Public Lectures from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

Speaker: Dr Luca Sicignano (Lecturer in Business Law at the University of Naples L’Orientale) Abstract: The effectiveness of corporate restructuring plans largely relies on solutions shared as widely as possible among relevant stakeholders. This explains the worldwide spread of procedures that presuppose a negotiation phase and the attainment of genuine agreements among all stakeholders involved, or at least among the majority of them. However, following Directive (EU) 2019/1023, the widespread introduction of cross-class cram-down mechanisms and more flexible value-allocation rules (the Relative Priority Rule), has profoundly altered the incentives that structure these negotiations. Through a comparative analysis of the main European systems, the paper shows that these tools - originally conceived to prevent opportunistic holdouts - often weaken the search for genuinely consensual solutions and encourage the formation of narrow negotiating coalitions that ultimately impose their preferred outcomes on dissenting creditors. This paper seeks to highlight the modern paradox (the so-called “imposed bargain”) represented by the spread of imposed plans and to investigate the motivations that are likely driving the growing reliance on non-consensual tools for resolving corporate distress. Luca Sicignano is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Business Law at the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” and a Lecturer in Business Law at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. He graduated from Luiss “Guido Carli” University in Rome in 2017, where he currently serves as a Teaching Assistant. In 2022, he obtained a Ph.D. in Business Law and was admitted to the Italian Bar following a judicial clerkship at the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Appeal of Rome. He has held visiting research positions at the University of Cambridge, the University of Vienna, and the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg, and has undertaken repeated research stays at the Institute for Comparative Law of Heidelberg University. During the academic year 2023–2024, he served as a Lecturer at Heidelberg University, teaching Introduction to Italian Company Law. His research focuses on Business Law, with particular emphasis on corporate, financial and insolvency law. He has authored over 25 publications in Italian and international journals and has presented his research at conferences in Dublin and Dubrovnik. He serves on the editorial board of Banca, Borsa e Titoli di Credito and is a member of the European Law Institute (ELI) and the Young Scholars section of the European Society for Banking and Financial Law (AEDBF). 3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners. For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website: http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Lecture summary: The regulation of submarines has rarely been an issue of focus in international law. Their military utility has influenced states’ willingness to develop rules that restrict their operations, both historically and in contemporary settings. So much is evident in examining current controversies over navigational rights of warships. Yet the types and uses of submarines are continually evolving and are regulated—to varying extents—by a myriad of international law. With the development of autonomous submarines, we again need to think carefully about the existing rules, their gaps and ambiguities. Have we reached the point that these evasive underwater vehicles cannot and should not elude the reach of international law?Dr Natalie Klein is Associate Dean (Academic) and a Professor at UNSW Sydney’s Faculty of Law & Justice, Australia. Professor Klein teaches and researches in different areas of international law, focusing on law of the sea. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre in 2008 when she was working on Maritime Security and the Law of the Sea (OUP). She is co-author, with Kate Purcell and Jack McNally, of a forthcoming monograph, Submarines in International Law (CUP).There is a sandwich lunch at 12.30 pm in the Old Library at the Centre. All lecture attendees welcome.Chair: Prof Markus GehringThe Friday Lunchtime Lecture series is kindly supported by Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

Speaker: Professor Morten Rasmussen, University of CopenhagenBiography: Morten Rasmussen is Associate Professor at the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen and a leading expert on the legal histories of European integration and the League of Nations. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics. The most recent publication is a general history of early period of European Union Law from 1950 to 1993. He is currently co-editing a Cambridge Handbook of the League of Nations and international law.Abstract: Professor Rasmussen will present on his forthcoming publication 'The History of European Union Law - Constitutional Practice, 1950 to 1993'. The formative period of EU law witnessed an intense struggle over the emergence of a constitutional practice. While the supranational institutions, including the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament, as well as EU law academics helped to develop and promote the constitutional practice, member state governments and judiciaries were generally reluctant to embrace it. The struggle resulted in an uneasy stalemate in which the constitutional practice was allowed to influence the doctrines, shape and functioning of the European legal order that now underpins the EU, but a majority of member state governments rejected European constitutionalism as the legitimating principle of the new EU formed on basis of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992). The lecture traces the struggle and accounts for eventual stalemate over the constitutional practice and the fragile and partial system of rule of law that exists in the EU today.For more information see:https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series

