Welcome to the Institute for Global Law and Policy

Harvard Law School is pleased to announce to formation of the Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) under the Direction of Professor David Kennedy. The new Institute will foster research and policy dialog about the structure and potential for global governance and international law affecting the most pressing issues of global policy from armed conflict and humanitarian cooperation to foreign investment and economic development. IGLP will provide an institutional framework at Harvard University to nurture and sustain innovative approaches to global policy in the face of an international legal architecture manifestly ill-equipped to address the most urgent global challenges. Global poverty, conflict, injustice and inequality are also legal and institutional regimes. IGLP will investigate the ways they are reproduced and what might be done in response. The IGLP will encourage new thinking on international legal and institutional arrangements, with particular emphasis on ideas and issues of importance to the global South. The IGLP will serve as a platform at Harvard for sustained South-South as well as South-North collaboration.

The IGLP is a collaborative faculty effort which builds on almost twenty years experience at the European Law Research Institute (ELRC) at Harvard, reorienting its focus to broader global issues. The new Institute will draw on our established interest in European matters as well as the important work of the ELRC in the last years in the fields of economic development, international and comparative law. The IGLP will continue the tradition of focusing on the work of younger scholars, particularly from the South, who bring new ideas and perspectives to comparative and international legal research and policy. Indeed, we are particularly committed to facilitating creative dialog among young faculty and policy makers from around the world, and in particular the global South, as we seek to contribute to practical solutions for pressing challenges. We have a uniquely strong track record of innovation and research by faculty, students and practitioners thinking about global economic and social justice, international law and economic development, progressive social theory, socio-legal study and new thinking in the fields of international and comparative law. We will continue to focus on developing new ideas, forging communication among younger innovative minds, bringing them into dialog in the face of current challenges.

We will build partnerships with a range of foreign institutions, with many of which we have collaborated in the past, including our long time collaborators in Europe at Complutense University, SOAS, the London School of Economics, Cambridge University, SOAS and the Universities of Turin, Helsinki and Frankfurt, as well as a wide range of institutions across the global South, among them American University in Cairo, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Los Andes University in Bogota, and others. Over the years, we have built a talented international network of thinkers and policy makers committed to the need for new thinking about issues of global governance and law, which will form the backbone for our work. We will also work with governments, international institutions, the private sector and the non-governmental sector, enhancing our talented network of thinkers and policy makers. We expect to establish a global Advisory Board, while continuing to draw on the expertise of our Honorary Advisory and Academic Councils, expanding their membership in line with our broad global mandate.

We provide a focal point at Harvard Law School for faculty and students interested in new thinking about international law and international affairs. Each year, we host Visiting Researchers and Fellows at Harvard, and sponsor a variety of conferences, workshops and symposia, in Cambridge and in collaboration with our partner institutions abroad. As we expand our work, we will host Senior and Junior Fellows from the policy making community, as well as support doctoral and post-doctoral researchers working on important problems of global governance and policy.

Our Affiliates Program engages students interested in law and global governance, offering them access to leading international experts for their research, in part through our Advisory Councils. We have regularly sponsored workshops for practitioners exploring contemporary policy issues, including a number of research initiatives in Latin America and Asia identifying promising new development policy initiatives which might become the basis for greater South-South collaboration.

The European Law Research Center was co-founded with the Real Colegio Complutense at Harvard University, and the Real Colegio will continue to play a key role in the new Institute for Global Law and Policy. We are also fortunate to count the Garrigues law firm in Spain as a Leading Sponsor of our efforts, and are grateful for the support of our friends and sponsors at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Brussels and Gomez-Acebo & Pombo in Madrid.

Please check back often for updates on all our programs and initiatives.