BOOK DISCUSSION: Hendrik SIMON in conversation with LAURI MÄLKSOO about "A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order" (OUP, 2024)

 

Source: OUP

Book discussion: A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order

The Interest Group on the History of International Law of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) warmly invites you to an online discussion with Hendrik Simon (Frankfurt University / PRIF) and Lauri Mälksoo (University of Tartu) on Hendrik Simon’s recent book A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order (Oxford University Press, 2024).

The book challenges the conventional narrative that the nineteenth century was a period of unlimited warfare until the emergence of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the UN Charter. Instead, Simon demonstrates how the concept of a “free right to go to war” (liberum ius ad bellum) was a construct of Imperial German legal realism, later universalized in international historiography. His work redefines our understanding of modern international order and the justifications of war. Hendrik Simon and Lauri Mälksoo will discuss the

book together, addressing current issues in the history of international law.

Speakers:

•       Hendrik Simon is Principal Investigator at the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) at Frankfurt University and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). His book A Century of

Anarchy? has received the Jost Delbrück Prize 2024 and the Helmuth James von Moltke Prize 2025.

•       Lauri Mälksoo is Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu, member of the Institut de Droit International, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, and the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe (2024) and author of the forthcoming Russia, the Soviet Union, and Imperial Continuity in International Law (OUP).

Date: 22 October 2025

Time: 2:00 PM (CET)

Venue: Online via Zoom -- contact Anastasia Hammerschmied to register at anastasia.hammerschmied@univie.ac.at.

We look forward to your participation!

Jaanika Erne - Anastasia Hammerschmied - Sze Hong Lam (Ocean) - Florenz Volkaert

EVENT: "The Atrocity Paradox: From Limited to Extreme Violence in Empires" (UCLouvain, Louvain Lab for Law, History & Society, 15 October 2025)

 

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: "Empires, Colonialism and the History of International Law - An Encounter with Prof. Lauren Benton" (UCLouvain, 15 October 2025, DEADLINE: 30 September 2025)

Call for Papers – Empires, Colonialism and the History of International Law - An Encounter with Prof. Lauren Benton

On the occasion of Prof. Lauren Benton’s (Yale University) visit and conference to the Louvain Lab for Law, History and Society (LHS) at UCLouvain on 15 October 2025, a doctoral research seminar will be held, open to all PhD candidates in law, history, and legal history in Belgium. This workshop will take the form of an encounter between Prof. Benton and early-career researchers, giving participants the opportunity to discuss their doctoral research on one of the following themes: 

• History of law and justice, across all periods
• History of empires
• Global and comparative history
• Colonial history and the history of colonial law
• History of violence
• History of international law

Each participant is invited to give a 10-minute presentation in English on their doctoral research, followed by a discussion with Prof. Benton.

To take part in this workshop, please send your paper proposal (350-word abstract + CV) to quentin.verreycken@uclouvain.be no later than 30 September 2025.

Lauren Benton is Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law at Yale University. Her research focuses primarily on the global history of empires and the history of international law. Her most recent book is They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton University Press, 2024).

Date : 15 octobre 2025, 14-17h

Lieu : UCLouvain Salle Dabin, Bât. Thomas More Place Montesquieu 2. 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve

Atelier doctoral

Appel à communications - Empires, Colonialism and the History of International Law - An Encounter with Prof. Lauren Benton

À l’occasion de la venue et conférence de la Pr. Lauren Benton (Université Yale) au Louvain Lab for Law, History and Society (LHS) à l’UCLouvain le 15 octobre 2025, est organisé un atelier doctoral ouvert à tous les doctorants et doctorantes en droit, histoire et histoire du droit de Belgique. Cet atelier prend la forme d’une rencontre entre Lauren Benton et les jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses, afin qu’ils et elles puissent dialoguer autour de leurs recherches doctorales pouvant porter sur l’une des thématiques suivantes : 

• L’histoire du droit et de la justice, toutes périodes confondues
• L’histoire des empires
• L’histoire globale et comparée
• L’histoire coloniale et l’histoire du droit colonial
• L’histoire de la violence
• L’histoire du droit international

Chaque doctorant·e est invité·e à faire une présentation de 10 minutes en anglais autour de ses recherches doctorales et qui sera suivie d’un échange avec Lauren Benton.

