Presentation

Born in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1973, of Swiss and British nationality, Samantha Besson is Professor at the Collège de France, Paris, and holds the International Law of InstitutionsChair since 2019. She has also been Professor of Public International Law and European Law at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) since 2005.

Samantha Besson studied law in Switzerland, Austria and the UK between 1991 and 1999. Following her doctorate, she held the positions of Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia Law School in New York (1999-2000) and Junior Research Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford University (2001-2004). Since then, she has also been a visiting professor at the Universities of Zurich (2007-2010), Lausanne (2010) and Lisbon (2010-2019), as well as Duke Law School (2009), Harvard Law School (2014) and Pennsylvania University (2019). Samantha Besson has also taught in various capacities at The Hague Academy of International Law since 2009. She was invited to give a special lecture there in January 2020 and the general lecture in July 2027. In 2011-2012, she was a resident of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institut d'études avancées de Nantes from 2013 to 2021. In 2021, she was awarded the Chevalière de la Légion d'Honneur, and in 2024received an honorarydoctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain for her work on sovereignty.

In 2021, Samantha Besson was elected associate member of the Institut de Droit International, where she is co-rapporteur of the 10th Commission on international distributive justice. From 2021 to 2024, she co-chaired the International Law Association (ILA) Working Group on the International Law of Regional Organizations (2021-2024). She has been on the committee of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences since 2017 and was the first delegate for human rights of the Swiss Academies of Sciences (2013-2016). Samantha Besson regularly advises the Swiss government on various issues relating to its foreign, European and security policy. Between 2008 and 2011, she was an independent member of the Swiss Federal Commission against Racism.

Samantha Besson's research interests lie at the crossroads of general international law, European institutional law and legal philosophy. Her areas of specialization are international, European and comparative human rights law, and international and European democracy.

Conferences

Chair

Selected bibliography

  • Rebuilding the international institutional order

    Besson S., Reconstruire l'ordre institutionnel international, Paris, Collège de France/Fayard, coll. " Leçons inaugurales ", 2021. 96 p.

  • Reconstructing the International Institutional Order

    Besson S., Reconstructing the International Institutional Order, Paris, OpenEdition Books/Collège de France, 2021.

  • Zum Wiederaufbau der internationalen Institutionenordnung

    Besson S., Zum Wiederaufbau der internationalen Institutionenordnung, translated from the French by O. Ammann and D. Wohlwend, Basel/Baden-Baden, Helbing Lichtenhan Verlag/Nomos, coll. " Beiträge zum Völkerrecht ", 2022, 45 p.

  • International due diligence

    Besson S., La due diligence en droit international, Recueil des cours de l'Académie de droit international de La Haye, tome 409. Leiden/Boston, Brill/Nijhoff, 2020, pp. 153-398.

  • Due Diligence in International Law

    Besson S., Due Diligence in International Law, translated from the French by S. Knuchel, Leiden/Boston, Brill/Nijhoff, coll. " Hague Academy Special Editions ", 2022, 242 p.

  • Comparative Law and Human Rights

    Besson S., Comparative Law and Human Rights. in M. Reimann and R. Zimmermann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 1222-1249.

  • Legitimate Actors of International Law-Making - Towards a Theory of International Democratic Representation

    Besson S. and Martí J. L., Legitimate Actors of International Law-Making - Towards a Theory of International Democratic Representation. Jurisprudence. 2018. vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 504-540.

  • The Oxford Handbook on the Sources of International Law

    Besson S. and D'Aspremont J. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on the Sources of International Law, with the assistance of S. Knuchel, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017. li-1232 pp.

  • The Human Right to Science, Special issue

    Besson S. (dir.), The Human Right to Science, Special issue, European Journal of Human Rights, vol. 4, 2015, p. 403-518

  • The Philosophy of International Law

    Besson S. and Tasioulas J. (eds.), The Philosophy of International Law, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, 626 p.