the Asian Development Bank. He was a member of the International Law Commission (UN) in 2002-2006. He has been Hauser Global Visiting Professor of Law at NYU since 1997 and had several visiting professorships across the world. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala, McGill, Frankfurt, Tartu and the European University Institute (EUI, Florence). His main publications include From Apology to Utopia; The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989/2005), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2001), The Politics of International Law (2011)  and To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power 1300-1870 (2021).

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Meeting ID: 678 4570 4441
Passcode: 565342