Leverhulme Lecture & Distinguished Experts Dialogue

Wednesday 16 June 2021 | 18:00 Geneva| 17:00 Cambridge | 12:00 Montreal / New York

University of Cambridge and University of East Anglia

You are invited to register now for a Leverhulme Lecture and Distinguished Experts Dialogue on Wednesday 16 June 2021 among leading international jurists, senior leaders and academics, and renowned trade and investment experts, to share insights and identify new directions for the global economy in the context of pandemic recovery and the global Sustainable Development Goals, guided by international law and policy.

After a welcome from Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, this special 'evening/lunch’ online event is chaired by Professor Thomas Cottier, founder and former Managing Director of the World Trade Institute and Professor Emeritus of European and International Economic Law at the University of Bern. The event will feature a Distinguished Experts Dialogue between respected international judges and arbitrators, expert professors of international trade and investment law, and senior leaders of international organisations and educational institutions in the field of international trade and investment law, public policy and sustainable development.

The event will feature a Distinguished Experts Dialogue between respected international judges and arbitrators, expert professors of international trade and investment law, and senior leaders of international organisations and educational institutions in the field of international trade and investment law, public policy and sustainable development, including Professor James Bacchus, former WTO Appellate Body Judge, Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida; Professor Daniel C. Esty Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, School of the Environment and Clinical Professor of Environmental Law & Policy, Yale Law School; Professor Sir Christopher Greenwood,* Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge; Adv. Wayne Garnons-Williams, founding President, International Inter-tribal Trade and Investment Organization; Ms. Anna Joubin-Bret, Secretary, UNCITRAL - United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and Director, International Trade Law Division, Office of Legal Affairs, United Nations; Adv Meg Kinnear, Secretary-General of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID); Ricardo Melendez-Ortiz, Strategic Advisor, Latin Trade Group and Senior Fellow, Centre for China and Globalization; and Adv Wendy Miles, QC, International Chamber of Commerce Court of Arbitration Vice-President, Twenty Essex Chambers Barrister and Global Climate Law Leadership Award Laureate; and Prof Jorge Vinuales, Harold Samuel Professor of Law and Environmental Policy of the University of Cambridge.

Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, has been confirmed to give opening remarks, and Professor Vaughan Lowe, Essex Court Chambers Investment Arbitrator, who is Emeritus Chichele Professor of Public International Law and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College in the University of Oxford, among others, are confirmed as special guests for the evening.

The dialogue will be preceded by a public online Leverhulme Lecture, opened by Professor Diane Coyle Co-Director of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, University of Cambridge, which is being provided by Professor Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor, University of Cambridge, Senior Director, Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), Full Professor of International Law, School of Environment, Entrepreneurship & Development, University of Waterloo and author of Athena’s Treaties: Crafting Trade and Investment Accords for Sustainable Development (Oxford University Press, June 2021). Professor Avidan Kent Associate Professor at the University of East Anglia has been invited to close the lecture.

This series of open public Leverhulme Lectures raises complex, inter-linked ‘wicked problems’ and innovative solutions to global economic concerns, health pandemics, climate change, natural resources and biodiversity degradation, poverty and injustice. It considers how the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a common global public policy agenda, supported by binding international legal principles and rules derived from treaty regimes, interpreted by courts and tribunals, for pandemic response and recovery. In the present lecture, experts consider how international trade and investment law, including dispute settlement, can foster a more sustainable recovery of the world economy, advancing new directions for research, education and practice in this field?