Unilateralism in international law: a United States-European symposium

It was a special privilege for the University of Michigan Law School's Center for International and Comparative Law to host the conference whose work is reflected in this issue of the EJIL. The challenge of unilateralism is profound. The term, in its pejorative sense, evokes an intuition of concern. Yet a moment's reflection summons up competing intuitions, and we can often find ourselves uncertain about what we should think, for example, when one country attempts to prevent genocide within the borders of another. During the two-day conference, an exceptional group of scholars worked with creativity, rigour and insight to deepen our understanding of the dilemmas of unilateralism. Their work product, reflected in the pages that follow, marks an extremely important contribution to the world's understanding of this issue. We congratulate the editors of the EJIL for their inspired effort in bringing this project to fruition.