Speaker: Professor Dirk Andreas Zetzsche (Professor of Financial Law, University of Luxembourg)Abstract: Sustainability-oriented investors want to pay for impact, not compliance. We analyse the regulatory challenges and opportunities of impact investing. We find that advancing impact investing requires a departure from the EU Sustainable Finance Framework's (EUSFF) prevailing input-orientation and an adjustment of EU asset-management law towards an EU Impact Finance Framework.In its current form, the EUSFF over-emphasises exclusion, using rule-based ex ante definitions of sustainable business (herein termed input). If a large share of global capital follows these rules, unsustainable firms’ capital costs will increase, furthering innovation of sustainable alternatives. However, the EUSFF alone cannot prevent global capital flows into unsustainable investments, and non-EU countries follow different approaches. Although the EUSFF encourages, in effect, the sale of unsustainable EU businesses to non-EU firms, its input orientation has not helped the planet: the same activities continue elsewhere, often under weaker environmental and social standards, leaving the planet worse off. Further, the EUSFF’s disregard for proven ex post impacts risks large-scale capital misallocation and “impact washing”. Worse, the input focus comes at the cost of investments paired with audited evidence of positive ESG impacts ex post.We argue for shifting EU financial regulation from input to (proven) impact. Yet, rather than adding a new product category, we propose recognising positive impacts through five fine-tuned steps that simplify EU financial regulation, taking into account regulatory developments in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. These include abolishing the link between “do no significant harm” under the Taxonomy Regulation and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, simplified reporting aligned with product materials and the emerging IFRS Disclosure Standards, introducing a new proportionality threshold for mid-sized AIFMs, and revising ESMA’s rules on fund names.Professor Zetzsche is Professor of Financial Law at the University of Luxembourg where he has held the ADA Chair in Financial Law (inclusive finance) since March 2016 and functions as the Head of the Department of Law since 2024. He is also coordinator of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance's House of Sustainable Governance & Markets and Co-PI of the Future FinTech National Centre of Excellence in Research and Innovation.Professor Zetzsche has published more than 400 publications on inclusive and sustainable finance, corporate governance, FinTech and RegTech, and collective investment schemes. He has spoken at most of the leading universities globally and has advised many of the major regulators, eg the FSB, the BIS, the Basel Committee, the European Commission, the European Parliament, ESMA, EBA, the ESRB and the US SEC. In February 2023, he made the case for financial inclusion at the United Nations Social Commission, and spoke on inclusive and sustainable finance at COP27, 28, 29 and 30.Professor Zetzsche's paper Towards an EU Impact Investing Framework is available on SSRN.3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Speaker: Prof Tamsin Paige, Deakin Law SchoolLecture summary: Stories serve an integral role in society as, among other things, a meaning making tool. As a method of meaning making, stories are relational and allow the storyteller to assist their audience in understanding ideas, concepts, and experiences that lie beyond their lived experiences. Using this understanding and starting point, I ask what happens if we read international law as an iterative archive of stories about global society? I will start by exploring the meaning making function that storytelling serves in society, and then consider how international law, be it treaties, custom, case law or other legal instruments, can be read as official stories of the society that produced them.Tamsin Phillipa Paige is an Associate Professor with Deakin Law School. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature, using qualitative sociological methods to analyse international law (with a focus on application of law and the impact it has on society). She also does law and literature research using popular fiction to understand social perceptions of the law. Her work has examined (among other things) Somali piracy, UN Security Council decision making, the impact of international law on queer lives, and conflict based sexual violence. In a former life, she was a French trained, fine dining pâtissière.Chair: Dr Lena Holzer, Centre FellowThis lecture was delivered on 20 February 2026 and is part of the Friday Lunchtime Lecture series.

