Conference: ILA British Branch Spring Conference

The ILA British Branch will hold its Spring Conference on April 8, 2019, at the University of Oxford. The theme is: "International Law at the Tipping Point." The program is here. Here's the idea:

Irreversible climate change. Ecosystem collapse and mass extinction of plant and animal species. Renewed threat of a nuclear arms race. Mass migration. Widespread famine. Each has been referred to as a ‘tipping point’ in this age of the anthropocene. What role does international law play when the natural world and human society is at, or nearing, such tipping points? And is international law itself at a tipping point? At the same time as it expands to cover all areas of human activity as an essential tool for bringing order to a rapidly globalising world, it is also the target of significant attacks from different angles – with regard to its general utility, its capacity to order our lives effectively, and its potential for creating an unaccountable leviathan limiting freedom. Increasing polarisation seems to indicate that the system will either gain greater acceptance as an ordering principle, or collapse under the fragmenting tendencies of re-nationalisation of powers and decision-making, ultimately declining as a normative ideal.