Martti Koskenniemi

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Martti Koskenniemi (born March  18, 1953 in Turku ) is a Finnish lawyer and former diplomat . He has been Professor of International Law since 1994 and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute for International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki since 1997 . His research interests include in particular the theory and structure of international law and its historical development. He is currently considered one of the leading legal scholars in this field because of his publications.

Life

Martti Koskenniemi was born in Turku in 1953. He studied law at the University of Turku , where he obtained an LL.B. , 1982 LL.M. and in 1989 the doctorate . From 1978 to 1994 he worked as a legal consultant to various Finnish delegations at international conferences and organizations, including the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations . From 1991 to 1992 he was jointly responsible for representing Finland before the International Court of Justice in the Passage through the Great Belt (Finland v. Denmark) case . In addition, he was a representative of Finland in a number of international organizations and bodies, such as the UN Commission on Human Rights and, from 2002 to 2005, the UN Commission on International Law .

In the diplomatic service he was attaché in the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1978 to 1989 and, among other things, Finnish Vice Consul in Marseille from 1979/1980 . From 1989 to 1991 he served as legal advisor to the Finnish Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York and then until 1994 as acting director of the Department of International Law at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has been Professor of International Law since 1994 and, since 1997, director of the Erik Castrén Institute for International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki . He was also visiting professor at various foreign universities such as the University of Paris-Nord (1996), the University of Cambridge (1997), the University of Paris-Nanterre (2000), the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (2002), and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Honorary Chair “ Henri Rolin ”, 2003/2004), the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2004) and several times between 1997 and 2007 at New York University , where he has been a Global Faculty member since 2002 .

Martti Koskenniemi worked at the Hague Academy for International Law in 1994 as director of studies in the field of public international law, in 1996 as director of the research center and in 2004 as a lecturer. He has published a number of historiographical articles on the history of international law as well as works on its role in international relations , of which the book “The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 ”is regarded as one of the most important contemporary treatises in this field. His dissertation , entitled “From Apology to Utopia. The Structure of International Legal Argument, first published in 1989 and reissued 16 years later, is considered a seminal work on the theory and structure of international law and one of the most prominent English-language books on the subject in recent years.

Awards

Martti Koskenniemi was awarded the 1995 Kekkonen Prize for studies on Finland's international role and the Idman Prize for the best work on international law published in the Nordic countries between 1992 and 1995 . In 2002 the Finnish Bar Association named him Legal Scientist of the Year. In the same year he received for his book “The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 “the Certificate of Merit of the American Society for International Law ( ASIL Certificate of Merit ). Since 2003 he has been a member of the Institut de Droit international and since 2005 of the Academy of Finland . He was elected to the Finnish Academy of Sciences in 2002, to the British Academy in 2014 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018 .

Works (selection)

  • International Law Aspects of the European Union. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague 1998, ISBN 9-04-110488-7
  • Sources of International Law. Ashgate Publishing, Burlington 2000, ISBN 1-84-014097-6
  • The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. The Rise and Fall of International law 1870-1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-52-154809-8
  • From Apology to Utopia. The Structure of International Legal Argument. New edition (original edition 1989). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-52-183806-1
  • La politique du droit international. Editions A. Pedone, Paris 2007, ISBN 2-23-300504-X

literature

  • George Rodrigo Bandeira Galindo: Martti Koskenniemi and the Historiographical Turn in International Law. In: European Journal of International Law. 16 (3 )/2005. Oxford University Press, pp. 539-559, ISSN  0938-5428
  • David Kennedy: The Last Treatise: Project and Person. (Reflections on Martti Koskenniemi's From Apology to Utopia). In: German Law Journal 7 (12) / 2006. Edited by Russell A. Miller and Peer Zumbansen, pp. 982-992; Online at www.germanlawjournal.com

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