Breakfast Briefing with Gilad Ben-Nun
Georg Cohn (1887-1956): Denmark’s (Forgotten) “Father” of International Law?
Abstract
Rabbi Georg Cohn was the foremost Danish international jurist during the 1st half of the 20th century, who in 1922 wrote the first draft of the League of Nations’s Non-Recognition principle of territorial appropriation by force. During the 1930s, he headed the ‘universalist’ jurists who opposed the use of force in international affairs against ‘Machtrecht’ jurists led by Carl Schmitt. He also led Denmark’s legal team in the Eastern Greenland case at the PCIJ (1932). Upon return to Denmark from his forced Nazi exile in Sweden after WWII, Cohn headed the Danish delegation to the Geneva Conventions (1948-49). There, he single-handedly inserted into the Fourth Geneva Convention for Civilians its prohibition of transfer by occupiers of their own civilian populations into territories they have forcefully usurped (Art. 49 para. 6), and its prohibition on death penalties there (Art. 68). Given contemporary breaches by occupiers of this prohibition (e.g. ICJ Advisory Opinion against Israel, 19 July 2024), this lecture recasts Cohn’s legal legacy demonstrating its high contemporary relevance.
About the Speaker
Prof. Dr. (Habil.) Gilad Ben-Nun, is interim professor (Vertretungsprofessor) for Global Studies at the University of Leipzig. A former FORD Foundation Senior Fellow at UNIDIR, and former EU Marie Curie fellow at Verona University’s law faculty, he has served as Israel Studies professor at LMU Munich (2020-2022) and has held the Alfred Grosser Chaired professorship (2021-2022) at Sciences Po in Paris. His first monograph Seeking Asylum in Israel – Refugees and the History of Migration Law (London: Bloomsbury) won the 2017 US National Jewish Book award. His article ‘How Jewish is International Law?’ won the Spotlight Award of the Journal of the History of International law in 2021. This lecture is largely based upon his Habilitationsschrift: The 4th Geneva Convention for Civilians: The History of International Humanitarian law (London: Bloomsbury 2020). Gilad is a guest of Roskilde University’s Erasmus Mundus Global Studies programme.
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