The Leitner Center is proud to support International Law Weekend again in 2024 during events at Fordham Law School and the New York City Bar Association, October 24-26, 2024.

The unifying theme for ILW 2024 is Powerless law or law for the powerless?, as follows:

International law faces an existential threat as history unfolds at unprecedented speed worldwide. Indeed, international law and international institutions at times appear incapable of protecting vulnerable persons against war, disease, hunger, exploitation, climate change, and other human and natural catastrophes. Some people–both individually and collectively–are openly eschewing legal values and frameworks in order to pursue results through other means, including dangerous and destabilizing ones. Is international law, in fact, powerless or does it remain a source of power that vulnerable persons can utilize to protect and advance their rights and interests? This year’s ILW is focused on engaged, interactive, and inclusive discussions about how international law can transcend perceptions and misperceptions of its powerlessness and fulfill its aspirations of balancing power through principles of justice, equality, and dignity.

Panel proposals closed May 1, 2024. The Organizing Committee is now working to review all proposals and put together a program. Stay tuned for more information.

Dedication: In honor of the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, ILW 2024 is dedicated to the promise of the Declaration’s preamble recognizing that humanity owes to children the best that we have to give.

This year’s opening plenary will be held on Thursday, 24th October, at the New York City Bar Association. The 2024 Opening Plenary will focus on the workings of the International Court of Justice. Our President, Michael Scharf, will interview:

Dr. Nilüfer Oral, Director of the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore.

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Professor Lori F. Damrosch, Hamilton Fish Professor of International Law and Diplomacy of Columbia Law School

Professor Harold Hongju Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law of Yale Law School and former Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State

Professor Sean D. Murphy of George Washington University Law School and Special Rapporteur for Crimes Against Humanity

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