Advanced International Law: Peaceful Settlement of Disputes

Core to the conduct of international relations since 1945, and the international law that facilitates and is produced by that process, is the determination expressed in the Charter of the United Nations (adopted in that year) ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’.

To achieve this, disputes that could otherwise lead to violent conflict—most obviously in this context, but by no means exclusively, those between States—must be settled peacefully.

In Chapter VI of the Charter, the Member States of the United Nations have accepted an obligation to peacefully settle all their disputes that might, if continued, endanger international peace and security. Its provisions identify means by which such peaceful settlement can be achieved and gives the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations particular roles in the peaceful settlement of disputes. 

The same Charter also provides, in Chapter XIV and an annexed Statute, for a World Court: the International Court of Justice in the Dutch city of The Hague. The Court is presently busier and more prominent than it has ever been before.

This course builds on and operationalises students’ existing understanding of international law by exploring the means of peaceful dispute settlement identified in the Charter, and the respective roles of the General Assembly and the Security Council in connection with them, before focussing on the law and practice of the International Court of Justice. It culminates in a multi-day simulation of proceedings before the Court, in which students take on the roles of those who actually engage in the judicial settlement of inter-State disputes to learn first-hand how they are discharged in reality. This will give them a unique perspective on this important subject and equip them for further engagement with it, academically or as a private practitioner or international or domestic civil servant.

Sebastian read law at the University of Oxford. He represented the University in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition and interned at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. After graduating from Oxford as the best student in his year in public international law, he clerked for Justice Froneman at the South African Constitutional Court. He was then a research assistant on the Quill Project at Pembroke College, Oxford, and subsequently completed an LLM at Yale Law School. At Yale, he was a Salzburg Cutler Fellow in International Law and an executive editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. He volunteered for the Temporary Restraining Order Project and was a summer fellow in the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. From 2019 to 2020, Sebastian was a Robina Fellow in the Registry of the European Court of Human Rights. He also teaches Law at LMH.