On 26 October 2026, the Max Planck Law Fellow Group ‘Fairness and International Law’ will hold its first online session via Zoom, focusing on the project’s theoretical foundations. This session will bring together the project team and the early-career scholars selected through the workshop process as they continue to develop and refine their research. Professor Andreas von Arnauld will present the project’s conceptual framework, followed by comments from the project’s co-directors: Professor Marie-Claire Foblets and Professor Anne Peters. A discussion will follow, along with a session of questions and answers with participants – time permitting.
The framework approaches fairness as a regulative idea capable of guiding the interpretation, application and development of international law. Drawing on the capability approach, it asks how legal rules can better accommodate legitimate interests across geographical and temporal boundaries. Its two connected themes—fairness across space and fairness across time—invite reflection on how international law responds to interests beyond state borders, the enduring effects of historical injustice and the needs of future generations. For this event, the discussion is expected to touch upon the unresolved tensions a fairness assessment reveals: eg how to balance competing interests across jurisdictional, governance, and species boundaries.
The session marks the next stage in the project’s participatory research process. The theoretical discussion will connect the lessons learned from the workshop to update the conceptual framework. Specialised topic-oriented sessions will follow in subsequent events such as this, bringing leading experts in the project’s thematic fields into dialogue with the early-career scholars.