On a hot summer afternoon in 1928, the leaders of the world assembled in Paris to outlaw war.  Within the year, the treaty signed that day, known as the Peace Pact, had been ratified by nearly every state in the world.  War, for the first time in history, had become illegal the world over.  But the promise of that summer day was fleeting.  Within a decade of its signing, each state that had gathered in Paris to renounce war was at war.  And in the century that followed, the Peace Pact was dismissed as an act of folly and an unmistakable failure.  Hathaway provides insights on the inaccuracy of this understanding and argues that the Peace Pact was ushered in a sustained march toward peace that lasts to this day.

Oona A. Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law and Counselor to the Dean at the Yale Law School.  She is also Professor of International Law and Area Studies at the Yale University MacMillan Center, on the faculty at the Jackson Institute for International Affairs, and Professor of the Yale University Department of Political Science.  She is a member of the Strategic Initiatives Committee of the American Society of International Law, Yale University’s Provost’s Committee on International Affairs, and the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the United States Department of State.  In 2014-15, she took leave from Yale Law School to serve as Special Counsel to the General Counsel for National Security Law at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence.  Professor Hathaway earned her B.A. summa cum laude at Harvard University in 1994 and her J.D. at Yale Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal, in 1997.  She served as a Law Clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and for D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Wald, held fellowships at Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and Center for the Ethics and the Professions, served as Associate Professor at Boston University School of Law, as Associate Professor at Yale Law School, and as Professor of Law at U.C. Berkeley.  Her current research focuses on the foundations of modern international law, the intersection of U.S. constitutional law and international law, the enforcement of international law, and the law of armed conflict.  She is a principal investigator on a recent grant awarded by Hewlett Foundation to study cyber conflict.  She has published more than twenty-five law review articles, and she is the co-author of The Internationalists:  How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (with Scott Shapiro).

Note to Registrants:  A Zoom link will be sent 24 hours in advance of the event.