HKU Public Law Lecture Series 2024
Global Constitutionalism, Great Power Competition and Prerogative Power
Date: 10 January 2024 (Wednesday)
Time: 6:00 – 7:00 PM
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, HKU (in-person only)
What is the relationship between the current structure of the international legal order and the rise of great power competition? What are the effects likely to be on that order? The lecture will analyze these issues from a perspective that takes as a starting point the principled legal commitments underlying the post WWII international legal order – a global constitutionalist perspective – in order to critically reflect on the failures of that order in its more concrete institutional operation. The current international order, the speaker will argue, is best described as a dual order, in which there is a domain of ordinary legality on the one hand, where international law tends to be reliably respected, and a domain in which great powers effectively exercise prerogative power limited only by balance of power considerations. Such an order is only as stable as the balance of power considerations underlying it and, under current circumstances, is under perpetual threat of calamitous collapse.
Speaker
Professor Mattias Kumm, Inge Rennert Professor of Law, NYU School of Law
Mattias Kumm is the Inge Rennert Professor of Law and has joind NYU in 2000. His research and teaching focuses on basic issues and contemporary challenges in Global, European and Comparative Public Law. He also holds a Research Professorship on “Global Public Law” and is Managing Director of the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Social Science Research Center in Berlin as well as Professor of Law at Humboldt University. He has taught at leading universities wordwide, and has held professorial appointments at Harvard, Yale, and the EUI. He is on the Board of various International Journals and Professional Societies and is Founding Co-Editor in Chief of “Global Constitutionalism” (CUP). Kumm holds a JSD from Harvard Law School and has pursued studies in law, philosophy and political sciences at the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and Harvard University before he joined NYU.
Chair
Professor Alec Stone Sweet, Sir YK Pao Chair in Public Law, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
Prior registration is required for this in-person event. Please register at https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=91933.