Wednesday 17 July marks World Day for International Justice. Our Law and Global Justice @ Durham group (LGJD) was formed in 2015 and here they explain how they came together to better understand the role law plays in responding to global challenges.
LGJD is one of the largest research groups in Durham University’s Law School and continues to grow.
We have approximately 25 members from across the academic and the post graduate researcher Law School community.
Whilst we have good relations with colleagues in other departments, we are primarily legal scholars bringing legal expertise to complex global problems.
We work together in different ways. We meet regularly to discuss work-in-progress by different colleagues. This a friendly and practical way to share expertise and to learn from one another.
We also have an occasional reading group, where we meet to discuss articles and judgments of shared interest, for example we met to discuss the preliminary judgment of the International Court of Justice on the question of genocide in Gaza.
We co-teach on international law modules. We work together on funding applications and on larger events, such as our recent workshop on law and global justice that included scholars from across several UK and Irish law schools.
These collaborative activities ground and enable our collaboration on more outcome-focused projects.
When it comes to global justice, LGJD understands international law as potentially both part of the problem (when it keeps unjust rules and institutions in place) and part of the solution (for example, when international law provides means and mechanisms for the global community to come together to debate and agree shared responses to shared challenges).
Institutions like the International Court of Justice were established to provide a non-violent means for states to resolve disputes between themselves.
We now understand international law as being about much more than only how states relate to each other; international law also regulates our daily lives in important ways, from migration to climate change to banking to providing accountability for crimes and violations in situations where national laws have not delivered justice.
Our Law School is ranked 48th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024.
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