After the Second World War, the dissolution of European empires and emergence of ‘new states’ in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and elsewhere necessitated large-scale structural changes in international legal order. In his new book, Completing Humanity, Prof. Özsu recounts the history of the struggle to transform international law during the twentieth century’s last major wave of decolonization. Commencing in 1960, with the General Assembly’s landmark decolonization resolution, and concluding in 1982, with the close of the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and the onset of the Latin American debt crisis, his book examines the work of elite international lawyers from newly independent states alongside that of international law specialists from ‘First World’ and socialist states. A study in modifications to legal theory and doctrine over time, it documents and reassesses post-1945 decolonization from the standpoint of the ‘Third World’ and the jurists who elaborated and defended its interests.

About the Speaker:

Umut Özsu is Associate Professor of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa. He is the author of Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Completing Humanity: The International Law of Decolonization, 1960-82 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He is also the co-editor of a number of edited volumes and journal symposia, including the Research Handbook on Law and Marxism (Elgar, 2021).

The Law Society of Hong Kong has awarded this seminar 1.5 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points.