Pour participer à cette rencontre, veuillez nous envoyer votre proposition de communication (résumé de 350 mots + CV) à l’adresse quentin.verreycken@uclouvain.be pour le 30 septembre au plus tard.

Lauren Benton est Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law à l’Université Yale. Ses travaux portent principalement sur l’histoire globale des empires et l’histoire du droit international. Son dernier livre est intitulé They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (Princeton University Press, 2024).

Date : 15 octobre 2025, 14-17h

Lieu : UCLouvain Salle Dabin, Bât. Thomas More Place Montesquieu 2. 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve

More info with UCLouvain's Lab for Law, History and Society.

BOOK LAUNCH EVENT: Hendrik SIMON & Lauri MÄLKSOO in conversation about "A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order" (OUP, 2024), 22 October 2025

 

Source: OUP

Book discussion: A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order

The Interest Group on the History of International Law of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) warmly invites you to an online discussion with Hendrik Simon (Frankfurt University / PRIF) and Lauri Mälksoo (University of Tartu) on Hendrik Simon’s recent book A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order (Oxford University Press, 2024).

The book challenges the conventional narrative that the nineteenth century was a period of unlimited warfare until the emergence of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the UN Charter. Instead, Simon demonstrates how the concept of a “free right to go to war” (liberum ius ad bellum) was a construct of Imperial German legal realism, later universalized in international historiography. His work redefines our understanding of modern international order and the justifications of war. Hendrik Simon and Lauri Mälksoo will discuss the

book together, addressing current issues in the history of international law.

Speakers:

•       Hendrik Simon is Principal Investigator at the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) at Frankfurt University and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). His book A Century of

Anarchy? has received the Jost Delbrück Prize 2024 and the Helmuth James von Moltke Prize 2025.

•       Lauri Mälksoo is Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu, member of the Institut de Droit International, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, and the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe (2024) and author of the forthcoming Russia, the Soviet Union, and Imperial Continuity in International Law (OUP).

Date: 22 October 2025

Time: 2:00 PM (CET)

Venue: Online via Zoom -- contact Anastasia Hammerschmied to register at anastasia.hammerschmied@univie.ac.at.

We look forward to your participation!

Jaanika Erne - Anastasia Hammerschmied - Sze Hong Lam (Ocean) - Florenz Volkaert

ONLINE BOOK DISCUSSION: Hendrik SIMON & Lauri MÄLKSOO in conversation about "A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order" (OUP, 2024), 22 October 2025

Source: OUP

Book discussion: A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order

The Interest Group on the History of International Law of the European Society of International Law (ESIL) warmly invites you to an online discussion with Hendrik Simon (Frankfurt University / PRIF) and Lauri Mälksoo (University of Tartu) on Hendrik Simon’s recent book A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order (Oxford University Press, 2024).

The book challenges the conventional narrative that the nineteenth century was a period of unlimited warfare until the emergence of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the UN Charter. Instead, Simon demonstrates how the concept of a “free right to go to war” (liberum ius ad bellum) was a construct of Imperial German legal realism, later universalized in international historiography. His work redefines our understanding of modern international order and the justifications of war. Hendrik Simon and Lauri Mälksoo will discuss the
book together, addressing current issues in the history of international law.

Speakers:
•       Hendrik Simon is Principal Investigator at the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC) at Frankfurt University and Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). His book A Century of
Anarchy? has received the Jost Delbrück Prize 2024 and the Helmuth James von Moltke Prize 2025.
•       Lauri Mälksoo is Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu, member of the Institut de Droit International, the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, and the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe (2024) and author of the forthcoming Russia, the Soviet Union, and Imperial Continuity in International Law (OUP).

Date: 22 October 2025
Time: 2:00 PM (CET)
Venue: Online via Zoom
We look forward to your participation!

Jaanika Erne - Anastasia Hammerschmied - Sze Hong Lam (Ocean) - Florenz Volkaert

ESIL IG HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL AWARDS 2024 ARTICLE PRIZE TO HANNA EKLUND

 

In April 2025, the ESIL IG History of International Law announced the inaugural edition of its annual article prize (link). With the prize, the ESIL IG History of International Law seeks to further its mission to promote and celebrate the history of international law as a vibrant and active (sub)field of international law scholarship.

