Third World Approaches To International Law

This book addresses the themes of praxis and the role of international lawyers as intellectuals and political actors engaging with questions of justice for Third World peoples. The book brings together 12 contributions from a total of 15 scholars working in the TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) network or tradition. It includes chapters from some of the pioneering Third World jurists who have led this field since the time of decolonization, as well as prominent emerging scholars in the field. Broadly, the TWAIL orientation understands praxis as the relationship between what we say as scholars and what we do – as the inextricability of theory from lived experience. Understood in this way, praxis is central to TWAIL, as TWAIL scholars strive to reconcile international law’s promise of justice with the proliferation of injustice in the world it purports to govern. Reconciliation occurs in the realm of praxis and TWAIL scholars engage in a variety of struggles, including those for greater self-awareness, disciplinary upheaval, and institutional resistance and transformation. The rich diversity of contributions in the book engage these themes and questions through the various prisms of international institutional engagement, world trade and investment law, critical comparative law, Palestine solidarity and decolonization, judicial education, revolutionary struggle against imperial sovereignty, Muslim Marxism, Third World intellectual traditions, Global South constitutionalism, and migration. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

This collection of essays explores different dimensions of the relationship between the third world and international law. The topics covered include third world approaches to international law, non-state actors and developing countries, feminism and the third world, foreign investment, resistance and international law, and territorial disputes and native peoples. It is a further contribution to the work done by scholars intent on elaborating what might be termed Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). This initiative seeks to continue and further develop the important work that has been done over many decades, particularly by scholars and jurists from the third world, to construct an international law which is sensitive to the needs of third world peoples. This body of scholarship has attempted to extend and expand the concerns and materials of international law. The essays in this volume are animated by these same motives at a time when unprecedented issues confront third world peoples, particularly since the contemporary international system appears to be disempowering third world peoples, intensifying inequality between the North and the South, and indeed, importantly, within the North and the South. TWAIL scholars attempt to look afresh at the history of colonial international law, engage previous trends in third world scholarship in international law, take cognizance of the dramatic changes which have characterized the body of international law in the last few decades from the perspective of third world peoples, record their resistance to unjust and oppressive international laws, and advance new approaches that address their needs and concerns. These are the broad themes and concerns which animate this collection of essays.

This volume is devoted to critically exploring the past, present and future relevance of international law to the priorities of the countries, peoples and regions of the South. Within the limits of space it has tried to be comprehensive in scope and representative in perspective and participation. The contributions are grouped into three clusters to give some sense of coherence to the overall theme: articles by Baxi, Anghie, Falk, Stevens and Rajagopal on general issues bearing on the interplay between international law and world order; articles highlighting regional experience by An-Na’im, Okafor, Obregon and Shalakany; and articles on substantive perspectives by Mgbeoji, Nesiah, Said, Elver, King-Irani, Chinkin, Charlesworth and Gathii. This collective effort gives an illuminating account of the unifying themes, while at the same time exhibiting the wide diversity of concerns and approaches.

Using the theoretical tools drawn from historical materialism and deconstruction, Tzouvala offers a comprehensive history of the standard of civilisation.

Globalization, interdisciplinarity, and the critique of the Eurocentric canon are transforming the theory and practice of human rights. This collection takes up the point of view of the colonized in order to unsettle and supplement the conventional understanding of human rights. Putting together insights coming from Decolonial Thinking, the Third World Approach to International Law (TWAIL), Radical Black Theory and Subaltern Studies, the authors construct a new history and theory of human rights, and a more comprehensive understanding of international human rights law in the background of modern colonialism and the struggle for global justice. An exercise of dialogical and interdisciplinary thinking, this collection of articles by leading scholars puts into conversation important areas of research on human rights, namely philosophy or theory of human rights, history, and constitutional and international law. This book combines critical consciousness and moral sensibility, and offers methods of interpretation or hermeneutical strategies to advance the project of decolonizing human rights, a veritable tool-box to create new Third-World discourses of human rights.

The first contemporary historiography of international law and an essential methodological guide for researching international legal history.

Launched in 1991, the Asian Yearbook of International Law is a major internationally-refereed yearbook dedicated to international legal issues as seen primarily from an Asian perspective. It is published under the auspices of the Foundation for the Development of International Law in Asia (DILA) in collaboration with DILA-Korea, the Secretariat of DILA, in South Korea. When it was launched, the Yearbook was the first publication of its kind, edited by a team of leading international law scholars from across Asia. It provides a forum for the publication of articles in the field of international law and other Asian international legal topics. The objectives of the Yearbook are two-fold: First, to promote research, study and writing in the field of international law in Asia; and second, to provide an intellectual platform for the discussion and dissemination of Asian views and practices on contemporary international legal issues. Each volume of the Yearbook contains articles and shorter notes; a section on Asian state practice; an overview of the Asian states’ participation in multilateral treaties and succinct analysis of recent international legal developments in Asia; a bibliography that provides information on books, articles, notes, and other materials dealing with international law in Asia; as well as book reviews. This publication is important for anyone working on international law and in Asian studies. The 2018 edition of the Yearbook features articles on the practice of Asian states from the perspective of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL).

Two fish are swimming in a pond. 'Do you know what?' the fish asks his friend. 'No, tell me.' 'I was talking to a frog the other day. And he told me that we are surrounded by water!' His friend looks at him with great scepticism: 'Water? Whats that? Show me some water!' International lawyers often find themselves focused on the practice of the law rather than the underlying theories. This book is an attempt to stir up 'the water' that international lawyers swim in. It analyses a range of theoretical approaches to international law and invites readers to engage with different ways of legal thinking in order to familiarize themselves with the water all around us, of which we hardly have any perception. The main aim of this book is to provide interested scholars, practitioners, and students of international law and other disciplines with an introduction to various international legal theories, their genealogies, and possible critiques. By providing an analytical approach to international legal theory, the book encourages readers to enhance their sensitivity to these different approaches and to consider how the presuppositions behind each theory affect analysis, research, and practice in international law. International Law Theories is intended to assist students, scholars, and practitioners in reflecting more generally about how knowledge is formed in the field.