2024 Annual Kirby Lecture in International Law: Claiming Queer Liberty

Established to recognise the long passion and service to International Law by The Hon Michael Kirby, this year's lecture will be delivered by James Hathaway (University of Michigan).

Sexual liberty must come out of the international legal closet. While non-discrimination and privacy law have been the basis for some very important queer rights victories, they cannot deliver that which is most central to queer sexuality: the right to have consensual sex outside the confines of the classic marital, procreative model. Beyond enabling international human rights law more fully to advance human dignity, this shift would afford an opportunity to refurbish the international human rights edifice in a globally inclusive way—something that continued pursuit of an identity-based, integrative queer rights agenda cannot achieve.

James C. Hathaway is the James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He works in the field of public international law, with a focus on international human rights law, international queer rights, and international refugee law. Before his retirement from the teaching faculty in 2022, Hathaway served as the founding director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan from 1998 to 2022.