“The Death of the Global System of Law and Governance?” A Conversation with Ralph Wilde

The Israeli-U.S. war against Iran, U.S. threats to forcibly annex Greenland, the US abduction of Venezuela’s President Maduro, coming on the heels of the Israeli genocide in the Palestinian Gaza Strip in the context of its more than half-century long illegal military occupation of that territory and the Palestinian West Bank, and the Russian war in and purported annexation of parts of Ukraine, have led commentators to pronounce international law “dead”, or at least on life support.  In this provocative lecture, Professor Ralph Wilde takes these pronouncements as the stepping off point to critically examine whether international law has ever meaningfully constrained state power.

Ralph Wilde is professor of international law at University College London, University of London, and visiting professor at Yale Law School where he was once, as a student, a visiting scholar as the Henry Fellow. He was previously a member of the Executive Councils of the International Law Association and the American and European Societies of International Law. He is a laureate of the Åland Islands Peace Fellowship, the American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit, and the UK Philip Leverhulme Prize.  He has represented, as Counsel, the Arab League and Bolivia before the International Court of Justice, and the Arab League and the Independent Palestinian Human Rights Commission before the International Criminal Court.