Rather than treating law as external to global hierarchies, the 2026 series highlighted its role in structuring authority and contestation. The speakers explored topics ranging from the historical spread of European legal authority and international investment law to the legal infrastructures of global markets and the changing role of international law in an era of geopolitical transformation.

The 2025 series featured speakers whose research challenges International Law’s self-understanding as a community of states and problematise its implicit understanding of the constitution of the social. With an eye on the role of values and the representational character of codes as the foundation of public order, the lecture series looked at the inclusions and exclusions of international law’s ordering and the possibilities of alternative conceptualisations.