Welcome to the John Sumner Stead Annual Lecture!

Join us in celebrating the 30th anniversary of the University of Baltimore School of Law's Center for International and Comparative Law with a lecture by Martti Koskenniemi, professor emeritus of international law at the University of Helsinki, and a renowned expert in the field. His influential works, including From Apology to Utopia and The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, have shaped the discourse on international law.

Koskenniemi will speak on "Sovereign Statehood and the Limits of International Legal Imagination: A History in Formalism." Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from one of the most respected voices in global legal scholarship.

As part of our 30th anniversary celebration, the event will feature a reception following the lecture.

Martti Koskenniemi is professor emeritus of international law at the University of Helsinki. He is a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has worked as a diplomat with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and was a member of the UN International Law Commission in 2002-2006, during which time he chaired the Study Group on the Fragmentation of International Law.

He has been a visiting global professor of law at NYU since 1997 and has held several other visiting professorships across the world, including in Paris, Brussels, Cambridge, Zurich, and Melbourne. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Uppsala, McGill, Frankfurt, Tartu, Brussels (VUB) and the European University Institute (EUI, Florence).

His main publications include From Apology to Utopia; The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989/2005), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2001) and To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power 1300-1870 (2021). His most recent publication is a joint work with Professor David Kennedy (Harvard), Of Law and the World. Critical Conversations on Power, History and Political Economy (2023)

John Sumner Stead Annual Lecture: Speaker Martti Koskenniemi