On March 17, Judge Hilary Charlesworth delivered her public lecture “Human Rights and the International Court of Justice”. In her lecture, she charted the growing openness of the ICJ to human rights-based arguments in its jurisprudence.
During the Q and A, Judge Charlesworth responded to a wide range of substantive and technical questions from the highly-engaged audience, primarily drawn from Durham Law School’s large cohort of undergraduate and postgraduate students in public international law. She also participated in a closed lunch with PhD researchers at Durham Law School researching international law and in a reception with module representatives from the taught undergraduate and postgraduate modules in public international law.
Public International Law is one of the largest and most popular elective subjects at Durham Law School, in addition to being the core focus of the LLM programme in International Law and Governance. The Public International Law module provides a foundation for more advanced study through further dedicated modules on International Human Rights Law, International Law of Peace and Security, Climate Change Law and Policy, Advanced Issues in International Law and International Criminal Law.
Judge Charlesworth’s lecture marked the inaugural Durham Law School Distinguished Lecture in Law and Global Justice. The lecture is an activity of the Law School’s research centre Law and Global Justice at Durham, which is dedicated to exploring how law both shapes and responds to global justice challenges. Law and Global Justice at Durham is made up of lawyers and legal scholars with a unique combination of legal expertise, that includes and goes beyond migration, conflict, environment, global finance, human rights, gender, colonialism and global governance.