The International Society of Public Law will hold their 2022 Annual Conference July 4 – 6 in Wrocław, Poland. The Conference will be held in hybrid format, with a fully in-person program of panels and activities in Wrocław alongside a virtual program of fully online panels and activities. The plenary sessions will be held in-person and broadcast live through ICON-S Live.

The plenary program at the 2022 Annual Conference will focus on Global Problems and Prospects in Public Law. The COVID-19 pandemic is only the latest in a succession of challenges facing the peoples of the world. The machinery of public law has been called on to help manage the public health crisis, and in some cases it has succeeded and in others it has not operated as hoped. The same is true of the global crisis of mass migration, the risks and opportunities in law and technology, and the current state of democracy in many corners of the world. The weight of these challenges can feel daunting. History tells us, however, that crises are also opportunities for re-thinking, and for renewal. And whether our purpose is to understand or to protest, or to unmake and re-build, public law will inevitably frame our response.

There are four key themes in the plenary and featured panels this year: democracy, migration, public health, and technology. Questions of trust and distrust feed into broader debates about democratic backsliding and the rule of law which have become a central concern in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. In this context, technology creates both new risks and new opportunities: the revolutions in data storage and information dissemination are manifestly double-edged swords. Trust and distrust are central, too, to how societies accommodate migrants, and to how they handle issues of public health, as the current pandemic has made all too obvious. In each of these four areas, the challenges are clear and present. But they are not just dangers. Each is a demand, and an opportunity, to rethink and rebuild key aspects of our societies in light of shared democratic ideals.

Plenary speakers will include:

• Koen Lenaerts, President of the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Olga Tokarczuk, Writer and the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
• Siri Gloppen, Professor, University of Bergen
• Mayra Feddersen, Professor, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez
• Jorrit Rijpma, Professor, Leiden University
• Judit Sándor, Professor, Central European University
• Pedro Villarreal, Senior Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Law and International Law

Featured panels will be held online and will include the following speakers:

• Fleur Johns, Professor, University of New South Wales
• Gerald Knaus, President of the European Stability Initiative
• Shalini Randeria, Rector, Central European University
• Sanford Levinson, Professor, The University of Texas at Austin

For any inquiries regarding the 2022 Annual Conference, please email: icons@icon-society.org

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