Individual in International Law

The Individual in International Law collects the work of esteemed scholars to examine the effects of humanisation on international law, and how individual status, rights, and obligations have changed the international legal system throughout history and into the present day.

Tom Sparks is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, where he works on international environmental law, the humanisation of international law and legal theory. He wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Durham, entitled Towards a Human-Centred International Law: Self-Determination and the Structure of the International Legal System. The thesis won the Global Policy North network of research universities' prize for the best doctoral dissertation of 2018. He is the author of Self-Determination in the International Legal System: Whose Claim, to What Right? (Hart 2023).
Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg, a professor at the universities of Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, Basel, and Michigan. She has been a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (2011-2015), served as the President of the European Society of International Law (2010-2012) and as President of the German Society of International Law (DGIR) (2019-2023). She is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration and an associate member of the Institut de Droit International.