Professor Susan Marks

Professor Susan Marks

Professor of International Law

LSE Law School

Telephone
020-7955-7262
Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 7.14
Languages
English
Key Expertise
Law

About me

Susan Marks joined LSE in 2010 as Professor of International Law. She previously taught at King’s College London and, prior to that, at the University of Cambridge, where she was a fellow of Emmanuel College. Her work attempts to bring insights from the radical tradition to the study of international law and human rights. Susan is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Administrative support: Law.Reception@lse.ac.uk

Books

A False Tree of Liberty  (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Writing in 1796, Thomas Spence denounced the rights of man for setting up a ‘false tree of liberty’. This book revisits the debate in which Spence was taking part, and considers its significance for the critique of human rights today.

click here for publisher's site


 

International Law on the Left: Re-Examining Marxist Legacies (editor) (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

This book brings together essays which consider the contemporary relevance of Marxist thought for the study of international law, along with the history of efforts to analyse international law in Marxist terms.

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International Human Rights Lexicon (with Andrew Clapham) (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Arranged thematically in alphabetical format, this book surveys the significance and limits of international human rights law on topics that range from arms control to work. The book was written with the support of a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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The Riddle of All Constitutions (Oxford University Press, 2000)

This book explores the ideas about democracy that inform international legal thought. In doing so, it considers the operation of these ideas as ideology, at the same time offering some general observations about pertinence of ideology critique in the international legal field. A Chinese translation of the book appeared in 2005.

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Articles

Research interests

In previous writings I have addressed themes which include democracy, poverty, torture, counter-terrorism and apology, exploring their character and significance as problems of international law and human rights. My current work is concerned with exploitation and dispossession, and with some general questions to do with the prospects of systematic theory in international law.

Public engagement

Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures

In 2021, Professor Susan Marks delivered the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures, a long-running lecture series organised by the Cambridge University Law Department, featuring leading scholars in the field of international law.

Click below to view Professor Marks's three lectures, 'On Dignity':

 

Teaching