2020-02-27

Stanley Ulijaszek (Professor of Human Ecology, University of Oxford) gave this presentation for the UBVO seminar series on 27 February 2020

An Interview with Dr Catherine Butler, author of the book 'Four British Fantasists'. An interview with Dr Catherine Butler (Cardiff University) by Will Brockbank (Oxford). Dr Butler has contributed much to fantasy literature studies, most notably her book 'Four British Fantasists'. The interview looks at the definition of fantasy, the 'Oxford School', the relationship between children's writing and fantasy covering a range of writers - J. R. R. Tolkien, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, and Philip Pullman. Will Brockbank is a DPhil candidate in Old English and Old Norse language and literature at Jesus College, Oxford. He fondly remembers childhood bedtime readings of 'The Hobbit' with his dad. Little did he expect back then that he would later do his MPhil in Medieval English at Pembroke College, where Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945. When he is not grappling with 'Beowulf' and the 'Poetic Edda', Will is usually dreaming of the islands of the North Atlantic.

Prof Cecelia Lynch, of the University of California, Irvine, discusses the academic career of US foreign policy and disarmament expert Dr Merze Tate. Prof Cecelia Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine, discusses the academic career of US foreign policy and disarmament expert Merze Tate. The opening remark for this event is kindly given by Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson. Dr Merze Tate was a prolific expert on US diplomacy and in 1932, the first African-American woman to attend Oxford (she commented several times she was “the only colored American in the entire university, man or woman”), where she studied International Relations. She was also the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in Government and International Relations from Harvard. In 1942 and 1948, she wrote two books on disarmament. Through her stints in several committees, Tate tried to tackle gender and racial discrimination in the academic system. Prof Cecelia Lynch, of the University of California, Irvine, discusses the academic career of US foreign policy and disarmament expert Dr Merze Tate. Tate was also the first African American graduate student at Oxford. Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson provides opening remarks in this session, marking the centenary of women being allowed to matriculate at Oxford.

International law ascribes to the conferral of a jus cogens status on a norm a particular legal significance. Bluntly put, jus cogens norms have legal consequences that norms of ordinary international law do not. International lawyers have a great many different ideas of what these legal consequences are more precisely. As of yet, the reason for this divide has not been fully clarified. This void tends to confuse jus cogens discourse on several issues such as the immunity of states and state officials in judicial proceedings originating in the violation of jus cogens norms, or the extradition of alleged perpetrators of international crimes, or again the non-applicability of amnesty law concerning such crimes. It also impedes the justification of judicial and other legal decisions. As this article argues, contrary to the general assumption, a lawyer’s conception of the legal consequences of jus cogens is not value-neutral but dependent on his or her preferred understanding of the concept of law. The argument goes briefly as follows: (1) What causes international lawyers to disagree is the issue of whether or not jus cogens norms entail obligations concerned with their own enforcement. (2) This is essentially an issue concerning the individuation of norms. (3) Depending on whether a lawyer takes the position of a legal positivist or a legal idealist, he or she uses different criteria for the individuation of jus cogens norms. (4) And this is why, for legal idealists, jus cogens norms entail obligations concerned with their own enforcement, whereas for legal positivists they do not. Ulf Linderfalk is Professor of International Law in the Faculty of Law, Lund University, which he joined in 2001. He is a general international lawyer, who takes a special interest in questions relating to international legal structure. His research has examined issues arising from phenomena such as normative conflict, legal hierarchy, treaty interpretation, the identity of special regimes, cross-fertilisation among such regimes, legal principles, legal discretion, balancing, and conceptual terms. He is the author of four monographs – including the recent ‘Understanding Jus Cogens in International Law and International Legal Discourse’ (Edward Elgar, 2020) – two textbooks (both of which are available in updated second editions); four co-edited volumes; and a total of some 30-40 articles in high-ranking peer-reviewed international law journals.