International law and moral philosophy have addressed questions of global justice, but with very little communication between disciplines.  The results are moral prescriptions that ignore legal institutions and legal theorising that hides inherent ethical choices.  To help bridge this gap, I propose to examine the justice of the core norms of international law.  Contrary to many philosophical accounts, many of these norms meet a "thin," though bona fide, standard of global justice -- one built on pillars of promotion of interstate and internal peace as well as non-interference with basic human rights.  Some norms remain deficient, and over time international law will need to develop to meet a higher standard of global justice. This seminar is being co-hosted with the Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory in ANU’s School of Philosophy.

Professor Steven Ratner is the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.  From 1993 to 2004, he was a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.   His research has focused on challenges facing new governments and international institutions after the Cold War, including ethnic conflict, territorial borders, implementation of peace agreements, and accountability for human rights violations. He has also written and spoken extensively on human rights and humanitarian law, and is also interested in the intersection of international law and moral philosophy.  In 1998-99, he was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to a three-person group of experts to consider options for bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice. In 2008-09, he served in the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.  In 2010-11, he was a member of the UN's three-person Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka.  Since 2009, he has served on the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Law.  Among his publications are The New UN Peacekeeping: Building Peace in Lands of Conflict After the Cold War (St. Martin's, 1995); Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy (Oxford, 1997, 2001 and 2009); and International Law: Norms, Actors, Process (Aspen, 2002, 2006, and 2010).