2023 ASIL Annual Meeting

2022 Annual Meeting content can be found here.

2023 Annual Meeting

March 29 - March 31, 2023
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20009

2023 Annual Meeting Theme: The Reach and Limits of International Law to Solve Today's Challenges

International law seems to be perpetually in crisis. Profound questions abound regarding its functions, utility, relevance, and ability to provide solutions in a complex and changing world. The past few years have presented us with multiple challenges – from trade wars to a global pandemic to the worsening of climate change to the invasion of Ukraine – which have led some to question the role and value of international law as a tool for solving modern day crises.

As international lawyers, it is incumbent on us to question underlying assumptions and to revisit the aims of international law and its ability to provide solutions to crises, big and small. It is worth reflecting on the more modest wins of international law, and to query the reach – as well as the very real limits – of what international law is, and what it can do. It is only in challenging and questioning the reach and limits of international law that we can, as a community, navigate, and ultimately strive to reinforce and strengthen its importance.

The 2023 ASIL Annual Meeting Committee seeks to elicit a more nuanced assessment of the role of international law in the world today, and the often incremental way in which it interacts, effects change, and succeeds – or fails – as a tool to address real-world global problems. We invite topics across a broad spectrum of sectors as well as across practice areas, academia, and civil society. We encourage submissions that address niche and overlooked aspects of international law, together with the core areas implicated by today's pressing crises, in order to explore the full range of challenges facing international law and society today, including those identified in the "Cross-Cutting Topics" included below.

Sessions that are selected will be assigned to a substantive track:
  • International Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, and Criminal Justice
  • Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Dispute Resolution
  • International Trade, Investment, and Finance
  • International Organizations, Global Governance, and Global Health
  • Security, Foreign Relations, and Use of Force
  • Environment, Sea, Space, and Sustainable Development
Within these tracks, topics may address any subject in line with the theme, including but not limited to one of the following Cross-Cutting Topics:  
  • Regional Approaches to International Law
  • Interdisciplinarity and International Law
  • The Compliance Challenge
  • Decentering, Decolonizing, and Addressing Race, Gender, and Sexuality in International Law
  • War, Peace and Anti-impunity
  • Multilateralism in International Law

Program Ideas Sought

From March 29-31, 2023, the American Society of International Law will convene its 117th Annual Meeting. The ASIL Annual Meeting Committee (chaired by Jennifer Permesly, Priya Pillai, and Sergio Puig) welcomes the submission of ideas for sessions on the theme, "The Reach and Limits of International Law to Solve Today’s Challenges."

The call for session ideas has ended. Thank you to all who submitted.