Speaker: Professor Madhavi Sunder, Georgetown University Law School Abstract: Innovation thrives on borrowing from creators, past and far-flung. When does cultural exchange cross the line into cultural misappropriation or theft decried as “cultural appropriation”? Notably, today’s culture wars increasingly turn on intellectual property claims, with calls for attending to the legal and ethical implications of dominant cultural creators taking and profiting from the innovations of disadvantaged an...
Mar 11, 2025•42 min•Ep. 149
Speakers: Professor Vanessa Munro (University of Warwick) and Professor Miranda Horvath (University of Suffolk) Professors Munro and Horvath both actively contributed to Operation Soteria, the joint project between the police and CPS to rethink how allegations of sexual violence should be investigated and prosecuted. In this public lecture they will reflect together on the data they collected and the findings concerning reasons for underperformance, myths and stereotypes affecting charging...
Mar 05, 2025•54 min•Ep. 26
On 28 February 2025 The Rt. Hon. Lord Briggs of Westbourne delivered the 2025 XXIV Old Buildings Lecture entitled "Equitable Ownership". Michael Townley Featherstone Briggs, Lord Briggs of Westbourne became a Justice of the Supreme Court in October 2017. Lord Briggs grew up around Portsmouth and Plymouth, following his naval officer father between ships, before spending his later childhood in West Sussex. He attended Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford. A keen sailor and the first lawyer i...
Mar 04, 2025•58 min•Ep. 20
Summary: This talk explains Sudan’s descent into a horrific war that is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The war has displaced over 11 million people, involved the targeting of civilians, including especially women, in mass violence, and precipitated a hunger crisis affecting over 24 million people, with over 630,000 currently facing famine. How, after a momentous civilian uprising in 2018-19 that toppled the dictator Omer el-Bashir after 30 years of authoritarian rule, did Sudan come to t...
Mar 03, 2025•43 min•Ep. 294
Speaker: Professor Margo Bagley, Emory University School of Law Abstract: 2024 was a year for multilateral IP like no other. WIPO Member states adopted two new treaties last year: the WIPO Treaty on IP, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge and the Riyadh Design Law Treaty. Both were groundbreaking in their mention of one or more of genetic resources, traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions, and indigenous peoples and local communities, none of...
Feb 28, 2025•47 min•Ep. 148
Lecture summary: Property is a fundamental legal institution governing the use of things: who may own what, how and why. Given that such questions extend to a wide range of natural resources essential to human well-being, such as food, water and shelter, then it is reasonable to assume that human rights should play an important role in shaping property rights discourse and practice. And yet this assumption is somewhat misplaced. The relationship between property and human rights and property rem...
Feb 25, 2025•47 min•Ep. 293
Speaker: Dr Stuart Baran is a barrister at specialist intellectual property chambers Three New Square IP Abstract: The UK Supreme Court has now given its long (and long-awaited) judgment in SkyKick v. Sky. It concerns the appropriate specification of goods and services as part of a trade mark application. In particular, the UKSC was asked to consider the circumstances in which a party applying for a specification broader than its intended commercial activities can be found to have a...
Feb 21, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 147
Panel: '(Non-)Defining 'Gender' in the Crimes Against Humanity Draft: Possibilities, Alliances, and Strategies' Feminist activists, country representatives, and other civil society actors have debated how to define “gender” in international criminal law (ICL) for at least three decades. In the Rome Conference that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its Statute in 1998, defining “gender” was a hotly debated topic of negotiation. More recently, this debate has resurfaced in the...
Feb 10, 2025•2 hr•Ep. 292
Sovereign debt crises have surged since the end of the Bretton Woods system and currently threaten a lost decade for many countries across the world. Indermit Gill, in the World Bank Group’s 2024 International Debt Report, describes the situation in many of the poorest countries as a ‘metastasising solvency crisis that continues to be misdiagnosed as a liquidity problem’. Despite their severe socioeconomic consequences, no comprehensive legal framework exists to address these crises—arguably the...
Feb 10, 2025•41 min•Ep. 291
Oh Thursday 6th February 2025 Professor Campbell McLachlan KC delivered his 1973 Professor Inaugural Lecture: 'On the Interface between Public and Private International Law'. The lecture begins at 05:18 Abstract: Our understanding of the operation of law beyond the nation State has been deeply shaped by two great disciplines: public and private international law. Yet surprisingly little systematic attention has been devoted to the relationship between the two. In his inaugural lecture as ...
