SPRING MEETING
OF THE ROYAL NETHERLANDS SOCIETY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
International Law and Nationalism:
Histories of a Complicated Relationship
TUESDAY 3 JUNE 2025 19.00 – 21.00
CAMPUS LEIDEN UNIVERSITY, WIJNHAVEN, TURFMARKT 99, THE HAGUE AND ONLINE
In conventional accounts, international law is often positioned in opposition to nationalism: whereas nationalism prioritizes the particular interests of individual nation-states, international law is thought to advance community interests. Upon closer examination, however, the relationship between international law and nationalism reveals itself to be more complex—and indeed, more troubling. International law has remained deeply entangled with nationalism, and in many instances, has actively sustained and reproduced it, for instance by effectively tying struggles for self-determination as well as social justice to nation states.
The KNVIR Spring Lecture will explore this counter-narrative about international law’s complicated relationship with nationalism in concrete detail and in light of contemporary global predicaments. It will examine three critical junctures — the Second World War, the era of decolonization, and the end of the Cold War — each marked by ambitious politico-legal projects of worldmaking that aimed to transcend nationalism in pursuit of just futures. Each time they failed. The lecture revisits those moments for the legal imagination they summoned, for the unfulfilled potentials they contain, and to draw critical lessons from their failures. The further we move back, the more clearly the linkages emerge between peace, social justice, and progressive visions of international law — and the more urgently contemporary claims to defend or rebuild the international rule of law must be interrogated.
Prof. Ingo Venzke, Professor for International Law and Social Justice, University of Amsterdam, will give the lecture. Two invited guests will comment on the topic from a
contemporary perspective after which the floor is opened for discussion with the audience. The meeting is followed by drinks.
Registration: Please send an email to gro.r1747702923ivnk@1747702923tcatn1747702923oc1747702923 by Monday 28 May 2025 indicating whether you would like to attend the meeting in person or online.
