Book Symposium Introduction: More Equal Than Others

Raffael Fasel

University of Cambridge

The book forming the subject of this IACL-AIDC Blog symposium is based on my PhD thesis at Cambridge, which I had the great fortune of writing under the supervision of Professor Nigel Simmonds. When, after three and a half years, I was nervously approaching the final viva voce, he tried to calm my nerves by reminding me – somewhat dismayingly – that this would be one of the few occasions in an academic career when someone would read one’s work carefully and engage with it. He was probably not wrong, but I was relieved to have discovered another such occasion: book launch events, which I was lucky enough to have at different universities. I am particularly grateful to Merris Amos, Alasdair Cochrane, Jonathan Herring, and Anne Phillips who have scrutinised the book at various launches and who have kindly contributed their responses to this symposium, which will be published in this space over the next couple of weeks. Their posts will be followed by a post where I will attempt to respond to their contributions. It goes without saying that I will not be able to do justice to their insightful comments within the confines of a blog post. However, I shall try to at least sketch what my answer to them would look like.

Raffael Fasel is an Assistant Professor in Public Law and Fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge.

Suggested citation: Raffael Fasel, ‘Book Symposium Introduction: More Equal Than Others’, IACL-AIDC Blog (4 February 2025) Book Symposium Introduction: More Equal Than Others — IACL-IADC Blog