Critical reflections on law and legal sciences
A lecture series
Since 2023, lecture series conserning critical reflections on law and legal sciences have been organised by students under the supervision of this chair.
The lecture series aims to introduce students to topics outside the scope of the classic curriculum. It wishes to aid students in developing a critial consciousness for the role of law in society and its use as an instrument of power.
The 2026 lecture series includes two lectures in english.
23.06.26 “Colonial Continuities and Contestations of the European Border Regime“ – Silvia Rojas-Castro & Dr. Vera Wriedt
This lecture foregrounds the colonial continuities shaping the European border regime and human rights law. The presentation starts with an overview of postcolonial critiques of global migration law. Next, it provides a critical analysis of Europe’s internal, external and externalised borders, with a particular focus on pushbacks and racial profiling. Human rights law is often seen as a means for contesting such violence but contains numerous exclusion mechanisms. The drafters of the European Convention inserted a clause exempting colonial territories from the automatic applicability of human rights guarantees and contemporary jurisprudence contains numerous exceptions, such as the construction of ‘own culpable conduct’ in collective expulsion cases. The lecture examines restrictive and protective caselaw in the European, Inter-American and African regional human rights systems, as well as UN Treaty Bodies - to decenter Europe as the supposedly most progressive human rights system and think through decolonial alternatives. Finally, we discuss strategic litigation and reflect on the potential and limits of using the law as a means for contesting structural violence at borders.
Silvia Rojas-Castro is Senior Legal Advisor in the Border Justice Program at the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Previously she coordinated the South-North partnership between ECCHR and the Argentine organization Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) in topics of international criminal law and corporate accountability.
Dr. Vera Wriedt, LL.M. (London) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Münster (Käte Hamburger Kolleg on Legal Unity and Pluralism & Institute for Public Law and Human Rights). Her doctoral thesis examined colonialism, nationality and expulsions in the European and African human rights systems. Before starting her PhD, Vera worked in ECCHR's Border Justice Programme.
07.07.26 “The Heap and the Hourglass: The Emergence of Genocidal Intent During War“ – Prof. Dr. Itamar Mann
In law, genocide is distinguished from other mass atrocities by a specific mental element: the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. But genocidal intent rarely appears fully formed at the outset of a conflict. It emerges – through decisions, through rhetoric, through patterns of violence – over time. This lecture examines how genocidal intent takes shape during wartime, using the Israeli military campaign in Gaza as its central case. Drawing on international criminal law, legal theory, and the documentary record of the Gaza campaign, Prof. Mann proposes a new analytical model –one that distinguishes between different phases and "temperatures" of genocidal purpose – and asks what it would take for international law to reckon honestly with what is happening in Gaza. The lecture is aimed at anyone interested in international law, human rights, and the ethical stakes of legal classification. No prior legal knowledge is required.
Prof. Dr. Itamar Mann is a professor of international law, now serving as Acting Chair in Public International Law at the University of Münster. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law. His work spans public international law, refugee and migration law, international criminal law, and legal theory. He is the author of “Humanity at Sea: Maritime Law and the Foundings of International Legal Order” (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and his articles have been cited by the UN Human Rights Committee and the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. His forthcoming book, “Liferaft Manifesto: Democratic Survivalism and the Sea” will come out with Cambridge Elements in International Law and Society.