Law School Events

Scholars on constitutional interpretation and federal Indian law will assess the recent call made by Justices Gorsuch and Thomas to reconsider foundational precedents in federal Indian law. The call centers around the seeming incongruence between broad scope of congressional powers in Indian affairs and the relative dearth of constitutional text to back it up.

Scholars on constitutional interpretation and federal Indian law will assess the recent call made by Justices Gorsuch and Thomas to reconsider foundational precedents in federal Indian law. The call centers around the seeming incongruence between broad scope of congressional powers in Indian affairs and the relative dearth of constitutional text to back it up.

Surabhi Ranganathan is a professor of law at the University of Cambridge. Her current work traces the co-constitution of international law and the ocean from 1945 to now, unsettling what we take as the givens in relation to the spatial zones, resource allocations and functional jurisdictions effected by the law of the sea. It extends the history and critique of international law into new areas, such as ocean depths and bottoms, global commons, marine infrastructures, and techno-utopian imaginaries, and, from the underexplored vantage point of oceanic law-making, throws new light on current preoccupations of international legal histories: statehood and territory, decolonization and the new international economic order, the Cold War, race and empire, and the emergence of new legal forms and institutions.

Sharmila Murthy joined Northeastern University in 2023 as professor of law and public policy within the School of Law and the College of Social Sciences. Her scholarship focuses on examining legal barriers to achieving environmental justice, improving access to water and addressing climate change. Between 2021 and 2024, she served at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, first as senior counsel and then as director for environmental justice.

Tatjana Papić is a professor of international law and international human rights law at the Union University Belgrade Law School and a visiting professor at University of Michigan Law School. Papić’s present research explores the role of narratives on international law, in both international and domestic discourse. Her academic publications cover topics of international responsibility, human rights, and the interactions between international law and domestic politics, including how states receive, adopt, or resist international law domestically. 

Lucas Lixinski is a professor at the Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney. He holds a PhD in International Law from the European University Institute (Florence, Italy), an LLM in Human Rights Law from Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), and an LLB from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil). He researches and teaches across a range of fields in international law, primarily international cultural heritage law and international human rights law. 

Benedict Kingsbury is Vice Dean and Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law at New York University School of Law. He has served as Director of the Institute for International Law and Justice since its founding in 2002. His current work focuses on physical, digital, and informational infrastructure (Infrareg); global data/tech law (including digital sequence data, earth systems data issues, and generative AI); and a new project on planetary and space governance issues and rethinking approaches to law and law-making.