Feb 07, 2025•59 min•Ep. 126
Speaker: Professor Orla Lynskey, University College London Abstract: The EU ‘digital empire’ seeks to align technological development to its rights and values by adopting and promoting a rights-driven model of technological regulation. Bradford’s influential characterisation of EU digital strategy is credible when one maps the array of legal ‘Acts’ applicable to data, digital markets, digital services and AI adopted by the EU in recent years, all of which are without prejudice to the EU data pro...
Feb 05, 2025•38 min•Ep. 139
Speaker: Professor Paul Deemer (Vanderbilt Law School) This lecture focuses on the development and project financing of large international infrastructure projects, and covers – What is “project finance” and what is not? How does a “project financing” differ from other types of financing? Why is project finance used on large infrastructure projects? What is “leverage,” and why is that important? What legal structures and documents are commonly used in project financings? Who are the participants...
Feb 04, 2025•31 min•Ep. 77
Speaker: Arman Sarvarian, University of Surrey Date: Friday Lunchtime Lecture: Friday 31 January 2025 Dr Arman Sarvarian will speak about his forthcoming monograph The Law of State Succession: Principles and Practice to be published by Oxford University Press in April. The product of seven years’ labour of approximately 170,000 words, the work includes a foreword by Professor August Reinisch of the University of Vienna and International Law Commission. The following is the summary of Oxford Univ...
Feb 04, 2025•28 min•Ep. 290
Speaker: Professor Eva Micheler (LSE) Abstract: Reliance on agency-theoretic reasoning has led to substantial theoretical and empirical advances in company law scholarship, but the narrow focus on board-level actors and phenomena has disconnected the analysis of the company from the reality of the economic organisation it is meant to enable and support. We follow Oliver Williamson’s call for a ‘law, economics, and organization’ approach, and build on Elinor Ostrom’s ‘institutional analysis and d...
Jan 28, 2025•32 min•Ep. 76
Speaker: Gregory Fox, Wayne State University Date: Friday Lunchtime Lecture - Friday 24 January 2025 Summary: Does international law place any constraints on a possible Ukraine-Russia peace agreement? While we can only speculate about its contents, two aspects appear certain: Ukraine will be asked to relinquish (at a minimum) territory now occupied by Russia, and it will only contemplate entering into an agreement because Russia invaded its territory. Professor Fox will examine the implications ...
Jan 24, 2025•44 min•Ep. 289
Lecture summary: Many political economists, economic historians, and historical sociologists understand the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s as involving a shift from debates about inflation, oil shocks, floating currencies, and the New International Economic Order to neoliberalism's political and ideological breakthrough, first in the industrialized states of the North Atlantic and shortly thereafter in much of the global South. By contrast, among most scholars of international law, the 1...
Dec 02, 2024•44 min
On 26 November 2024 Professor Paul Mitchell (University College London) delivered the CELH annual lecture on the topic 'Legal History and Literature: Towards Creative Reciprocity'. The Centre for English Legal History (CELH) was formally established in 2016 to provide a hub for researchers working in legal history across the University of Cambridge. The Centre holds regular seminars during academic terms, and an annual centrepiece lecture. To find out more, and download the accompanying presenta...
Nov 29, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 7
Speakers: Professors Daniel Monk (Birkbeck University of London) & Rebecca Probert (University of Exeter) The enactment of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 was a landmark moment in family law. Coming into force in 1971, it had a significant impact on legal practice and was followed by a dramatic increase in divorce rates, reflecting changes in social attitudes. Fifty Year of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 brought together scholars from law, sociology, history, demography, and film and literature, to...
Nov 28, 2024•28 min•Ep. 15
Speaker: Dr Andriani Kalintiri, King’s College London Abstract: Is EU antitrust law resilient in the face of change? This question has acquired prominence amidst the many crises and disruptions of recent times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and digitalisation. Attempts to answer it though have been rather narrow in scope and tend to employ the language of resilience casually. This article contributes to knowledge (a) by developing a conceptual framework for understanding and asse...
Nov 20, 2024•42 min•Ep. 138
Lecture summary: In this talk Sharifah Sekalala examines this critical moment in the making of Global Health Law, with two treaty making processes: the newly finalised revisions of the International Health Regulations and ongoing negotiations by the Intergovernmental Negotiation Body for a possible pandemic Accord or Instrument, as we well as soft-law proposals for the World Health Organization proposal for a medical countermeasures platform. The lecture will illustrate that despite the laudable...
