The colloquium will be held in English (with the exception of a few speeches in French), without simultaneous translation.
The organization of this symposium has received financial support from the Fondation du Collège de France.
To illustrate the point of this year's lecture and the difficulties of the public/private distinction in international law, this year's colloquium will focus on consent to international law. Certain representations of the role of consent in international law are in fact the fruit of analogies between relations between States (and then between international organizations, through the interplay of other analogies with what applies between States) and relations (of a contractual or promissory nature, in particular) between private individuals and institutions.
This is, of course, a long-standing question, concerning the basis of the obligation to obey international law, which has long been considered to rest on the consent (or even the will) of States. In addition to its historical and theoretical interest, however, the question has lost none of its practical relevance. This is the case in all international law regimes, but especially in international environmental law. The concepts of consent and agreement are as difficult to grasp as ever in international treaty law, not to mention their role in the formation of customary international law and in the settlement of international disputes. Moreover, the question of consent is now at the heart of debates on the validity and/or legitimacy of international soft law , as well as law adopted by and within international organizations.
A number of international jurists and philosophers of international law have been invited to take part in this colloquium. They will discuss the notion and role of consent in contemporary international law, and its relationship to related notions (such as will, agreement or participation), as well as its object and subjects. More generally, it is the very normativity and authority of international law in this period of crisis that will be explored through the prism of consent.
Samantha Besson (Collège de France, Paris) ; Laurence Boisson de Chazournes (University of Geneva) ; Fernando Lusa Bordin (University of Cambridge) ; Catherine Brölmann (University of Amsterdam) ; Jutta Brunnée (University of Toronto Law School) ; Monique Chemillier-Gendreau (Université Paris 7 Diderot) ; Duncan Hollis (Temple Law School, Philadelphia) ; David Lefkowitz (University of Richmond) ; José Luis Martí (University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) ; Georg Nolte (ICJ, The Hague) ; Alain Pellet (Université Paris 10 Nanterre) ; Christian Tams (University of Glasgow) ; Fuad Zarbiyev (Graduate Institute, Geneva).
Pierre d'Argent (University of Louvain); Jean d'Aspremont (Sciences Po Law School, Paris); Paolo Palchetti (University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne); Yannick Radi (University of Louvain).
