CLPE Fellow Profile

Achilles Skordas studied, and later taught, law at the University of Athens-Greece, and was awarded a PhD by the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt/Main. He is currently Professor of International Law at the School of Law, University of Bristol, in the UK.

Professor Skordas has been, a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris XII, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. He is also affiliated with the Southeast Europe Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, DC.

Professor Skordas is the Greek member of the Odysseus Academic Network for Legal Studies on Asylum and Immigration in Europe, and has previously been an advisor to the Greek Parliament on international law and international affairs.

Professor Skordas has written extensively on international law, including on sources, the use of force, regime theory and human rights, migration and asylum law and policy, and foreign policy issues. He also co-edited (with V. Karavas and E. Christodoulidis) a book of essays by Gunther Teubner, translated in Greek, on systems theory and law.

During his stay in Osgoode, Professor Skordas will undertake research on the topic "Justice in international law". He will first explore the systems-theoretical approach to justice, as developed by Niklas Luhmann (justice as contingency formula) and Gunther Teubner (justice as self-transcendence). As well, he will then  link this perspective to the corresponding discourse in the area of  international law, as developed by theorists such as Martti Koskenniemi, Philip Allott, David Kennedy, and Thomas Franck. Finally, Professor Skordas will attempt an answer to the question, whether there is place for the notion of justice in the system of international law and global law.