IILAH Reading Group Semester 1, 2026: Ruptures in International Law
The reading group will be co-convened by André Dao, Richard Joyce and Adil Hasan Khan.
The theme for the IILAH Reading Group in Semester 1, 2026, is ‘Ruptures in International Law’. In light of renewed discussion of the ‘end’ of the liberal international legal order (even at Davos!), the texts will look at how international law has been conditioned by cosmological, theological, political and jurisprudential ruptures from settler-colonialism to the far-right, and also consider what we can learn from the response and continuation of indigenous laws and alternative visions and forms of international law.
Meetings will be held in-person at Melbourne Law School.
Sessions will commence Wednesday 4 March 2026, 1:00pm – 2:00pm in Room 831, Level 8 unless specified. Register here.
Semester 1, 2026
- Wednesday 4 March 2026
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Room 831, Level 8
The rupture of settler colonialism
Christine Black, Chapter 7 of The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with Indigenous Jurisprudence (Routledge, 2011)
- Wednesday 11 March 2026, 2.15pm - 3.15pm
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Room 831, Level 8
The rupture(s) of hemispheric imperium
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth, tr. G Ulmen, (2006, Telos), chapter 5: The Western Hemisphere
Donald J. Trump, ‘National Security Strategy of the United States’ (2025), at: 2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
- Wednesday 22 April 2026
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Level 10 Boardroom, 2.15pm - 3.15pm
The ruptures of WWII, Nuclear Weapons and the Cold War
Alison McQueen, ‘Morgenthau and the Postwar Apocalypse’ in Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (CUP, 2017)
Please note, this session has been moved to the Level 10 Boardroom (entry via the Level 9 stairs) and will be held from 2.15pm - 3.15pm
- Wednesday 6 May 2026
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Room 831, Level 8
The 'end' of ruptures? Development as the final structure of Western law?
Jennifer Beard, Chapter 6 of The Political Economy of Desire: international law, development and the nation state (Routledge, 2007)
Mark Carney, Davos 2026: Special address by Mark Carney, PM of Canada | World Economic Forum (20 January 2026)
- Wednesday 20 May 2026
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Room 831, Level 8
The rupture of 9/11 and the War on Terror
Upendra Baxi, ‘Human rights in times of terror’ in Human Rights in a Posthuman World (OUP, 2007)
- Wednesday 3 June 2026
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Room 831, Level 8
The rupture of far-right evangelicalism and international law
Tom Albrecht and Tristan Sturm, ‘Religion and Geopolitics: Apocalyptic Geopolitics as a Way of Knowing About Global Space’ in Kong et. al. (eds) Handbook of the Geographies of Religion (Springer, 2025)