Wednesday, May 6, 2026, 1:00 – 2:30 pm PT

Powerful states are explicitly flouting international law’s general prohibition on the use of force and denying the relevance of international law at all. In doing so, they are pushing for a world in which might is right, and powerful states can use force to bully smaller states into submission with little regard for international law or its general prohibition on the use of force. This is a seismic shift in international law and will fundamentally reshape the world if it goes unchallenged, with implications for a range of areas including the use of AI in the military and cyber operations.

Bailey Ulbricht argues in forthcoming scholarship that to adequately respond to this troubling trend, scholars will need to embrace long-standing legal critiques of international law’s functional role in constraining force, as well as realist critiques about the role of power in the system, to avoid irrelevance. Controversially, she argues that such critiques indicate a promising pathway forward through long-standing international principles that leverage contextual and pragmatic decision-making while still incorporating normative values, principal among which is the necessity principle. She then presents key components of necessity, derived from a novel examination of state practice, and conclude with a series of initial recommendations aimed at improving incorporation of necessity into U.S. decision-making.

The aim of this talk is to foster honest reflections about international law and to attempt to chart a pathway forward.

Bailey Ulbricht, Executive Director, Stanford Humanitarian Program, Stanford University. Ulbricht is the founding executive director of the Stanford Humanitarian Program, through which she has pursued projects focused on technology, harm, and international law, primarily in armed conflict settings. Her research interests include international laws and norms governing the use of force, the law of armed conflict, international human rights law, and Indigenous data sovereignty. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Berkeley Journal of International Law, the New Mexico Law Review, the Stanford Law Review, the Michigan Law and Technology Journal, and the International Review of the Red Cross.