War, Law, and a World in Crisis: An interview with Professor Samuel Moyn ahead of the 2026 Cyril Foster Lecture
Prominent American legal scholar and historian Professor Samuel Moyn will deliver the 2026 Cyril Foster Lecture on ‘Gaza, the Humanisation of War, and the Politics of International Law.'
Professor Moyn, who is Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University and Head of Grace Hopper College, will give this year’s address at the Examination Schools on Thursday 7 May at 5pm.
We caught up with Professor Moyn to ask him more about the lecture and the key messages he hopes the audience will take away from it.
Make sure you register now to join us at the Examination Schools for the lecture on Thursday 7 May.
How much has the world changed since you last gave the lecture in 2013?
Enormously. The last time I delivered the Foster lecture, we were still in the last years of the “end of history” and I spent my visit analysing the dream of global justice, where it had come from, and what happened to it. Now no one would dream of a utopian world order, and we are wondering if there is such a thing as world order to begin with.
What do you hope to convey to the audience in 2026? And what questions do you expect to leave us considering?
This is going to be a lecture about how international law works, and how people make claims on it in the heat of events, especially outrageous or tragic events. What can international law do for us, and how are we changed in our beliefs and strategies by it?
In your view, what does “humanising war” practically look like today?
It is in the process of abandonment as a multipolar world dawns, but I am convinced the idea that war can and should be fought less brutally still has a hold on millions. So I am going to explore our moment by looking and how some of them appeal to humanisation as a betrayed ideal, and what happens next.
Do you think international law meaningfully shapes how wars are fought, or mostly how they are justified afterward?
I am going to explore how the part of international law that is intended to control the outbreak of war has been reduced to a nullity, and the fallback of international law intended to regulate fighting has become ever more important, but rhetorically and really.
Are there risks in framing conflicts primarily through a legal lens?
Absolutely - my main goal in the lecture is going to be to explore some of the possible dark sides of what scholars have called “juridification,” when legalism displaces ethics and politics.