Speaker: Professor Halvard Haukeland Fredriksen, UIB, NorwayBiography: Halvard Haukeland Fredriksen is professor of European law at the University of Bergen, Norway. Besides his Norwegian law degree, he holds the degrees of Mag.Jur. and Dr.Jur. from the University of Göttingen (Germany) as well as a PhD from the University of Bergen. Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Co-Director of the Bergen Centre of the Europeanization of Norwegian law. Editor-in-chief of the Norwegian Law Journal. Member of the 2022-2024 ‘EEA Review Committee’ that assed Norway’s current affiliation to the European Union.Abstract: For more than three decades, the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA) has integrated Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway into the better part of the EU internal market. Over the years, the Agreement has been supplemented by numerous other agreements between Norway and the EU, creating a complex patchwork of agreements commonly referred to as ‘the Norway model’. Notwithstanding the model’s democratic problems, the general view in Norway is that it has worked well as a compromise between those in favour of membership of the Union and those very much opposed to this idea. However, the EU’s strive for ‘strategic autonomy’ in the current geopolitical situation makes it more complicated to remain part of the internal market without being part of the customs union and the common commercial policy. The seminar will discuss the legal challenges confronting ‘the Norway model’ as well as possible remedies.For more information see:https://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/weekly-seminar-series

Speaker: Dr Penelope Ridings, International Law CommissionLecture summary: In the last several decades, scholarly views of due diligence in international law have shifted from due diligence as a primary obligation under customary international law, to due diligence as a standard of conduct attached to a primary obligation. Thus, for example, due diligence is required to meet a State’s obligation of protection (of the environment) or of prevention (of genocide). The International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion on Climate Change adopted such an articulation and stated that due diligence is a standard of conduct and States have a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment by acting with due diligence. The Court not only reinforced the importance of the customary international law obligation not to cause significant harm to the environment but placed this within the ‘no harm’ principle, as expressed in the Corfu Channel case. However, the Court did not expressly articulate whether there was a broader obligation of due diligence that applies not only to the prevention of environmental harm, but also to the prevention of other harms to the rights and interests of States. Due diligence is thus as a crossroads. Has the ICJ essentially sought to bridge the gap between on the one hand the notion of due diligence as an obligation on a State not to permit activities subject to its jurisdiction or control which causes harm to the rights and interests of other States, and on the other hand the notion of due diligence as a standard of conduct attached to a primary obligation? Has the Court opened the door to finding a general customary international law obligation not to cause harm to the rights and interests of other States? Or has it confined due diligence to its status as a standard of conduct attached to a primary obligation? This lecture will discuss this pivotal point which is central to the elucidation of the foundation and scope of the due diligence obligation under international law.Dr Penelope Ridings is a Member of the International Law Commission and New Zealand Barrister practising in the field of public international law. In 2025 she was appointed the ILC Special Rapporteur for the topic ‘Due Diligence in International Law’. She was formerly New Zealand’s Chief International Legal Adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and a New Zealand diplomat. She was Agent for New Zealand before the International Court of Justice in Whaling in the Antarctic: Australia v Japan, New Zealand Intervening and before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea in the Request for an Advisory Opinion submitted by the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission.After moving to the New Zealand Bar, she has advised governments and international organisations on public international law including law of the sea, fisheries, environmental law, trade and investment, international security and international dispute settlement. She was Chair of the 2025 arbitration under the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (UK-Sandeel) and Chair of the WTO appeal arbitration China – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights under the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement. She has served on several ICSID ad hoc Annulment Committees, including as Chair, and as an independent panellist in disputes before the WTO. She has lectured in international law and contributed to several books and written articles on various aspects of international law.This lecture was delivered on 13 February 2026 and is part of the Friday Lunchtime Lecture series.

Speaker: Dr Svitlana Lebedenko, Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick and part-time Assistant Professor at the European University Institute.Biography: Dr Svitlana Lebedenko specialises in innovation and industrial policy, law and technology, and intellectual property law. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Law at the University of Warwick and a part-time Assistant Professor at the European University Institute, contributing to the Global Governance Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Previously, she was a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University School of Law's Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, a Research Fellow at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen's Center for Advanced Studies in Bioscience Innovation Law. Her first book, Russian Innovation and Intellectual Property: From Communism to Capitalism, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2026.Abstract: Intellectual property has mainly been studied from the institutional and systems perspectives. While both have produced useful insights, neither really explains the spread of intellectual property, which, despite its numerous institutional failures, has never been rolled back. The talk introduces a technology perspective on intellectual property to provide a macro-level explanation of this phenomenon of resilience. Two propositions arise from conceptualising intellectual property as a technology. First, the efficiency and neutrality theses of technology serve as intellectual property anchors. Second, the evolutionary nature of technology means that changes to the tools of knowledge governance that may occur are likely to be bound by the limits of the dominant technological (intellectual property) paradigm. The talk will conclude by considering the descriptive and normative value of this technology perspective.For more information see:https://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk/seminars-and-events/cipil-seminars

