The University of Bristol Law School invites postgraduate researchers and early career professionals to address the creation and development of international law from European and International perspectives. We seek to bring together junior researchers from across the world to discuss in a friendly environment, elaborate on running legal issues and promote their work.

The key idea is that international law develops in distinct legal orders. Trade rules develop separately from environmental law, EU law from national legal orders, human rights from investment law, community rules from international law, counter- terrorism responses from human rights. These orders are autonomous to the extent that they have different regulatory domains and aims, law-making procedures and arbitrators, represent different groups of actors and comprise different legal epistemic communities. Very often however, conflicts arise between the norms or interests of two legal orders, challenging the autonomy of the latter.

The conference aims to explore how these conflicts arise and which legal or extra- legal methods are employed by the relevant actors, such as arbitration tribunals, international organisations and states, to resolve them. Both theoretical and practical approaches are relevant to investigate the effects of norm collisions on the separate legal orders and the development of the international legal system more general. Is international law fragmented, threatening the coherence and effectiveness of the international legal order? Or has this pluralism resulted in the constitutionalisation of the international legal order?

The keynote address will be given by Professor Malcolm Evans OBE, Professor of Public International Law, University of Bristol and Chair of the United Nations Sub-Committee for the Prevention of Torture.