5 August 2025. Sir George Turner Lecture with Professor Antony Anghie

Law and Disorder: Reflections on the United Nations at Eighty

Antony Anghie

Law and Disorder: Reflections on the United Nations at Eighty

The United Nations is the major multilateral institution of our time. It enters its 80th year at a time of intensifying global turbulence, and its role, relevance and effectiveness are being subjected to ongoing criticism and scrutiny. In this lecture, Professor Tony Anghie will reflect on the UN in the world, taking a long historical perspective. He will consider the historical relationship between global governance and Empire, and use that relationship as a critical lens through which to explore some of the founding principles of the United Nations relating to human rights, the use of force, political economy and decolonization, to ask what they were about, what has become of them, and what they mean for the present.

Tony Anghie is Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore and University of Utah. His research interests include the history and theory of international law, international economic law, human rights and Third World Approaches to International Law. He has taught and served as a visiting professor at a number of institutions including Cambridge, the University of Melbourne, the University of Tokyo, Harvard Law School and the American University of Cairo. He has also served as the Secretary-General of the Asian Society of International Law from 2017 to 2023.

The Sir George Turner Lecture series is an annual lecture series at the Melbourne Law School named in honour of Australian politician Sir George Turner (1851-1916). Sir George was admitted to practice in 1881. He was Mayor of St Kilda from 1887 to 1888, elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1889 and became Solicitor-General for Victoria in 1892. In 1894 he became Premier of Victoria. The lecture series was established by Turner’s daughter Grace Melvin Turner upon her passing in 1959.

Register to attend the lecture here.