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The End of the Global Rule of Law?, a Conversation with Andrew Hurrell

3,516 views · Published 29 March 2017 · 25:22 · Indexed 31 October 2026

Channel: UN University · 2017 · Education

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“The End of the Global Rule of Law?”, a conversation with Andrew Hurrell, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. 

In this video Prof. Hurrell joins UNU Rector David M. Malone for a conversation exploring the complex relationship between political disorder and the roles of international law and institutions. The discussion also considers the capacity of different areas of law and governance to withstand turbulent times.

The global order appears to be moving towards greater instability and increasing conflict. The return of geopolitics and heightened nationalism — coupled with the structural instabilities and inequalities of global capitalism, new and disruptive patterns of sociopolitical mobilisation, and the fragmentation of international institutions — are calling into question the effective rule of international law. This sense of disorder seems to be mirrored at regional and national levels, with increasing rivalries over issues such as territories and trade, the rise of populist movements, and the unpredictable trajectory of US foreign policies. What is driving the present crises? How do they relate to the global rule and order that has been sustained since the end of the Cold War?

About the speaker

Andrew Hurrell is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Balliol College. He is a Delegate and Finance Committee member of Oxford University Press. He was elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in 2010 and to the British Academy in 2011. In 2015, he was awarded the Susan Strange Award by the International Studies Association (ISA).

Prof Hurrell is the author of On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society (2008), which won the ISA Annual Best Book Award in 2009. He is the co-editor of Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics (1999), and Regionalism in World Politics (1995).

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