Leiden Journal of International Law (2020), pp. 1–25 doi:10.1017/S0922156520000667 ORIGINAL ARTICLE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY Mapping the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’ through obituaries Luiza Leão Soares Pereira1 and Niccolò Ridi2* 1School of Law, University of Sheffield, Bartolomé House, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, United Kingdom. Email: l.pereira@ sheffield.ac.uk and 2School of Law and Social Justice Building, Liverpool Law School, University of Liverpool, Chatham Street, Liverpool L69 7ZR, United Kingdom. Email:
[email protected] Abstract Since Oscar Schachter’s articulation of the concept, scholars have attempted to better understand the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’ making up our profession. They have done this through piece- meal surveys of public professional rosters (arbitrators, International Court of Justice counsel), piecing together anecdotes of connections between members, or constructing stories about individuals’ role in dis- crete legal developments. Departing from these approaches, we use the obituaries published in the British Yearbook of International Law (1920–2017) to draw an interactive map of the ‘invisible college’. Obituaries are a unique window into international law’s otherwise private inner life, unveiling professional and per- sonal connections between international lawyers and their shared career paths beyond single institutions or individual stories. Employing network analysis, a method commonly used in social sciences to describe complex social phenomena such as this, we are able to demonstrate the ubiquity of informal networks whereby ideas move, and provide evidence of the community’s homogeneity. Exploring connections between international lawyers and their shared characteristics in this novel way, we shed light on the fea- tures of this group and the potential impact individual personalities have on the law.