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Conferences and Workshops

Concluding Final Conference DFG-Funded Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe

With its concluding three-day conference ‘Change Collapse Chance: The Future of the International Legal Order’ that took place from 26 to 28 September 2024, the DFG-funded Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe ‘The International Rule of Law - Rise or Decline?’ reached its official end.

The three-day conference that took place at the Freie Universität Berlin was devoted to three reoccurring topics of the research group. The first part of the closing conference, entitled ‘At the Brink of Collapse?’, took stock of how the international legal order has developed since 2014 when the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe had started its work. Based on the research undertaken by our group over the last decade, this part thus ventured into the ambivalences of contradictory, and often opposed, trends that have marked the course of international law in recent years.

The second part of the closing conference, which focused on ‘Structures, Actors, and Systemic Change’, shed light on contestations, challenges, and backlashes that, although they seemed to have pushed the international to the brink of collapse, allowed for a clearer view of what the significance of legal ordering entails, and what it means to speak about the intrinsic value of (international) law (‘Eigenwert des [Völker-]Rechts’) that distinguishes (international) law from other ways of ordering social relations. Finally, the third part of the closing conference on ‘Chances’, looked ahead and aimed to explore the chances and possible future avenues that may arise from periods of entrenched complexities. Different ways were discussed how the international legal order could eventually be remodeled in a way that allows for containing conflict, enhancing consensus, and allowing for collaboration. The role for international law in regulating planetary challenges arising from environmental degradation and technological revolutions, as well as power asymmetries, postcolonial grievances, and other legitimacy fallacies of international law were addressed. As part of the conference the German Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Susanne Baumann, delivered a keynote speech at the conference dinner focusing on the role of international law as far as the future of the international rules-based order is concerned. The interdisciplinarity and diversity of academic and local backgrounds at the closing conference enabled a multifaceted and nuanced view on how the international legal order could develop in the future and made the conference a productive conclusion of this comprehensive project. The output of the conference and the research group, among which notably the KFG Working Paper Series is to be mentioned, provides a reference for solutions in light of ever-intensifying challenges of today’s international legal order – or disorder. With more than 100 scholars from all five continents and all academic levels (from PhD to full professor) involved in the project during its existence, the research group gained input from a wide array of legal, political, and philosophical perspectives. The analysis of the research group was guided by three different core research lenses, which the Research Group referred to as values, structures, and institutions. With the newly founded Institute for International Law, European Law and Comparative Public Law, which will continue the Thomas Franck Lecture speaker’s series, the Freie Universität Berlin remains actively engaged in responding to immediate pressing challenges of international law while also contributing to long-term strategies for shaping the future of the international legal order. A big thank you goes to all the people that have contributed to the research group with their ideas and examined with us together the role of international law in a changing global order since 2015. It was great seeing so many former members of our research group at the concluding conference. It has been 10 years of tremendously enriching work and hopefully academic and personal routes will cross in the future.

Heike Krieger, Freie Universität Berlin
Andreas Zimmermann, Universität Potsdam
Andrew Hurrell, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Andrea Liese, Universität Potsdam Stefan Gosepath, Freie Universität Berlin