Celebrating the conferral of honorary doctorates by the University of Vienna’s Law Faculty to Andrea K. Bjorklund und Anne Peters
Celebrating the conferral of honorary doctorates by the University of Vienna’s Law Faculty to Andrea K. Bjorklund und Anne Peters
On the occasion of celebrating the conferral of two honorary doctorates to renowned international lawyers, many academic experts and former students of the LL.M. in International Law participated in the celebrations in the Great Hall of the University of Vienna on 24 June 2025.
The honorary doctorates were conferred by the Rector of the University of Vienna, Sebastian Schütze, together with the Dean of the University of Vienna, Brigitta Zöchling-Jud.
Andrea K. Bjorklund, Full Professor and the L. Yves Fortier Chair in International Arbitration and International Commercial Law at McGill University, has been a renowned expert in international arbitration and litigation, international trade and international investment, as well as the General Editor of Arbitration International and the General Editor for Investment for the Journal of International Dispute Settlement for many years. LL.M. students and alumni remember her as visiting professor to the Section for International Law and International Relations in 2017.
Her lecture focused on issues concerning “The Resilience of International Law".
The honorary doctorate was conferred due to her “outstanding scholarly work in the field of international commercial and investment dispute settlement has contributed to upholding the rule of law.”
Anne Peters, former full professor of international and constitutional law at the University of Basel and present director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law is best-known for her research interests in constitutionalization and the history of international law, global animal rights, global governance and the status of individuals in international law.
Her lecture which was held in German focused on “Double Standards in International Law".
The honorary doctorate was conferred due to her “groundbreaking contributions to issues concerning the idea of constitutionalizing international law, human rights and animal rights, as for opening new perspectives in global governance.”
50 years The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT)
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), adopted in Vienna in 1969, is frequently called the most important instrument governing treaty law, largely codifying customary international law. State and judicial practice are guided by the authoritative rules of the VCLT. Accordingly, over the last five decades, the VCLT has become a "pillar" of the law of treaties. It incorporates crucial rules of the law of treaties, including the interpretation of treaties, reservations, and the competence to conclude treaties.
Against this background, a stock-taking in the year of the 50th birthday of the VCLT seemed warranted. The Conference on 18 November 2019 took the VCLT’s anniversary as a starting point to examine selected developments in the law of treaties over the past five decades. The Conference, held in Vienna, the city of major international law codification conferences, was organised by August Reinisch and Christina Binder in honour of Karl Zemanek, who played a key role in some of these conferences. Karl Zemanek celebrated his 90th birthday the same day as the conference, on 18 November 2019.
Karl Zemanek was Professor of International Law at the University of Vienna for sixty years, 10 years of which were taught in the LL.M. program International Legal Studies. For this reason a large number of former LL.M. students seized the opportunity to travel to Vienna to congratulate their professor of the workshop "The Law of Treaties" and greet his successor in this LL.M. program, Univ.-Prof. Christina Binder, who has been teaching this course for already three years.
