Course Summary
This interdisciplinary course examines how international law is interpreted, practiced, and contested across Europe’s centers and its inner and outer peripheries in an era of democratic erosion, rising illiberalism, and renewed war. Designed for students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, it explores how shifting borders, competing sovereignties, and geopolitical tensions generate fragmented legal and political orders. Eastern and Southeast Europe serve as key sites for analyzing how international norms are mobilized, challenged, or strategically reshaped—and how these dynamics relate to, or diverge from, other regional approaches to international law worldwide.
Adopting a multi-scalar and area-studies–informed perspective, the course connects local practices and conflict dynamics to broader European and global debates on the rule of law, territoriality, and the geopoliticization of legal argument. Students assess how legal meaning is produced differently in powerful centers, EU borderlands, and contested spaces, and how authoritarian resurgence and violent conflict unsettle assumptions about the coherence and universality of international law.
Key elements of the course include:
•Lecture sessions, complemented by seminar discussions
•Student-led presentations, shaping the thematic focus of class meetings
•Guest lectures, offering practitioner and scholarly perspectives
This course offers thematic preparation for the Autumn School “Contested Spaces, Fragmented Orders: International Law in the South Caucasus”, which will take place in Yerevan, Armenia, in early October as part of a DAAD-funded project. Participation in the course is not required to apply for the Autumn School, and attending the Autumn School is not mandatory for students in the course. A call for applications will be published during the summer term; participation of 10 selected students will be funded by the DAAD.
