Internationell rätt
Forskningsgruppen för internationell rätt vid juridiska institutionen samlar forskare inom EU-rätt, folkrätt och havsrätt. Flera forskare inom gruppen är också anslutna till den tvärdisciplinära forskargruppen CERGU (Centrum för Europaforskning vid Göteborgs universitet).
Forskningsgruppen strävar aktivt efter att skapa en inkluderande forskningsmiljö. En del av detta arbete består i att arrangera forskningsseminarier såväl inom gruppen för internationell rätt som samarrangemang med andra forskningsmiljöer vid institutionen samt seminarier med inbjudna forskare från andra lärosäten.
Gruppen för internationell rätt har starka band till forskningsmijöer vid bland annat University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, Free University of Amsterdam, University of Kent och Åbo universitet samt långvariga samarbeten med EUI Florence och Columbia University.
International Law Group’s Seminar
Head of State Immunity before the International Criminal Court
Date: 12 November 2025
Time: 13:15-15:00 CET
Venue: Fyren (C4) School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg
Speaker: Professor Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen
This seminar examines the different legal positions regarding head of state immunity before international criminal courts, particularly the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Do international criminal courts – particularly the ICC – have a legal basis to override the personal immunity accruing to incumbent Heads of State? Leading judgments on this issue from the ICJ and the ICC point to different conclusions. This places ICC Member States in a difficult legal dilemma, which has become highly relevant due to the arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen will present her recent report, which maps the legal developments regarding personal immunity, including the establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (STCAU), and analyzes the dominant arguments for why immunity no longer applies before the ICC.
You can read the report (in Danish) here: Head of State Immunity before the International Criminal Court (ICC) – University of Copenhagen
About the speaker:
Astrid Kjeldgaard-Pedersen is Professor of international law at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, and Editor-in-Chief of the Nordic Journal of International Law. Her publications include two monographs – The Immunity of State Representatives (Thomson, 2005) and The International Legal Personality of the Individual (Oxford University Press, 2018) – and two edited volumes entitled Nordic Approaches to International law (BRILL, 2017) and International Law in Cyberspace – The Nordic Perspective (BRILL, 2025)