In the past, Ingo Venzke’s work has focused on the theory and practice of interpretation in international law and on the different functions that international courts play in global governance.

As a professor, Venzke will focus his research and teaching on the connection between International Law and social inequality (both between and within states). The question Venzke will now investigate is: How does international law relate to aspirations of social justice? Issues of economic distribution have traditionally been left to the discretion of states and have not typically been a concern for international lawyers. Wrongly so, Venzke argues, as international law has contributed to shaping the political economy, has distributed gains and losses within and between nations, and has influenced public policy space across levels of governance. Venzke places a particular emphasis on international law’s role in the creation of past or present conditions of social (in)justice.

About Ingo Venzke

Venzke is Director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law. He has held visiting positions at various universities including the National University of Singapore and Jindal Global Law School. He was a Hauser Research Scholar at New York University and a visiting scholar at the Cegla Center for the Interdisciplinary Research of the Law (Tel Aviv University) and the Center for the Study of Law and Society (UC Berkeley). He received his PhD in Law from the Goethe University in Frankfurt while he worked as research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for International Law in Heidelberg. On various occasions he has acted as expert consultant, most recently on human rights effects of economic reforms.

Venzke is the author of How Interpretation Makes International Law (OUP 2012), which won the 2014 ESIL book prize. Together with Armin von Bogdandy, he co-wrote In Whose Name? A Public Law Theory of International Adjudication (OUP 2014). More recently, Venzke has carried out research into critical moments in the history of international law, especially international economic law.