Can laws prevent wars? For Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro of Yale and Cornell's Isabel Hull and Jens Ohlin, that is the question. In a debate moderated by Cornell government professor Matthew Evangelista, the scholars will take as a starting point the successes and failures of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 in limiting the outbreak of international wars.

Hathaway and Shapiro published a book on this subject, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (Simon & Schuster), in the fall of 2017.

Oona A. Hathaway is the Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law and Counselor to the Dean at the Yale Law School. She is also professor of international law and area studies at the Yale University MacMillan Center, on the faculty at the Jackson Institute for International Affairs, and professor in Yale's department of political science. Hathaway earned her BA summa cum laude at Harvard University in 1994 and her JD at Yale Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, in 1997.

Scott Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and professor of philosophy at Yale Law School. His areas of interest include jurisprudence, international law, constitutional law and theory, criminal law, family law, philosophy of action, and the theory of authority. He is the author of Legality (2011) and editor (with Jules Coleman) of The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (2002). He earned BA and PhD degrees in philosophy from Columbia University and a JD from Yale Law School, where he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Isabel V. Hull is John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell. She is the author of A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War (2014), Absolute Destruction (2004), and Sexuality, State and Civil Society in Germany, 1700–1815 (1996). Her research focuses on political theory, gender/sexuality, and sociopolitical and administrative aspects of Germany during the period 1700-1945.

Jens Ohlin, vice dean and professor of law at Cornell Law School, specializes in international law and all aspects of criminal law, including domestic, comparative, and international criminal law. His latest books include Necessity in International Law (2016) (with Larry May), Criminal Law: Doctrine, Application, and Practice (2016), and The Assault on International Law (2015). Ohlin’s research also focuses on the laws of war, in particular the impact of new technology on the regulation of warfare, including remotely piloted drones and the strategy of targeted killings, cyber-warfare, and the role of non-state actors in armed conflicts.

Matthew Anthony Evangelista, moderator, is President White Professor of History and Political Science and the director of the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. His current teaching and research interests are the relationship between gender, nationalism, and war; ethical and legal issues in international affairs (particularly just war theory and international humanitarian law); transnational relations; and separatist movements. Evangelista’s most recent book, Italy from Crisis to Crisis: Political Economy, Security, and Society in the 21st Century (Routledge 2018), seeks to understand Italy’s approach to crises by studying the country in regional, international, and comparative context.