LPE Presents: Completing Humanity with Umut Ozsu

Please join the LPE Project for a lunch talk with Umut Özsu⁵, Professor of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, to discuss his latest book, "Completing Humanity: The International Law of Decolonization, 1960–82" (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He will be in conversation with Professor Samuel Moyn.

In "Completing Humanity," Professor Özsu recounts the struggle to transform international law during the twentieth century’s last major wave of decolonization. From the UN’s landmark 1960 decolonization resolution to debates about development and human rights in the early 1980s, the book examines the efforts of Third World jurists to confront global inequality, the economic dependence of newly independent states, and the enduring challenges of ‘unequal exchange’ in international trade. The book revisits and reinterprets post-1945 decolonization from the perspective of the ‘Third World’ and the jurists who elaborated and defended its interests.

Professor Özsu writes on public international law, the history and theory of international law, and Marxist critiques of law, rights, and the state. He is also the author of, "Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers" (Oxford University Press, 2015), and co-editor of the "Research Handbook on Law and Marxism" (Edward Elgar, 2021) and "The Extraterritoriality of Law: History, Theory, Politics" (Routledge, 2019).

This event will be available in a hybrid format. Please register to participate in person¹ or to join online (Zoom)⁶.