Dr Pavel specialises in political philosophy and the history of political thought. Her interests include the philosophy of international law, liberal theory and contemporary challenges to it, and ethics and public policy. At King’s, Dr Pavel has served as the first director of the PPE programme from 2015-2018 and has contributed substantively to its re-design.

Office hours

Wednesday: 09.30 – 11.30 in Bush House North East wing, room 7.22.

Research and PhD supervision

Dr Pavel welcomes PhD supervision in the areas of political theory, international political theory/international law, constitutional thought, and ethics and public policy.

Dr Pavel has published two books with Oxford University Press. The first, entitled Divided Sovereignty (2015), addresses the question of how to constrain states that commit severe abuses against their own citizens. The book challenges the long-standing assumption that collective grants of authority from the citizens of a state should be made exclusively for institutions within the borders of that state. It argues that international institutions can act as an insurance scheme against the possibility of states failing to fulfil their most basic sovereign responsibilities.

The second book, Law Beyond the State: Dynamic Coordination, State Consent and Binding International Law (2021), examines under what conditions international law is compatible with the sovereignty claims of constitutional democracies. The book argues that 1. The reasons we have to defend the establishment of legal institutions are the same as inside and across political communities; 2. International law can be developed in a manner that is compatible with the authority of constitutional democracies; and 3.The internal morality of the rule of law, such as the idea that rules have to be applied impartially, and to protect a minimum of individual rights, demands that international law be developed in a certain way.

Teaching

Carmen is teaching a second-year module called ‘Morality, Law, and the State’ and two third-year modules: ‘Ethics, Economics, and Public Policy,’ and ‘Politics and Justice in International Law.’