Event Details

Dr Alexander Orakhelashvili from the University of Birmingham will speak on 'State Immunity, Act of State and Human Rights in UK Courts in the 21st Century'

At the turn of the century, the House of Lords in Pinochet and Kuwait Air Co. brought major innovations to the doctrines of state immunity and act of State. Their impact was to enhance ways in which international law and human rights could be vindicated in UK courts. However, a reaction was witnessed in mid-2000s in Jones v Saudi Arabia and other cases on extraordinary rendition. The Government pursued a strategy of letting courts foreclose venues for individuals to claim remedies. This talk will analyse whether and to what extent the pushback against Pinochet has worked, the extent to which it misrepresented the applicable international law, and perceptions that still linger in both academia and legal practice on these issues.

Dr Alexander Orakhelashvili (LLM Leiden, PhD Cantab.) has taught and researched public international law at four British universities over the past 20 years. Before joining the University in Birmingham in 2009, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College Oxford (2005-2008). His teaching also includes elements of criminal law and jurisprudence. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences and seminars on developments in public international law, and has given invited papers at the events and conferences held in UK, USA, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Japan. He has provided legal advice regarding public international law issues in litigation before English and American courts. His publications include Peremptory Norms in International Law (OUP 2006), The Interpretation of Acts and Rules in Public International Law (OUP 2008), Collective Security (OUP 2011), Domesticating Kelsen – Towards the Pure theory of English Law (Elgar 2019), and International Law and International Relations: Foundations of Interdiciplinary Analysis (Elgar 2020), as well as three edited collections and over 80 articles and book chapters. In 2018 Routledge has published his 8th edition of Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law– one of the leading British textbooks of international law.

For the Teams link to attend this event please contact Dr James Summers.