Nov 18, 2024•35 min
Speaker: Professor Christopher Nicholls (University of Western Ontario) In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Yale Law School and Harvard Business School launched an innovative joint program: the “Law-Business Course”. The program’s principal architect was Yale law professor William O. Douglas, best remembered today as the longest serving member of the US Supreme Court and one of the most provocative. For a short time, this remarkable academic initiative brought together profession...
Nov 12, 2024•48 min•Ep. 75
Speaker: Professor Barend van Leeuwen, Durham University Abstract: What do we mean when we talk about the "horizontal direct effect" of the free movement provisions? You would think that, after decades of case law on the free movement provisions, the meaning of this concept should be relatively clear and crystallised. However, there is still a significant amount of disagreement about the very meaning of the concept of "horizontal direct effect". While some EU lawyers speak of horizontal direct e...
Nov 11, 2024•31 min•Ep. 137
Speaker: Dr Henry Pearce, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Portsmouth and Deputy Editor for Computer Law & Security Review Abstract: This presentation examines the impact of Brexit on UK data protection law and, using the introduction of the now-defunct Data Protection and Digital Information Bill as a case study, critiques the ongoing reliance on personal data as the core concept underlying UK data protection law and policy. As an alternative, the presentation explores the possib...
Nov 11, 2024•51 min•Ep. 146
Lecture summary: The United Nations Charter order (UNCO) and the co-evolved liberal international order (LIO) are contested with a heretofore unknown force. The steep rise in contestations in the realm of public politics rather than the courtroom demonstrates a shift from normal contestation as a source of legitimacy and ordering towards deep contestation as a political challenge of foundational elements of liberal order. Today, not only in the Global South but also across Europe and North Ameri...
Nov 11, 2024•37 min
Lecture summary: Grand corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain by a nation's leaders (kleptocrats) - has devastating consequences. As then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, the amount lost to corruption each year is enough to feed the world's hungry 80 times over. Grand corruption contributes to climate change and is a major impediment to ameliorating it. The refugees creating humanitarian and political crises around the world are largely fleeing failed sta...
Nov 04, 2024•41 min
Speaker: Dr Akshaya Kamalnath (Australian National University) Governance of companies has always involved some uncertainty and technology related challenges similarly add to the risks and challenges involved. Yet, corporate governance – both the legal and non-legal aspects – finds ways to address risks and so it will be with tech-related issues. This paper argues that effective corporate governance should now include a focus on ‘digital governance’ which I define as governance of technology and...
Oct 29, 2024•23 min•Ep. 74
Speaker: Dr Kalpana Tyagi, Assistant Professor, Maastricht University Abstract: Data protection, privacy and copyright may be closely aligned, yet distinctly respond to the common element, that is data – comprising of personal as well as non-personal elements. While data may not be copyright-protected, works (at least in their current form) are copyright-protected. As the Generative AI tools become more advanced, data and copyright-protected works may cease to bear any direct resemblance to pre-...
Oct 25, 2024•52 min•Ep. 145
On Friday 18 October 2024, The Honourable Susan Mary Kiefel AC KC delivered the 2024 Sir David Williams Lecture entitled "Judicial review of discretionary decision-making: differences of approach". The lecture begins at: 05:40 The Sir David Williams Lecture is an annual address delivered by a guest lecturer in honour of Sir David Williams, Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of English Law and Emeritus Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. More information about this lecture, including photographs ...
Oct 24, 2024•53 min•Ep. 23
Speaker: Professor Ruth Okediji, Jeremiah Smith Jr., Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Co-Director of the Berkman Klein Center Abstract: The conclusion of the Agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1994 sparked a quiet revolution in the global IP system by directing unprecedented scrutiny to the maldistribution of innovation benefits among countries and communities, including Indigenous Peoples’ traditional knowledge. The unauthorized access, use, and commercia...
Oct 21, 2024•45 min•Ep. 144
Lecture summary: Part 1 of the Lecture focuses on the development of the right to self-determination as a rule of customary international law and its application to the Chagos Archipelago, Africa and the Commonwealth Caribbean. The adoption of Resolution 1514 by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 14, 1960 was a decisive element in the development of the customary character of the right to self-determination. After that transformational development it was colonial peoples, not...
Oct 21, 2024•56 min
