Tuesday 11 November 2025
The second Lord Judge Memorial Lecture in Legal History will be held this year as a collaborative event between the Middle Temple Historical Society and the Selden Society, in commemoration of the distinguished legacy of Lord Judge, who served as President of the Selden Society from 2009 to 2015.
Both Societies are pleased to announce that this year’s lecture will be delivered by The Rt. Hon. Lord Sumption, FSA, FRHistS, former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and a distinguished historian.
In his lecture, Lord Sumption will dispute the prevailing historiographical orthodoxy that locates the origins of international law as a discrete legal discipline in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the writings of Hugo Grotius. He will argue that the medieval period saw the development of a coherent notion of sovereignty and an elaborate code of what would now be called customary international law.