On 19 November 2024, Dr. Hendrik Simon (member of the ConTrust research initiative) was awarded the 3rd Jost Delbrück Prize for his book “A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order” was awarded the 3rd Jost Delbrück Prize.
The Walther Schücking Institute for International Law (WSI) at Kiel University awards the Jost Delbrück Prize every two years in memory of its former director of many years. The prize, endowed with €1,000, honors outstanding dissertations in the field of international law of peace and conflict that have been written at universities or research institutions in Germany, Austria or Switzerland.
In his excellent dissertation, Hendrik Simon critically examines the widespread idea that the “free right to war” (liberum ius ad bellum) was only gradually outlawed in international law with the founding of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the UN Charter. Hendrik Simon questions this narrative of progress in the history of international politics and locates the birth of the modern ban on war under international law in the early 19th century.
