Wednesday, March 25, 2026
3:30 - 5:30 p.m. ET
D'Alemberte Rotunda
Florida State University College of Law
Virtual attendance is available.
Steven R. Ratner, the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, will present the annual Lillich Lecture in International Law on the topic Can – and Should – the UN Charter be Saved?. This presentation will address whether the UN Charter's rules and institutions are worth saving and, if so, how? Fixing the system lies not in grand schemes proposed by some critical scholars but in the patient work of deploying international law where it can facilitate global improvements and recognizing its shortcomings where it does not.
Approved for 1.0 Florida Bar CLE credit.
About the Speaker
Steven R. Ratner, the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan
Professor Ratner is the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. He teaches and writes in public international law on a range of issues, including war and peace, human rights, foreign investment, the United Nations (UN), territorial and ethnic-based disputes, and business and human rights. He is also interested in the intersection of international law and political philosophy and other theoretical issues. Professor Ratner began his legal career as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the US Department of State. He came to the Law School in 2004 from the University of Texas School of Law and served on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law from 1998 to 2008.
In 1998–1999, the UN secretary-general appointed him to a three-person group of experts to consider options for bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice. And in 2010–2011, he was a member of the UN’s three-person Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, which advised the secretary-general on human rights violations related to the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. From 2022 to 2023, he was a commissioner on the UN Human Rights Council’s three-person International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia. Since 2015, he has been a member of an international working group promoting the use of arbitration for business-related human rights violations. Professor Ratner also worked in the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva and at the Office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in The Hague.
From 2009 to 2021, he was a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law. He is also a counsellor of the American Society of International Law and a member of the American Law Institute. He has served as an expert on international investment law in various arbitrations. He established and directs the Geneva International Fellows Program.