After careful deliberation following the procedure outlined in the Call for Nominations, the Evaluation Committee has decided to award the 2024 Article Prize to:

Hanna Eklund (University of Copenhagen)

for her article published in Volume 34 (4) of the European Journal of International Law, entitled

Peoples, Inhabitants and Workers: Colonialism in the Treaty of Rome 

The Evaluation Committee would like to congratulate Professor Eklund on the award.

An honourable mention goes to:

Sebastian Spitra

for his article published in Volume 26 (3-4) of the Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte, entitled

A Short Introduction to Research in the History of International Law: Current State, Contexts and Perspectives

The ESIL IG History of International Law Coordinating Committee would also like to thank its members for their active participation in the nomination process and warmly invites them to participate again in the 2025 edition.

Anastasia Hammerschmied - Florenz Volkaert - Jaanika Erne - Sze Hong Lam

Fr

CALL FOR PAPERS: Journal for Digital Legal History, "Agent-Based Modelling in Law and Legal History" (DEADLINE: 30 September 2025)

 

2025 Call for Papers: Agent-Based Modelling in Law and Legal History

The Journal for Digital Legal History invites submissions for its 2025 issue on the (mis)use and potential of agent-based modelling (ABM) in legal history and legal studies. This issue will explore how computational simulations can serve as heuristic and hermeneutic tools, rather than replacements for “traditional” (however defined) legal research, to illuminate the dynamics of law as a complex system.

Submissions from all fields of law and legal history are welcome. This includes private, public, European, and international law, both contemporary and historical.

Background and Rationale

Agent-based modelling is now “a common and well-established tool in social sciences and certain of the humanities” (Klein, Marx, and Fischbach 2018). Agent-based models construct artificial societies of autonomous “agents” whose simple rules of interaction generate emergent macro-level patterns. Historians are increasingly open to simulation and have thought fairly extensively about the epistemology of ABM (Düring 2014; Gavin 2014).

ABM remains underutilized in law and legal history but offers unique strengths: It can make assumptions explicit, allow for counterfactual “what-if” experiments, and uncover the generative sufficiency of hypothesized mechanisms (Benthall and Strandburg 2021; Schwartz 2020). Legal historians could employ ABM to test theories by simulating alternative sets of legal “rules of the game” and observing the resulting outcomes.

We welcome diverse formats:

Research articles (up to 10000-15000 words) presenting ABM-driven projects.

Technical essays (2000–5000 words) with code snippets, notebooks, or visualizations.

Reflections: Shorter pieces (up to 2000 words) on methodological hurdles, interdisciplinary collaboration, or critiques of ABM.

Trial and error (up to 5000 words): pieces reflecting on failed attempts to implement ABM in a project or grant application, identifying the specific factors or obstacles that led to failure or success.

Deadline: 30 September 2025 (authors can request another timeline in consultation with the editorial board)

Bibliography

Benthall, Sebastian, and Katherine J. Strandburg. 2021. “Agent-Based Modeling as a Legal Theory Tool.” Frontiers in Physics 9. doi:10.3389/fphy.2021.666386.

Düring, Marten. 2014. “The Potential of Agent-Based Modelling for Historical Research.” In Complexity and the Human Experience: Modeling Complexity in the Humanities and Social Sciences, eds. Paul A. Youngman and Mirsad Hadzikadic. CRC Press, 121–37.

Gavin, Michael. 2014. “Agent-Based Modeling and Historical Simulation.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 8(4). https://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/8/4/000195/000195.html (April 28, 2025).

Klein, Dominik, Johannes Marx, and Kai Fischbach. 2018. “Agent-Based Modeling in Social Science, History, and Philosophy. An Introduction.” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 43(1 (163)): 7–27.

Schwartz, Alex. 2020. “Agent-Based Modeling for Legal Studies.” In Computational Legal Studies: The Promise and Challenge of Data-Driven Research, ed. Ryan Whalen. Edward Elgar, 312–27.

More info with the JDLH.