NEWS

Friday 20 July 2018 International Seminar
Limiting War Technologies in the History of International Law
Genealogy of Pariah Weapons


■This seminar will be held as part of our “Pariah Weapons” project.

On Friday, 20 July 2018 the Meiji University Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer will host a seminar entitled “Limiting War Technologies in the History of International Law: Genealogy of Pariah Weapons”. The seminar will be co-hosted by the Arms and Civil Society Research Forum.

Professor Miloš Vec is professor of European legal and constitutional history at the University of Vienna and a permanent fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM: Institute for Human Sciences). In this seminar, he will analyse the intersection of the idea of pariah weapons with clashes between moral verdicts and legal bans in the nineteenth century. The industrial revolution and subsequent technological progress enabled the production and use of a new range of weapons and military equipment. How did international law and lawyers react to this development? What arguments based on legal doctrine were in favour of or against outlawing “uniquely evil” weapons? The talk will also offer a synopsis and interpretation of the writings from the best-known authors of the so-called classical European law of nations, such as Hugo Grotius, Emer de Vattel, and Immanuel Kant, who provided long-lasting standards and criteria for outlawing weapons. The history of international law will be approached from a multi-normative perspective that examines entanglements between legal norms, morality, and social customs (e.g. military honour codes). Finally, Professor Vec will address how the self-perceptions of nineteenth-century international lawyers and their beliefs in the progress of technology and civilization were overshadowed by Eurocentrism.

Date and time

Friday, 20 July 2018, 6:30PM-8:30PM (Venue opens at 6:00PM)

Venue

Room 1085, 8th Floor, Liberty Tower, Meiji University

Map

Entry fee

Free

Seating capacity

Maximum 30 seats

Registration

Pre-register before 19 July 2018 at the link below. We will close the registration when the number of applicants reaches the capacity. Your information will be kept confidential by the Arms and Civil Society Research Forum and will be used to provide you with information on its events.