Taking note of the numerous processes of regionalization of international law and, since the end of the Cold War, of their generalization and deepening, and in particular of the multiplication of regional international organizations in all regions of the world and their growing influence on the international legal and institutional order, this year's lecture raises the question of what regions do to international law and what international law does to regions.
How has an international law that was originally regional, as it stemmed mainly from European public law, come to have universal validity, and how can its universal legitimacy be ensured under these conditions ? How does this translate into the concepts of " region ", " regional law " and " regional organization " in and of international law ? What is the relationship between " regions " and " civilizations " in international law, and between the institutional forms they now take ? What is, and should be, the place of regional international law from the different regions of the world within the procedures for adopting and interpreting universal international law ? How can and should the universality of human rights be reconciled with the coexistence of different regional systems (in this case, European, Inter-American, African and Arab) for the protection of these same rights, and the sometimes differing interpretations given to them by their respective readings ? More generally, how are we to understand the terms " universalism " and " regionalism " in international law, and their relationship ? What institutional forms does international law, trapped in the binary structure " State-international organization ", give to regions, and can it do better to ensure the political legitimacy of the law that emerges from them ? In the future, how can we link these numerous regional international organizations to States, to each other and to universal international organizations ? As Europeans, can we still tolerate European exceptionalism in international law and the official positioning of the EU as an "autonomous " and "new " legal and institutional order, and what should the EU's place be today among regional international organizations if it is to be neither sui generis nor a model for others ?
These and many other questions will occupy us in this lecture devoted to International Law of Institutions and the post-imperial world it could (finally) help to institute. Some of these questions will be explored in greater depth during the seminar.