Speaker: Dr Clara Martins Pereira (Associate Professor of Financial Law, University of Durham)Abstract: The increasing use of AI in finance is predicted to have mixed impact on financial stability: while AI can be used to help financial institutions and supervisors identify, manage, and monitor systemic risk, it can also increase the frequency and severity of crises by exacerbating existing vulnerability channels. Under the UK’s technology-agnostic approach to AI, algorithmic technologies are primarily governed through existing sectoral frameworks rather than bespoke regulation. I argue that this approach might be insufficient to mitigate their negative impact on financial stability. The features that separate AI from other technologies—opacity, autonomy, and adaptability—make existing regulatory frameworks and architectures a poor fit for tackling the financial systemic risk created by AI. Disclosure rules are undermined by ‘black box’ opacity and the unpredictability of autonomous algorithm-algorithm interactions, while ex-ante testing struggles to predict endogenous risks arising from those interactions and their systemic impact. Crucially, model risk management and operational resilience frameworks, often calibrated for acute disruptions and focused on individual firms, are ill-equipped to ensure systemic resilience when AI models drift in similar ways. The article concludes that mitigating the risks of AI for financial stability calls for a purposeful change towards specialised algorithmic governance rules, and a review of supervision and enforcement practices.Dr Clara Martins Pereira is Associate Professor of Financial Law and Director for International Development at Durham Law School, Invited Professor at Católica Lisbon School of Law, and Global Associate Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on financial law and regulation, technological innovation, and sustainable development. Clara holds a DPhil, MPhil, and Magister Juris from the University of Oxford, as well as an MSc in Law and Business and an LLB from Católica Lisbon. She has held academic roles at King’s College London, the University of Oxford, and the LSE, and served as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School, Sapienza University of Rome, and the Max Planck Institute, among others. Formerly a capital markets lawyer at PLMJ, she has also acted as a consultant for organisations such as the World Bank and ICF.3CL runs the 3CL Travers Smith Lunchtime Seminar Series, featuring leading academics from the Faculty, and high-profile practitioners.For more information see the Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law website:http://www.3cl.law.cam.ac.uk/

Speakers: Prof Mads Andenas & Prof Johann Ruben Leiss, University of OsloLecture summary: The lecture explores the systemic function of general principles in international law in light of the ongoing work of the ILC on general principles of law and recent practice of international courts and tribunals, such as the Climate Change Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice from 2025. In its first part, the lecture examines the ILC’s approach to the systemic function of general principles and comments of states on the ILC’s work. In its second and third part, the lecture discusses the two main features of the systemic function of general principles, namely their contribution to inter-norm and inter-systemic coherence in international law. All general principles potentially fulfil a systemic function by their gap-filling role and inter-systemic communication through Article 38(1)(c) ICJ Statute. Several general principles have a systemic pull in inter-norm contexts as interpretative guidelines and inter-norm harmonisers and coordinators. In the relationship between different (sub)orders of international law (including European law and national legal orders applying international law), several principles provide for ‘hinge’ mechanisms and inter-system harmonisers which open legal (sub)orders to one another, and integrate them into (relative) unity, while others serve as inter-system coordinators or mechanisms for conditional closure of legal orders. This means, all general principles have a systemic function, whereas certain principles have more direct systemic function by virtue of their normative content. Through their systemic function, general principles contribute as a central cohesive force furthering international law’s character as a legal and (relative) unitary system. This system is characterized by a complex and dynamic interplay between a plurality of legal norms, orders, and sub-orders, including national legal orders, through systemic principles of openness, coordination, and conditional closure.Chair: Prof Campbell McLachlanThis lecture was given on 6 February 2026 and is part of the Friday Lunchtime Lecture series at the Lauterpacht Centre.