Pictured above: Professor Peter Danchin (left), director, International and Comparative Law Program, and Noor Waheed ’26, Maryland Journal of International Law editor-in-chief
This academic year, the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Maryland Journal of International Law.
To mark the milestone, the journal planned a dynamic slate of events and activities, which took place on Feb 12-13. They included a panel discussion with former journal editors, the investiture of Peter Danchin as the Jacob A. France Professor of International Law, and the journal’s annual symposium, “A Half Century of International Law: Critical Reflections, Reimagining Horizons,” featuring distinguished scholars from around the world in discussion with the law school’s international and comparative law faculty.
Since 1975-1976 (with a hiatus in the aughts), the journal has provided a unique forum for scholarly discourse on a wide range of issues of international and comparative law. Authors include experts in the field of international law, academics, practitioners, and politicians.
While celebrating that history, discussions throughout the two days largely focused on international and comparative law going forward.
“Our job is not just to criticize what international law is,” said Noor Waheed ’26, the journal’s current editor-in-chief, “but to help shape its future.”
The festivities began with a panel discussion among former Maryland Journal of International Law editors who spoke about their career trajectories after studying international law. Speakers were Thomas Brown ’09, senior aviation & admiralty counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice; Ruth Pritchard-Kelly ’96, an expert in satellite regulatory affairs and space law and policy; and Jennifer Chapman ’17, foreign, comparative, and international law librarian at the University of Virginia School Law. The panel was co-sponsored by the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice, led by Professor Maureen Sweeney, and the International Law Society. Sweeney moderated the conversation.
Following the panel discussion, the Maryland Carey Law community enjoyed an investiture lecture from Professor Peter Danchin, who is the journal’s faculty adviser and director of the International and Comparative Law academic program.
In her opening remarks, Dean Renée Laurent expressed appreciation for Danchin’s many contributions to the law school, particularly in building opportunities for students to study international law through innovative classes and study abroad experiences.
“Thank you,” said the dean, addressing Danchin directly, “for taking our students out into the world and for bringing the world to us right here at Maryland Carey Law.”
Also offering remarks in advance of the lecture was Professor Richard Boldt, who praised Danchin’s deep intellectual rigor and ability to “see details in the world that are invisible to others.”
In his lecture, Danchin’s keen insights revealed both of these attributes. Setting the stage for the next day’s symposium, he structured the talk around four puzzles involving value pluralism—or the non-hierarchical notion that different values can exist in the same space as equally genuine, equally ultimate, and above all, equally objective —and its relationship in international law to long-standing questions of sovereignty, the right to religious freedom, the Enlightenment, and the liberal tradition.
After the lecture, the Maryland Journal of International Law hosted an intimate dinner to celebrate the milestone anniversary. The event featured a presentation by Waheed on the journal’s history, as well as a tribute from Professor Mark Graber to Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law Peter Quint, a mainstay in international and comparative law at the law school for more than 40 years.
The journal’s daylong symposium titled “A Half Century of International Law: Critical Reflections, Reimagined Horizons” took place the next day. An impressive array of scholars from around the world engaged in rich conversations with Maryland Carey Law faculty on international legal theories, critical histories of human rights, the new “cold peace” in our time, comparative constitutionalism, and transnational law.
Maryland Carey Law faculty participants were Professor Rabiat Akande, Professor Peter Danchin, Professor Mark Graber, Professor Paula Monopoli, Professor William Moon, Professor Matiangai Sirleaf, and Professor Marley Weiss.
The Gerber Memorial Keynote Lecture was presented by Professor Obiora Chinedu Okafor, the Edward B. Burling Chair in International Law at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. The talk was titled, “Between Contextual Peril and Contingent Promise: International Law and the New ‘Cold Peace’ in our Time.”
“It has been an incredibly rich and stimulating two days,” said Danchin, “suitably reflecting the depth, vitality and cutting-edge work over many years of our alumni, students, and faculty working in different aspects of international, comparative, and transnational law. I am excited about the future of our teaching and scholarship in these fields and our International and Comparative Law Program more broadly.”