"International Law in Europe: Between Tradition and Renewal" – The Inaugural Conference of the European Society of International Law

The Inaugural Conference of the recently established European Society of International Law (ESIL)1 was held on 13-15 May 2004 in Florence in a troubling context: on the one hand, some international legal scholars consider that recent events, in particular the “War on terror” and the United States’ “intervention” in Iraq, have “threatened the integrity and relevance of international law.”2 On the other hand, the drafting process of the Constitution of the European Union reminds us of how heterogeneous Europeans are in terms of values and culture at large. Why, then, to establish a “European” Society of International Law? The theme of the opening session of the conference was, quite appropriately, the raison d’être of the new Society. For Judge Bruno Simma, one of ESIL’s founders and its President, being European is more “a state of mind” than a geographical notion. A call for an inclusive Society that recognises no geographical frontiers had indeed attracted a number of non-Europeans, mostly from the developed world, to the event.3 Coining the “European state of mind’, identity, or intuition, shared by such a heterogeneous audience proved, however, a challenging exercise: