Where will the conference be held?

The conference will be held in Vienna, AUT.

What is the primary focus of the conference?

The conference focuses on various aspects of international law, providing a platform for legal scholars and practitioners to discuss contemporary issues and future directions in the field.

When does the conference take place?

The conference is scheduled for a period of several days in August.

International Law Association Biennial Conference 2026

Name: International Law Association Biennial Conference 2026
Start: 2026-08-17T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-08-21T00:00:00Z
Location: Vienna

Aug 17–21, 2026Vienna, AustriaIn-person

Starts in 9 daysRegistration open

The International Law Association Biennial Conference is a significant gathering for legal scholars and practitioners, convening in Vienna, Austria. This event serves as a crucial platform for discussing contemporary issues in international law, fostering collaboration, and shaping the future discourse in the field. Attendees can anticipate a program designed to address the evolving landscape of global legal frameworks and their practical implications.

Committees & topics

Topics
Alternative Dispute Settlement in International Law · Global Health Law · International Monetary Law · International Tax Law · International Securities Law · International Law and Artificial Intelligence · International Law and Emerging Technologies · International Migration Law

Why it matters

This conference holds particular importance as it brings together a diverse group of experts to deliberate on the complex challenges facing international law today. The discussions in Vienna, AUT, are instrumental in identifying emerging trends, proposing innovative solutions, and strengthening the foundational principles that govern relations between states and other international actors. Such gatherings are vital for maintaining the relevance and adaptability of international legal norms in a rapidly changing world.

The insights generated from this conference can significantly influence policy-making and legal scholarship globally. By providing a forum for critical analysis and debate, the event contributes to a deeper understanding of international legal obligations and opportunities. The outcomes often inform academic curricula, legal practice, and the strategic approaches of various international organizations and national governments.

How to prepare

To maximize engagement at this conference, participants should consider a multi-faceted preparatory approach. Familiarizing oneself with the current legal and political landscape of the host city, Vienna, AUT, can provide valuable context for discussions. Understanding the historical and contemporary role of AUT in international legal development can offer a unique perspective on the proceedings.

Delegates should also prepare to engage with a wide array of perspectives. International law is inherently shaped by diverse national interests and legal traditions. Therefore, an appreciation for different legal systems and their approaches to global challenges will be beneficial. This includes understanding how various countries interpret and apply international legal principles, which can vary significantly across regions and political systems. Leveraging Model Diplomat's lesson on "engagement-strategies" can help in navigating these diverse viewpoints and fostering productive dialogue. Furthermore, applying the principles of "dynamic-analysis" can aid in understanding the evolving nature of international legal issues discussed at the conference.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Austria

As the host nation, AUT plays a central role in facilitating dialogue and providing a neutral ground for international legal discussions.

Role in topic

AUT has a long-standing tradition of neutrality and a strong commitment to international law, often hosting significant international organizations and diplomatic events. Its legal scholars and practitioners contribute significantly to the development and interpretation of international legal norms.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Alternative Dispute Settlement in International Law

Alternative dispute settlement (ADS) — encompassing arbitration, mediation, conciliation, and good offices — has become a central pillar of international dispute resolution as states and private actors seek alternatives to litigation before the ICJ or domestic courts. Modern investor-state arbitration emerged with the 1965 ICSID Convention and proliferated through bilateral investment treaties, while commercial arbitration grew under the 1958 New York Convention and the UNCITRAL Model Law. Inter-state arbitration, rooted in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, has seen renewed use through the Permanent Court of Arbitration, including in maritime delimitation and UNCLOS Annex VII cases such as the South China Sea arbitration. The field is now in flux. A legitimacy crisis around investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) — concerns over inconsistent awards, regulatory chill, and high costs — has prompted UNCITRAL Working Group III to negotiate structural reform, including proposals for a multilateral investment court. The 2019 Singapore Convention on Mediation has begun to mainstream cross-border mediated settlements, and parallel debates address transparency (the 2014 Mauritius Convention), third-party funding, and the role of ADS in human rights and climate disputes. The ILA's work intersects with all of these strands, focusing on coherence between fragmented regimes and the integration of public-interest considerations into traditionally private dispute mechanisms.

Key players

Global Health Law

Global health law has evolved from a narrow regime of cross-border disease control into a broad framework covering pandemic response, access to medicines, non-communicable diseases, and the human right to health. Its foundations lie in the 1946 WHO Constitution and the International Health Regulations, most recently revised in 2005 after the SARS outbreak. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed structural weaknesses — inequitable vaccine distribution, opaque pathogen-sharing arrangements, and weak compliance mechanisms — and catalyzed both the 2024 IHR amendments and the WHO Pandemic Agreement adopted in May 2025. Key unresolved disputes include pathogen access and benefit-sharing (PABS), technology transfer for vaccines and therapeutics, the relationship between TRIPS flexibilities and emergency access, and the legal status of WHO emergency declarations. Beyond pandemics, global health law increasingly engages with antimicrobial resistance, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the 2025 High-Level Meeting on NCDs, and intersections with trade, investment, and human rights law. The ILA's work addresses fragmentation across WHO, WTO, WIPO, and human rights bodies, and the question of whether soft-law instruments can deliver enforceable obligations.

Key players

International Monetary Law

International monetary law governs the legal architecture of exchange rates, capital flows, sovereign debt, and monetary cooperation. Its modern form was shaped by the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which created the IMF and a par-value system anchored to the US dollar and gold. The 1971 collapse of dollar-gold convertibility and the 1978 Second Amendment to the IMF Articles legalized floating exchange rates, shifting the Fund's role toward surveillance and conditional lending. Subsequent crises — Latin American debt in the 1980s, the Asian financial crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the eurozone crisis — have repeatedly tested the regime. Contemporary debates focus on sovereign debt restructuring in the wake of post-COVID distress affecting Zambia, Sri Lanka, Ghana, and others under the G20 Common Framework; the legal treatment of central bank reserves following the freezing of Russian assets after 2022; the rise of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and private stablecoins; and the use of unilateral financial sanctions. The ILA's Monetary Law Committee has historically engaged with IMF jurisdiction, lex monetae, and currency-related state responsibility, and now confronts questions about the fragmentation of the dollar-centric system and the legal frameworks needed for digital money.

Key players

International Tax Law

International tax law historically rested on a bilateral treaty network built around the OECD and UN Model Conventions, designed to prevent double taxation and allocate taxing rights between residence and source states. This century-old architecture proved increasingly unsuited to a digitalized economy in which multinational firms generate substantial profits in jurisdictions where they have little physical presence. Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), tax havens, and aggressive transfer pricing prompted the OECD/G20 BEPS Project launched in 2013 and the 2021 agreement among more than 135 jurisdictions on a Two-Pillar Solution. Pillar One reallocates taxing rights over the largest multinationals to market jurisdictions; Pillar Two establishes a 15% global minimum corporate tax, now being implemented through domestic GloBE rules in the EU, UK, Japan, South Korea, and others. Implementation remains uneven — the United States has not adopted Pillar Two, and Pillar One's Multilateral Convention faces ratification hurdles. In parallel, the UN General Assembly in 2023 launched negotiations on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, reflecting Global South demands for a more inclusive forum. The ILA engages with treaty interpretation, dispute resolution under MAP and arbitration, and the legal architecture of the emerging global minimum tax.

Key players

International Securities Law

International securities law governs cross-border capital markets activity — issuance, trading, custody, clearing, and enforcement — across jurisdictions with sharply different regulatory traditions. The field has grown from a patchwork of national rules into a partially harmonized regime coordinated by IOSCO, whose Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (2002) and Enhanced MMoU underpin cross-border enforcement cooperation. The 2008 financial crisis accelerated harmonization in derivatives (G20 OTC reforms), credit rating agency oversight, and systemic risk regulation through the Financial Stability Board. Current issues include the regulation of crypto-assets following the EU's MiCA Regulation and IOSCO's 2023 crypto recommendations, sustainability disclosure under the ISSB and EU CSRD, the extraterritorial reach of US securities laws after Morrison v. National Australia Bank, and the legal treatment of intermediated securities under the 2009 Geneva Securities Convention. Tokenization of traditional assets, cross-border insolvency of financial institutions, and the fragmentation of clearing infrastructure after Brexit add further complexity. The ILA examines how private international law, soft-law standards, and treaty instruments interact in a market that is global in practice but national in law.

Key players

International Law and Artificial Intelligence

The rapid deployment of advanced AI systems — particularly foundation models and generative AI since 2022 — has outpaced existing legal frameworks across human rights, trade, IP, liability, and security domains. Early governance efforts have been predominantly soft law: the OECD AI Principles (2019, updated 2024), UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (2021), G7 Hiroshima AI Process (2023), and the UK-hosted AI Safety Summits beginning at Bletchley Park in 2023. The first binding instruments have now emerged: the EU AI Act entered into force in 2024 with phased implementation, and the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law opened for signature in September 2024 as the first international treaty on AI. Key unresolved questions include cross-border liability for AI-caused harm, the application of IHL to AI-enabled military systems, copyright treatment of training data and outputs, algorithmic discrimination under human rights law, and the governance of frontier model risks. The UN General Assembly's 2024 resolution on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI and the Global Digital Compact have opened broader UN-level engagement, while disagreement persists between rights-centric, innovation-centric, and sovereignty-centric regulatory philosophies. The ILA's work addresses how existing international law applies and where new instruments are needed.

Key players

International Law and Emerging Technologies

Beyond AI, a cluster of emerging technologies — quantum computing, biotechnology and gene editing, autonomous systems, space technologies, neurotechnology, and advanced cyber capabilities — is straining international legal frameworks built for slower-moving innovation. Cyber operations have prompted the Tallinn Manual processes and the UN Open-Ended Working Group on ICT security, while gene editing raised acute concerns after the 2018 He Jiankui case and ongoing debates under the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Cartagena Protocol. Outer space activity has shifted from a state-dominated domain governed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to a commercial environment in which mega-constellations and resource utilization (Artemis Accords vs. Moon Agreement) pose novel legal questions. Cross-cutting issues include export controls on dual-use technology, data governance and cross-border data flows, supply-chain security, and the application of human rights and humanitarian law to novel capabilities. The fragmentation of standards-setting — across ITU, ISO, IEEE, and regional bodies — and competing techno-regulatory blocs complicate harmonization. The ILA examines how general international law principles (sovereignty, due diligence, non-intervention, state responsibility) translate into actionable rules for technologies whose effects are diffuse, attributional uncertainty is high, and private actors play outsized roles.

Key players

International Migration Law

International migration law is a fragmented field drawing on refugee law (1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol), human rights law, labor law (ILO conventions), the law of the sea, and consular and nationality law. Migration pressures have intensified due to protracted conflicts (Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan), climate-related displacement, and demographic divergence between regions. The 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and Global Compact on Refugees provided the first comprehensive — though non-binding — international frameworks, but implementation has been uneven and political backlash against migration has grown in many destination states. Legal flashpoints include externalization of asylum processing (UK-Rwanda arrangements, EU-Tunisia and EU-Türkiye deals, Italy-Albania protocol), pushbacks and the principle of non-refoulement, search-and-rescue obligations in the Mediterranean and other routes, the rights of climate-displaced persons (highlighted by the UN Human Rights Committee's Teitiota decision and the 2023 ICJ advisory proceedings on climate), labor migration governance, and statelessness. The ILA's work addresses gaps between protection categories, the interaction of migration with trade and development law, and the emerging question of whether new instruments are needed for cross-border climate displacement.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Law Association Biennial Conference 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Mifepristone Ruling Sparks 2026 Political Tug

Mifepristone Case Revives Abortion Politics

Democrats Push SCOTUS to Protect Abortion Pil

Federal Court Blocks Trump's Asylum Rules

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

Austria August 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Law Association Biennial Conference 2026

Aug 17–21, 2026Vienna, AustriaIn-person

Starts in 9 daysRegistration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Alternative Dispute Settlement in International Law · Global Health Law · International Monetary Law · International Tax Law · International Securities Law · International Law and Artificial Intelligence · International Law and Emerging Technologies · International Migration Law

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Austria

As the host nation, AUT plays a central role in facilitating dialogue and providing a neutral ground for international legal discussions.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Alternative Dispute Settlement in International Law

Key players

Global Health Law

Key players

International Monetary Law

Key players

International Tax Law

Key players

International Securities Law

Key players

International Law and Artificial Intelligence

Key players

International Law and Emerging Technologies

Key players

International Migration Law

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Law Association Biennial Conference 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Mifepristone Ruling Sparks 2026 Political Tug

Mifepristone Case Revives Abortion Politics

Democrats Push SCOTUS to Protect Abortion Pil

Federal Court Blocks Trump's Asylum Rules

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

Austria August 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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