Informed, ignorant, or indifferent? Knowledge of international and European law since 1945

Sept. 30, 2025

Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2025
Date: 18 June 2026 - 19 June 2026

The workshop enquires into knowledge of and about international law, its production, circulation, reception, application, and storage in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on but not limited to the post-World War II era and in a wide array of areas of (international, transnational, supranational) law.

Ignorantia juris non excusat – unawareness of the law will not excuse you – has long been an established and indeed widely-known principle in both national and international jurisprudence. Ignorantia iuris nocet, though less well-known, is of similar importance: not knowing the law might do you harm. The two maxims bear rather distinct connotations: while the former is meant to pre-empt any apologies in case of conflict with the law, the latter serves a as reminder to protect oneself. What they have in common is their implied imperative: get your law right!

But how do you learn (about) law, and what qualifies as legal knowledge: is it what you learn at law schools, or is it what you do in government offices, courtrooms, and law firm cubicles? Is it primarily about statutory law, or are case law, customary law, and natural law also included in the need-to-know category? Do all legal protagonists have to have the same knowledge, and what is the relationship between “knowledge” of law as given fact and social struggle over the power to enforce a certain interpretation? And, in the latter case, who gets to decide which such interpretation is authoritative, and how is it communicated and to whom? How are some pieces of knowledge acknowledged as (objective) facts, while others are relegated to the status of subjective opinion? How is legal knowledge circulated, and who are its keepers?

These questions point to the wide array of problems that the category of “legal knowledge” raises in legal studies. If this is true for the long and diverse history of domestic law – as, in Holmesian terms, both logic and experience –, the challenges of conceptualizing, tracing, and analysing knowledge become even more apparent in international law, here comprehensively understood to include also European and transnational law. With a much shorter academic pedigree, a significantly less elaborate degree of codification, and a collection of precedent not even remotely close to that created by national courts, international law is often held to be in flux, a moving target, evolving, or – in the European Court of Human Rights’ famous formula – a “living instrument”. Learning about international law, while an obligatory part of most legal curricula, is still more often than not peripheral to the core of lawyers’ education and practice. And it rarely enjoys broad familiarity among those not legally trained; few of its principles qualify as commonplaces. The very distinction between various prefixes will elude virtually everyone outside a small community of experts.

The uneven spread and often outright lack of familiarity with international law creates evident problems (and amplifies those created by rampant disrespect) for its application, especially in an era of increasing and increasingly dense cross-border entanglements. Those bearing rights under international law might be no more aware of them than those supposed to respect, enforce, and protect them. Procedural rules and substantial arguments may be ignored, resulting in inconsistencies, if not in either wilful or unwitting miscarriages of justice. Sub-fields of international law such as environmental law or areas of EU law such as social security law and labour law – to name but a few – display both high specialization and exponential expansion, thereby further increasing the gap between the need for knowledge and its readiness.

The workshop therefore enquires into knowledge of and about international law, its production, circulation, reception, application, and storage in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on but not limited to the post-World War II era and in a wide array of areas of (international, transnational, supranational) law. Papers should touch on at least two, but preferably more of the following research questions below: 

1. Which are the fora in which knowledge about international law is produced (and by whom), the avenues by which it is transmitted, and who are both the senders and the recipients?
 
2. Is there a difference between making law, practicing law, and producing knowledge about law? Which role, if any, does administrative fiat play? 

3. When transmitting legal concepts and rules from the international to the national arena, which challenges related to (terminological, conceptual, linguistic) translation arise, and how are concepts and rules transformed during this process? 

4. Who is credited with having relevant knowledge of international law? How are “authority” and “expertise”, “hard law”, “landmark cases”, and “precedent” construed, and who gets to do that? Are there notable epistemic communities within but, possibly even more important, outside the lawyering guild, that play key roles?

5. How is learning about “new” or “changing” international law, with its or less stable institutional foundations, organised and institutionalized? How do the ideal types of dogma and practice figure in pertinent legal education?

6. Are there historical and contemporary instances of deliberate or tacit ignorance of international law on the one hand, and of active efforts to track down its unknowns – available, yet unspecified knowledge – on the other?

We welcome papers from anthropology, history, law, political science, and sociology, but submissions from other fields are also expressly welcome. We aim at producing a collective publication following the workshop, with the details to be decided based on the composition of contributions.

To submit, send and abstract of no more than 400 words to Magnus Esmark (m.h.e.schroder@jus.uio.no), Mala Loth (mala.loth@arena.uio.no), and Kim Christian Priemel (k.c.priemel@iakh.uio.no) no later than 1 December 2025. Travel and accommodation costs can be, within certain limits and in accordance with the University of Oslo’s regulations, covered. The ecological impact of travels will be taken into account in selecting papers.

Contact: m.h.e.schroder@jus.uio.no, mala.loth@arena.uio.no, k.c.priemel@iakh.uio.no

Source: nformed, ignorant, or indifferent? Knowledge of international and European law since 1945, in: H-Soz-Kult, 23.09.2025, https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-157609.