Events

'The world crisis and international law'

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Project on Democracy and Capitalism

'The world crisis and international law'

Paul Mahoney, Margaret Foster Riley, Paul B. Stephan

Thursday, April 06, 2023
1:00PM - 2:00PM (EDT)
Event Details

Many projects of international scope from the 1990s have become targets of populist revolt—including the conversion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Communities into the European Union, the privatization of foreign investment protection, the human rights revolution, open borders for migrants, and cyberspace itself.

Paul Stephan's latest book, The World Crisis and International Law: The Knowledge Economy and the Battle for the Future, calls for new approaches to international law, based not on grand projects to remake the world but on pragmatic and more limited state-led innovations.

Margaret Foster Riley, Paul Mahoney, and Paul Stephan discuss what brought the world to such a perilous state, and how pathways to productive international cooperation exist and can be extended.

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When
Thursday, April 06, 2023
1:00PM - 2:00PM (EDT)
Where
ONLINE
Speakers
Paul Mahoney headshot

Paul Mahoney

Paul G. Mahoney is a David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor and served as dean of the University of Virginia School of Law from 2008–16. Mahoney's teaching and research areas are securities regulation, law and economic development, corporate finance, financial derivatives, and contracts. His book, Wasting a Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2015. Mahoney joined the Law School faculty in 1990 after practicing law with the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell and clerking for Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has also worked on legal reform projects in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Nepal.

Margaret Riley headshot

Margaret Foster Riley

Margaret Foster Riley, the Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor at the Miller Center, is professor of law at the University of Virginia’s School of Law, professor of public health sciences at the UVA School of Medicine, and professor of public policy at the University’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. She also directs the Animal Law Program at the law school. Riley has advised numerous state and federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Department of Defense; committees of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine; the Virginia Department of Health; and the Virginia Bar.

Paul B. Stephan headshot

Paul B. Stephan

Paul B. Stephan, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is the John C. Jeffries Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and David H. Ibbeken ’71 Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is an expert on foreign relations law, international law, comparative law, international business, international civil litigation, and international dispute resolution, with an emphasis on Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet legal systems. He has served as counselor on international law in the U.S. Department of State and special counsel to the general counsel in the U.S. Department of Defense. He also has worked with the U.S. Department of Treasury, the IMF, the World Bank, and the OECD on issues of global tax reform and has testified in judicial and arbitral proceedings as an expert witness on matters of international and foreign law.