scholarly journals ‘Is this a Time of Beautiful Chaos?’: Reflecting on International Feminist Legal Methods

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-203
Author(s):  
Faye Bird
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Nonideal Theory ◽  
Conceptual Clarity

Abstract This article considers how Margaret Jane Radin’s theory of the feminist double bind can bring conceptual clarity to the difficulties feminisms face in engaging with political and legal institutions of global governance. I draw on her theory to reinitiate a conversation on ideal and nonideal theory, in order to answer the call of key proponents in international legal feminism to reevaluate methodologies in critiquing mainstream institutions. By providing an account of how to navigate the double bind, this article brings conceptual clarity to the tension between resistance and compliance that has been argued to lie at the heart of the feminist project in international law. I demonstrate how this theoretical framework can foster greater pluralist perspectives in feminist engagement of ideal theories to temper the deradicalising and conservative risk of navigating feasibility constrained nonideal strategies.

Feminist Dialogues on International Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gina Heathcote
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Black British ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

Reflecting on recent gender law reform within international law, this book examines the nature of feminist interventions to consider what the next phase of feminist approaches to international law might include. To undertake analysis of existing gender law reform and future gender law reform, the book engages critical legal inquiries on international law on the foundations of international law. At the same time, the text looks beyond mainstream feminist accounts to consider the contributions, and tensions, across a broader range of feminist methodologies than has been adapted and incorporated into gender law reform including transnational and postcolonial feminisms. The text therefore develops dialogues across feminist approaches, beyond dominant Western liberal, radical, and cultural feminisms, to analyse the rise of expertise and the impact of fragmentation on global governance, to study sovereignty and international institutions, and to reflect on the construction of authority within international law. The book concludes that through feminist dialogues that incorporate intersectionality, and thus feminist dialogues with queer, crip, and race theories, that reflect on the politics of listening and which are actively attentive to the conditions of privilege from which dominant feminist approaches are articulated, opportunity for feminist dialogues to shape feminist futures on international law emerge. The book begins this process through analysis of the conditions in which the author speaks and the role histories of colonialism play out to define her own privilege, thus requiring attention to indigenous feminisms and, in the UK, the important interventions of Black British feminisms.

Toward a Theoretical Framework of Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Clarifying the Gray Zones Between Responsibility and Irresponsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 000765032110159
Author(s):  
Cynthia E. Clark ◽  
Marta Riera ◽  
María Iborra
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Corporate Social Irresponsibility ◽  
Corporate Social

In this conceptual article, we argue that defining corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) as opposite constructs produces a lack of clarity between responsible and irresponsible acts. Furthermore, we contend that the treatment of the CSR and CSI concepts as opposites de-emphasizes the value of CSI as a stand-alone construct. Thus, we reorient the CSI discussion to include multiple aspects that current conceptualizations have not adequately accommodated. We provide an in-depth exploration of how researchers define CSI and both identify and analyze three important gray zones between CSR and CSI: (a) the role of harm and benefit, (b) the role of the actor and intentionality, and (c) the role of rectification. We offer these gray zones as factors contributing to the present lack of conceptual clarity of the term CSI, as a concept in its own right, leading to difficulties that researchers and managers experience in categorizing CSI acts as distinct from CSR.

Global Governance in a World of Change

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World War ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modes Of Governance

Global governance has come under increasing pressure since the end of the Cold War. In some issue areas, these pressures have led to significant changes in the architecture of governance institutions. In others, institutions have resisted pressures for change. This volume explores what accounts for this divergence in architecture by identifying three modes of governance: hierarchies, networks, and markets. The authors apply these ideal types to different issue areas in order to assess how global governance has changed and why. In most issue areas, hierarchical modes of governance, established after World War II, have given way to alternative forms of organization focused on market or network-based architectures. Each chapter explores whether these changes are likely to lead to more or less effective global governance across a wide range of issue areas. This provides a novel and coherent theoretical framework for analysing change in global governance.

Covenants Without the Sword International Law and the Protection of Civilians in Times of War

2006 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Valentino ◽  
Paul Huth ◽  
Sarah Croco
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
International Law ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Geneva Conventions ◽  
Long Duration ◽  
International Laws ◽  
The Hague ◽  
War Aims

Do the international laws of war effectively protect civilian populations from deliberate attack? In a statistical analysis of all interstate wars from 1900 to 2003 the authors find no evidence that signatories of The Hague or Geneva Conventions intentionally kill fewer civilians during war than do nonsignatories. This result holds for democratic signatories and for wars in which both sides are parties to the treaty. Nor do they find evidence that a state's regime type or the existence of ethnic or religious differences between combatants explains the variation in civilian targeting. They find strong support, however, for their theoretical framework, which suggests that combatants seek to kill enemy civilians when they believe that doing so will coerce their adversaries into early surrender or undermine their adversaries' war-related domestic production. The authors find that states fighting wars of attrition or counterinsurgency, states fighting for expansive war aims, and states fighting wars of long duration kill significantly more civilians than states in other kinds of wars.

A matter of principle(s): The legal effect of impartiality and neutrality on States as humanitarian actors

2015 ◽  
Vol 97 (897-898) ◽  
pp. 157-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kubo Mačák
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
Humanitarian Organizations ◽  
International Court ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Legal Effect ◽  
Universal Applicability

AbstractThis article examines the legal nature of the principles of impartiality and neutrality of humanitarian action, focusing on States as humanitarian actors. It argues that international law does not provide a general legal basis for the universal applicability of these principles, contrary to a common interpretation of the International Court of Justice's 1986 judgment in theNicaraguacase. Nevertheless, impartiality and neutrality may have a significant legal effect on the conduct of States. They may be directly binding on States through the operation of Security Council resolutions drafted in mandatory language. In addition, they may have indirect effect due to the States’ obligation to respect humanitarian organizations’ adherence to the principles. On the basis of this argument, the article pleads for increased conceptual clarity and, in turn, effectiveness of humanitarian action.

The Global Governance Implications of Private International Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 892-910
Author(s):  
Horatia Muir Watt
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Competing Values ◽  
National Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Constraints ◽  
Domestic Setting

The ways in which the background rules of private law determine the balance of power within the global economy are difficult to identify to the extent that the reach of any given legal system and its combination with other potentially contradictory sets of national regulation are uncertain. The specific contention here is that private international law, which allocates the various sets of applicable rules on all these points when they involve private, usually corporate, actors, has served above all to dispense them from the regulatory constraints to which they might be subject in a domestic setting. It has thereby provided the building blocks that have allowed capital to expand beyond borders and the pursuit of profit to develop to the detriment of competing values, beyond control.

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