Biography

CV

Director of Studies for the "Law" track ("Parcours Droit") of the Department of Social Sciences at the ENS (Ecole normale supérieure - Université Paris Sciances et Lettres) I am an Associate Professor with Habilitation to Supervise Research (HDR) in Public Law, a member of the Center for Legal Theory and Analysis (CTAD) (ENS-Paris Nanterre-CNRS), and an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Advanced International Studies (IHEI) (Université Panthéon-Assas). I teach, or have taught, Philosophy of Law, International Law, International Economic Law, Constitutional Law, Institutional Law of the European Union, and the History of Legal Ideas at the ENS. Since 2022–2023, I have offered a course on the International Ecological Law of the Economy, open to all ENS students but integrated into the Law Track of the Department of Social Sciences, the Public Policy and Development program at the Paris School of Economics, and the Center for Environment and Society (CERES). Additionally, with Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach, I have co-led a bimonthly workshop on current developments in International Law and International Relations. With Jean-Louis Halpérin, I have also taught an online course entitled Comparative Law and International Law: Cross-Perspectives on the Coursera platform.

I serve on the editorial boards of Droit(s) – Revue française de théorie, de philosophie et de cultures juridiques and the Journal français de droit international. I am also an active member of the French Society for International Law, the French branch of the International Law Association, the International Association of Economic Law, the European Society of International Law, and the Sustainable Market Actors Research Network (SMART Network).

As a member of the College of Associate Experts at the Institut Veblen, I frequently collaborate — as an expert or as a supervisor of students from the EUCLID legal clinic — with associations, trade unions, and NGOs working in the environmental field (Bloom, Friends of the Earth, Notre Affaire À Tous, etc.).

I am the author of two books, co-editor of five volumes and two journal issues, and the author of more than one hundred articles, case notes, and book reviews.

My research as a whole falls into four major clusters, each characterized by distinct objects of inquiry and distinct methodological approaches.

1) The first cluster of my research concerns the origins and political uses of legal theories, concepts, arguments, rules, and institutions, particularly — though not exclusively — in the international sphere.

I have approached the theme of the political uses of Law from multiple angles: through the legal concepts employed, through the policies at stake, through the state or non-state actors adopting such policies, or through the authors who originated a concept, theory, or argument that was subsequently taken up and deployed — by others or by themselves — in practical domains.

At present, I am particularly interested in the uses of legal theories and their constituent elements by actors engaged in the democratization of political societies, or, conversely, by actors advancing authoritarian agendas.

2) The second cluster of research concerns International Economic Law broadly conceived, and in particular the relationship between that field and ecology.

This work rests on the conviction that, alongside the opaque and authoritarian character of the procedures through which treaties are produced — and thus through which international trade and investment institutions are created — their often ambivalent effects on human rights and their frequently deleterious effects on the natural world stem from the way in which these instruments and institutions are structured and conceived, and, behind that, from the way in which the discipline of "International Economic Law" is itself structured and conceived. I am therefore working toward a new approach to the discipline — one that places at its center what was excluded at its inception, including in particular the "generalist" international institutions (notably the United Nations General Assembly and the International Court of Justice), certain strands of customary international Law (especially the requirements flowing from the principles of equality and sovereignty), classical legal typologies (public Law and private Law, international Law and domestic Law, "hard Law" and "soft Law"), and above all the economic implications of international labor Law, international environmental Law, international peace and security Law, human rights Law, health Law, and so forth.

In 2021–2022, I was granted a six-month research leave by the National Council of Universities, and a further six-month leave by the École Normale Supérieure, in order to write a textbook on International Economic Law setting forth this new approach. The volume was published in the "Droit fondamental" series of the Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) in November 2023.

In order to put this approach into practice, I have worked on the negotiation of the treaty on the responsibility of transnational and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. This led me to advise the French coalition for the UN treaty and, together with Sophie Grosbon, to organize a meeting on October 5, 2018, between that coalition and some twenty academics, in preparation for the fourth session of the Human Rights Council's Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on this issue (October 15–19, 2018).

As an extension of this approach, I participated as a standing committee member in the collective research project 2021–2023 on the Ecological Transition of Economic Law (TEDE), which aimed to make economic Law a lever for ecological, economic, and democratic transition. I contributed to writing the final report submitted to ADEME (the French government agency responsible for ecological transition).

It is again in this same vein that, in 2023, I opened a course on the International Ecological Law of the Economy — the first of its kind in France — and that I am currently exploring the possibility of an international organization for ecology capable of producing standards in this domain. In June 2025, I co-organized with Paolo Farah an ESIL-supported international conference, Towards a Global Ecological-Economic Legal  at the ENS.

