This summer, our Department funded five Goldsmiths Law students to attend the summer school in Utrecht, paying for their tuition fees there.

Adam Cooney, who will be going into Year 3 in the LLB Law with Politics and Human rights this year, was one of the students who successfully competed for our study abroad scholarships, worth c. £600 each. In the blog post that follows, he reflects on the experience in this unforgettable trip:

“International Law is about paving the path already walked.”

This was one among a range of quote-worthy lessons about international law that four other Goldsmiths law students and I were taught at Utrecht Law School’s summer programme this June. In my course, ‘An introduction to public international law’, a hybrid bachelor-masters module at Utrecht, we approached the world of international law critically accessing both the construction of international law interlaced with critical discussion; a not too dissimilar experience from what you would hear in a Goldsmiths law seminar. Having completed Dr. Sheri Labenski’s International Law and Politics module months prior I had a strong understanding of many of the concepts touched upon in the module. The broad scope of international law meant this module could provide a unique experience in expanding my knowledge further.

In such modules, we covered the topics of Sources and Subjects of International Law, Jurisdiction, State Responsibility, Attribution and Use of Force and concluded with students fielding a 20 minute presentation on something they were knowledgeable on and relating it back to the international law topics covered.

Certainly, the substance of the course was in outlining malleability of international law in its unique construction as a legal system which is constantly developing and adding exceptions to its principles. As a result, a common criticism from my cohort was how this lends favourably to powerful countries, a theme well explored in our Goldsmiths module which materialised into a review of a critical international law essay by Kathrine Knop. In the seminar-like discussion sessions, my cohort blended a unique range of voices, all challenging the concepts learned about in our classes there; we pinpointed how the concepts were used, how they could otherwise be used.

Two recurring cases critiqued in lectures, presentations and discussions were the Mothers of Srebrenica and Nicaragua cases. Having prior knowledge, from Goldsmiths, of the Nicaragua case, I entered the discussion already from a very critical position as did most of my cohort; the principles established in that case left many of us feeling that power in the horizontal system of international law created an unfair imbalance in which less powerful countries could not reach justice, with powerful countries refusing to cooperate.

Similarly, in the Mothers of Srebrenica case, the UN was unsuccessful in hold itself or the Netherlands accountable for failing to provide a promised ‘safe haven’ and enabling the genocide of Bosnian Muslims that occurred in 2007. The presentations of two of my coursemates explored this idea and applied it to the ongoing Palestinian genocide, which made for an excellent listen. 

In my own presentation with Federica, who I met on the course and became friends with, we discussed the first case to reach the ICJ, the Corfu Channel case. In our presentation we explored the ruling of the case and the methods used to reach the decision and opened up the questions of what precedent this set not only in the formation of principles but how it established the presence of hierarchy in a horizontal legal system.

Socially, my cohort would always have lunch together at a local cafe and chat about the course and our lives from our respective backgrounds. As the only person from the UK I was bombarded with questions over the, now concluded, national election and how I felt about the candidates. In the evening, I would reconvene with my Goldsmiths cohort to talk about our day and explore places to eat and visit. One such night led myself and Andy to the only gay bar in Utrecht, where we had a fantastic night hanging with locals and made friends with other queers studying at the university. 

Another such night our Goldsmiths cohort teamed up in a pub quiz ran by Utrecht University. While we didn’t win, we had some expert performances from people on the history and music rounds, scoring maximum (10) points there and even getting a bonus point for naming all of Henry VIII wives! However, our understated performance in the Netherlands round was compounded not only through our lack of Dutch experts but also my own shotcalling causing us to drop crucial points. 

All in all, the trip to the Utrecht Summer school was fulfilling academically and socially, and would have otherwise not been an opportunity for me in the absence of the competitive and generous scholarship provided to me by our Department of Law at Goldsmiths.