What is a Treaty?
March 28–29, 2019
Answers to the question “What is a treaty?” are at once deceptively simple and dizzyingly complex, depending on who is asking it and for what reasons. The meaning of a treaty in the ancient world was evidently not the same as its significance in the contemporary era of digital diplomacy; the conceptions of a treaty among Indigenous peoples in North America, South and Southeast Asia, Africa, or Oceania were not the same as the understanding of treaties within the Eurocentric system of international law; the significance of a treaty also differs in a settler colonial society where it forms the basis of an intercultural social contract—for example, in Aetearoa/New Zealand where the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) fulfills that function—from those polities where treaties are primarily objects of public international law; a treaty’s import will not be the same for a student of material culture as for a practising diplomat, nor is it obvious how legal theory might integrate diplomatic documents into the broader social contract tradition. Such distinctions and discussions should be a productive source of intercultural comparison as well as a spur to conceptual innovation. Only a dialogue among disciplines--history, international relations, political science, law, and art history among them--can tackle such proliferating questions. It is especially appropriate to convene such a meeting in 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 1969.
Convener
Contact
Participants
Stefan
Eklöf Amirell
Linnaeus University
Saliha
Belmessous
University of New South Wales
Jessica
Berenbeim
University of Cambridge
Matthew
Birchall
University of Cambridge
Christina
Brauner
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Li
Chen
University of Toronto
Megan
Donaldson
University of Cambridge
Stella
Ghervas
Newcastle University
Christoph
Grabenwarter
Fellow
2018/2019
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
Mamadou
Hébié
International Court of Justice and Leiden University
Edward
Keene
University of Oxford
Bertram
Lomfeld
Freie Universität Berlin
Adam
Mestyan
Duke University
Georg
Nolte
Fellow
2006/2007
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
James
Stafford
Universität Bielefeld
Dieter
Grimm
Permanent Fellow
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Eva Marlene
Hausteiner
Universität Bonn
Daniel
Schönpflug
Wissenschaftskolleg and Freie Universität Berlin
Barbara
Stollberg-Rilinger
Permanent Fellow
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Heidi
Tagliavini
Fellow
2018/2019
Bundesverwaltung, Bern
Sven
Trakulhun
Universität Konstanz
Basak
Tug
Fellow
2018/2019
Istanbul Bilgi University