During the last 20 years, some of the world’s most distinguished scholars have been invited to the law school to deliver a public lecture in memory of the late former dean Cecil A. Wright, who founded U of T’s modern law school.


2023 Cecil A. Wright Memorial Lecture

"The Past, Present, and Future of the Global Legal Order"

Thursday, October 12, 2023 - 4:10pm to 6:00pm
Location: J140, Professor A.V. Dicey Classroom

Register to attend in-person or watch via livestream

If you require accommodation(s) please contact events.law@utoronto.ca by October 5, so that they can work with you to make appropriate arrangements.

Professor Oona A. Hathaway

Oona A. Hathaway
Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law, Yale Law School
Professor of International Law and Area Studies at the Yale University MacMillan Center
Professor of the Yale University Department of Political Science
Director of the Yale Law School Center for Global Legal Challenges

Professor Oona Hathaway will begin examining the "Old World Order," when war was not only legal but the key way in which states enforced their legal rights. She will explain when and how the legal order transformed in the 20th century, when war for all but a very limited set of purposes was outlawed, spurring widespread changes in the broader international legal system. Finally, she will discuss the impact of the illegal war in Ukraine on the global legal order—and what impact it might have in the future.

Professor Oona A. Hathaway has been a member of the Advisory Committee on International Law for the Legal Adviser at the United States Department of State since 2005. In 2014-15, she took leave to serve as Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense, where she was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence. She is the Director of the annual Yale Cyber Leadership Forum and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has published more than 40 law review articles, and The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (with Scott Shapiro, 2017). She is also Executive Editor of and regular author at Just Security, and she writes often for popular publications such as The Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, and Foreign Affairs.


See the Wright Lecture archives to find out more information about past lectures, including in some cases a description, the text, or a video of the lecture.