The Era of Populism: Dilemmas of Public Engagement by International Courts

iCourts lunch seminar with Jolyon Ford.

We are currently in an age marked by populist backlash and political narratives that de-legitimise supra-national governance and adjudicative institutions as elitist, out-of-touch and/or foreign. This seminar will explore how international and regional courts (and other adjudicative institutions at the supra-national level) do – and perhaps should – navigate public relations, strategic communication, and civic engagement in such an era. Our era is also marked by social media and the more direct communications between ‘governors’ and ‘the governed’ also informs how court systems conceptualise ‘engagement’. How are courts to engage in ‘informing’ the public about their role (as well as about the outcomes of particular, especially high-profile, case outcomes) in effective and legitimate ways, while not (a) engaging in ‘public relations’ that is inappropriate for bodies that must remain authoritative and independent, and (b) without becoming patronising and condescending in how they ‘educate the public’?

Bio

Jolyon Ford is a Professor of Law at the Australian National University (ANU) and Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Year Book of International Law. Author of Human Rights and Populism (2024), he co-leads a 2022-2027 Australian Research Council-funded project ‘Reconceiving Engagement with International Law and Institutions in an Era of Populism’; recent work from the project appears in the 2025 editions respectively of the Virginia Journal of International Law, Asian Journal of International Law, Melbourne International Law Journal, Cambridge International Law Journal, and Australian Journal of International Affairs. Before re-joining academia in 2015 he had a varied career in an international organisation, an NGO, the private sector, and leading London think-tank Chatham House. From Zimbabwe, he holds degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), Cambridge, and the ANU, from where his PhD was published as Regulating Business for Peace (CUP 2015). He was a Fulbright Fellow in 2021-2022 (University of California, Berkeley).