JUS | Public International Law Open Lecture (Hybrid)

Public International Law Taster Lecture (Hybrid)

Taster Lecture on the Grammar of the Passport and International Law
1 September at 17:00 Vienna time

In person in L619 and online via Teams

Academic freedom is often discussed as a right exercised inside the university, archive, laboratory, conference room, or classroom. But what happens when the scholar never reaches that space at all?

This taster lecture serves as an introduction to the Master’s in Public International Law jointly organized with UNITAR, offering a brief insight into the broader themes explored throughout the programme. Drawing on my recent work on academic freedom and the remote digital border, the lecture will explore how visa systems, carrier controls, biometric databases, advance passenger information, interoperability, EES, ETIAS, and other forms of digital pre-screening increasingly shape who can travel for teaching, research, study, conferences, doctoral defences, archival work, and scholarly exchange.

The lecture will ask whether EU fundamental rights law is equipped to respond when a state-designed border system prevents access to a concrete academic opportunity. A missed flight may not simply be an inconvenience. For a scholar, student, researcher, journalist, lawyer, or human rights defender, it may mean the loss of a time-sensitive academic forum that cannot be recreated later.

The lecture will also place this problem within public international law more broadly. Even outside the EU Charter framework, remote border controls raise questions about freedom of expression across frontiers, the right to science, international academic cooperation, freedom to leave any country, non-discrimination, state responsibility, private enforcement through carriers, and the availability of effective remedies.

The point is not that international law already recognises a general right of scholarly travel. It is more precise: when state-designed border systems prevent people from reaching the physical spaces where knowledge is presented, tested, taught, defended, or exchanged, international law may need to look beyond the airport counter and ask where the real legal decision was made.

Passport Grammar: This taster lecture explores how a passport can be technically valid yet legally and practically misleading. Drawing on the lecturer’s research into Uruguay’s treatment of naturalised citizens, the class will examine ordinary Uruguayan passports that record the holder’s country of birth, including in some cases the former Soviet Union, as the holder’s nationality. The lecture will use this case to ask how ICAO Doc 9303 structures the nationality field, why carriers, consulates, border systems, and recognition registers rely on that field without verifying it, and what happens when a state inserts an unverified assertion into a global trust system.

Location:
ONLINE / SFU Faculty of Law,
Lassallestraße 3, 6th floor, Room 607, 1020 Wien Google Maps

Please register here

• Infoevent LL.M. Programme in Public International Law