Dr Stefan Mandelbaum

I am an experienced researcher working on international law in its public, private as well as hybrid manifestations. My work encompasses critical studies on international investment arbitration, international investment law and state theory, international criminal justice as well as the history of international legal thought. I am, moreover, a seasoned academic with leadership experiences as a senate member, a senate committee member as well as a faculty chair for research ethics. 

With a strong background in philosophy, especially German Idealism, my research focusses on the semantics of legitimacy/illegitimacy perceptions of general international law. My most recent publications encompass a variety of trajectories from a critical and access to justice angle, such as international people’s tribunals, use and misuse of rhetoric in international arbitral reasoning, and a dialectical analysis of the conceptual framework in which legitimacy concerns in international investment law arise.

• ‘‘If I would stay alive, I would be their voice’: On the legitimacy of international People’s Tribunals’, in: Modern Law Review (May 2022), co-authored with Aldo Zammit Borda etc.
• ‘Legitimation Crisis or Access to Justice? On the Authority of International People’s Tribunals’ (co-authored with Aldo Zammit Borda), OpinioJuris, July 2021 (blog) 
• ‘The Legitimacy of Arbitral Reasoning: On Authority and Authorisation in International Investment Dispute Settlement’, in: Czech and Central European Yearbook of Arbitration, Vol. 10 (2020)
• ‘The Measure of Finality: A Structural Analysis of Legitimacy Concerns in International Investment Arbitration’, in: UCL Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Vol. 9 (2) (2020) 
• ‘On Making Sense of Contradictions: A Dialectical Critique of Methods and the Status of Customs in International Investment Law’, in David A. Frenkel, ed., Economy and Commercial Law, Athens, 2013, pp. 123-34

I welcome approaches from prospective doctoral candidates in any field of general international law, international arbitration, legal theory, political philosophy, German Idealism and Critical Theory.

Undergraduate

• Law, Justice and Society LW1172
• Jurisprudence LW3410
• Contract Law (advanced) LW2130

General International Law, Access to Justice, German Idealism

External Examiner LLB/LLM: University of Buckingham (UK)
Chief External Examiner: Westminster University (UK)
External LLM Examiner: Lloyd’s Law School (India)
External LLM Examiner: University of Greenwich (UK)

Full (merit-based) Doctoral Scholarship (King’s College London)

Magister Artium (Philosophy, Law and Greek Philology)
PhD in Law
PG Certificate