3) The third cluster of research concerns the national and international procedures governing the negotiation, conclusion, ratification, implementation, and denunciation of international treaties, and the problematic fact that these procedures are often opaque, insufficiently inclusive, and poorly deliberative.

This cluster has three dimensions:

A critical dimension, which highlights the undemocratic character of the procedures that give rise to norms that are now numerous and highly influential on the daily lives of individuals, particularly in Europe;

A practical dimension, which involves identifying best practices (Swiss, British, European, South African, and others) in these areas; and

A prospective/advocacy dimension, which consists in formulating proposals for democratization.

On the subject of enhanced popular and parliamentary participation in the negotiation, adoption, and ratification of international treaties, I conducted a six-month research stay at McGill University (Montréal, Canada) in 2017. My subsequent publications on this subject have consisted primarily in a comparative examination of the Laws and practices of Western states and the European Union, particularly — though not exclusively — with regard to major trade and investment agreements (EU/Colombia and Peru agreements, CETA, TTIP, JEFTA, etc.).

Part of this research has recently found expression in the published proceedings of the ENS International Law conferences, which I founded in 2014 together with Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach: the fifth conference, devoted to Treaty Withdrawal (proceedings published by Pedone in 2022), and the sixth, organized in partnership with the Université Paris Descartes (Nathalie Clarenc-Bicudo and Anne-Thida Norodom) and devoted to French Practices of International Law (proceedings also published by Pedone in 2022).

Previous colloquia were devoted successively to Non-Legal Grounds of International Judgments (proceedings published by Pedone in 2016), State Policies Toward International Courts and Tribunals (proceedings published by Pedone in 2019), and The Writing of International Law (recordings of the first panel, devoted to the negotiation and drafting of treaties, and the second, devoted to the drafting of Security Council resolutions, are available online).

In 2023, the seventh ENS International Law conference addressed Democratic Rojava and Law. Its proceedings have been published in the "International Law Series" of Bruylant in 2025.

4) The fourth cluster of research aims to place this broader project in historical, geographical, and "civilizational" perspective.

First, I am conducting genealogical research on the foundational choices of Western political modernity and what it may have "missed," or what explains its current inability to respond effectively to demands for greater justice and democracy, or to the ongoing ecological collapse. In this framework, I offer a course on the history of legal ideas that examines the conceptions of the state, of international Law, and, at a more fundamental level, of humanity and politics, as defended by Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G.W.F. Hegel, and Alexandre Kojève, as well as Georges Scelle and Hans Kelsen. I also publish work on the political intentions and legal theories of jurists such as Georges Scelle, Georges Burdeau, and Hans Kelsen, and on the political implications and political uses that have been made of their work. I am planning to undertake similar research on the thought of Friedrich Hayek.

Second, I am interested in the manner in which Japan and China received, in the nineteenth century, the Western-origin institution of the Law of nations — subsequently international Law — and how, both historically and today, they have appropriated and employed it. China is often regarded as the civilization that, despite certain appearances, resists Western influence most persistently, while Japan is seen as the Eastern society that has most successfully blended its traditional culture with Western modernity; studying both always affords a productive vantage point from which to reflect on the West itself. This is all the more the case given that the Chinese Communist Party has for several years been engaged in a form of cultural warfare against the West. In this context, I have written regularly on Chinese foreign legal policy — most recently in collaboration with Matthieu Burnay — with particular attention to its economic dimensions. With Alice Ekman, I co-edited the Asia section of the Annuaire français de relations internationales, a responsibility I relinquished in 2023 in order to focus on my other research agendas.

All of these research clusters are organized around a broader reflection aimed at placing Law in the service of equitable, convivial (in the sense of a harmonious coexistence among human beings, among political communities, and among living beings more broadly), and democratic societies.

Research Areas:

  • The relationships between the democratic ideal and conceptions of – and discourses on – Law

  • The ecological transition of international economic Law (alignment of international economic Law's rules, institutions, and procedures with the requirements of international environmental Law)

  • National and European procedures for the negotiation, conclusion, ratification, and denunciation of international treaties, and their democratization (comparative Law)

  • The political and ideological choices embedded in legal concepts and in relationships among legal systems

  • The use of international Law by the People's Republic of China and Japan

More broadly, my specific areas of expertise include:

  • Philosophy of Law

  • Theory of International Law

  • International Economic Law broadly conceived

  • History of international legal thought