International Law and the Ukraine-Russia Crisis

“This case has become much bigger than just Ukraine vs Russia. It has become a test of who will prevail: Russia, or the post-war international legal order.”

In 2022, Harold Koh, Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, played a key role with the team of lawyers who successfully sued Russia on behalf of Ukraine at the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (watch Koh at 2:40:08).

One of the country’s leading experts on the subject, Koh will join the UNC community in a discussion on international law and the Ukraine-Russia crisis as part of Carolina’s third Diplomacy Week.

Koh is the Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, where he has taught since 1985, and served as Dean from 2004¬–09. He is one of the nation’s leading experts in public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. From 2009–13, he served as the 22nd Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State in the Obama Administration, and in 2021, he returned to the Office of the Legal Adviser at the start of the Biden Administration as Senior Adviser, the senior political appointee in that office. He is the author of many books and articles, most recently, The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century (forthcoming Yale University Press 2024). He has been awarded numerous awards for his human rights work, including most recently, the 2023 Raphael Lemkin Rule of Law Guardian Medal from Duke Law School.

Join in-person in the Mandela Auditorium in the FedEx Global Education Center or via Zoom.

This event is sponsored by UNC’s Carolina Forum for Education and Diplomacy.