Disciplinary Privilege and the Promise of Decampment: A Response to James Thuo Gathii's “The Promise of International Law: A Third World View”

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 187-191
Author(s):  
Fleur Johns
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
World View ◽  
Legal Scholarship

It is an immense privilege to respond, as discussant, to James Gathii's 2020 Grotius Lecture.1 I have known and admired Professor Gathii and his work for decades. He is one of those people who manages to combine great accomplishment in international legal scholarship and practice with an unswerving commitment to teaching, collegiality, and mentoring. In these, and in other ways, James Gathii walks his talk. And his talk, as you have heard, is challenging.

scholarly journals TWAIL: a Paradox within a Paradox

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-196
Author(s):  
Mohsen al Attar
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Theory Method ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
Do So ◽  
Critical Perspectives

Abstract What insight do critical perspectives bring to international legal theory? In the following article, I answer this question through an examination of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). Troubled by geopolitical imbalance in the enterprise of international law, a group of critically minded scholars sought to expand the scope of legal scholarship. They would do so by growing a scholarly community sensitive to Third World concerns in their engagement with international law. Movements are known to collapse just as quickly as they sprout and it is testament to TWAIL’s force that, twenty years on, it is still gaining momentum. Self-described as a theory, method, sensibility, movement, and, as per the moniker, approach, TWAIL’s place in legal theory remains ambiguous. Drawing on a range of TWAIL scholars as well as journeymen commentators, I investigate, first, how its scholars represent TWAIL’s theoretical credentials and, second, where its contribution fits in the field.

Promise of International Law: A Third World View (Including a TWAIL Bibliography 1996–2019 as an Appendix)

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 165-187
Author(s):  
James Thuo Gathii
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
World View ◽  
College Of Law ◽  
Washington College

Thank you very much Professor Padideh Ala'i for that very kind introduction. I would also like to thank you Dean Camille A. Nelson of the Washington College of Law and the Society for this really special honor of inviting me to give the Grotius Lecture this year. I also thank the President of the Society, Catherine Amirfar, for her leadership and stewardship. My thanks too to my friend, Fleur Johns, for accepting to be the discussant for this lecture. Like you, I look forward to her response very much.

scholarly journals SPLITTING TWAIL?

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
George R.B. Galindo
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Intellectual Movement

Periodizations are political acts. They produce temporalities that do not necessarily coincide with chronology. TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) scholars have generally endorsed the division of TWAIL into two generations. Whereas TWAIL I was composed by scholars that thought and wrote about international law during the decolonization process, TWAIL II began at the end of the 1990s. Although there are common features between the generations, a number of differences are also identified and emphasized by TWAIL II scholars. In this article, I advance the argument that such periodization is problematic for four reasons: anachronism, progressivism, a difficult self-identification of past third world legal scholars with TWAIL and the image made of TWAIL by non-TWAILers. Instead of periodizing TWAIL in two successive generations, I argue that identifying it as part of a larger tradition of third world international legal scholarship is more productive for the inner coherence of the intellectual movement and, consequently, for its success in the international legal academia.

Francisco de Vitoria’s Unexpected Transformations and Reinterpretations for International Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
American Society ◽  
The University

Abstract A review of some of the legacies of Vitoria for international legal scholarship accompanies, in the first part, a retrospective gaze at the first third of the Twentieth century, in order to examine how the founder of the American Society of International Law, James Brown Scott, contributed to (re)establish Vitoria as the father of international law in the inter-war years. The second part provides a genealogy of the critical front of the Vitorian revival in international law today. Special attention is, then, paid to some of the intellectual building-blocks and programmatic tenets which have inspired a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) anti-imperial narrative of the international legal order along with a TWAIL’s re-interpretation and re-contextualisation of the works of the sixteenth century’s Prima professor of Sacred Theology at the University of Salamanca. The conclusion reflects on the lasting legacy of the Spanish Classics in the American tradition of international law.

scholarly journals CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES OF THE SOUTH: INDIGENOUS WATER RIGHTS IN CHILE - ANOTHER STEP IN THE “CIVILIZING MISSION?

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaya Álvez Marín
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Third World ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Legal Scholarship

This article explores the struggles of indigenous rights based on the adoption of the 1980 Chilean Constitution, under an authoritarian frame, that resulted in water being considered as a commodity and, therefore, subject to radical market rules that serves as a relevant local example in conflict with ratified international treaties. The argument proposes a critical approach to establish a continuum of the recurring rejection of the ancestral beliefs of Indigenous People since colonial times. In light of the actual constituent process for drafting a new constitution in Chile (2015), the article evaluates the emancipatory potential of Chile’s early sovereignty proposal on natural resources and later articulations of water as a human right. The argument assesses the possibility of including alternative views in the constituent debate over water, under the light of Third World Approaches to International Law [TWAIL] and Latin American International Law [LAIL] legal scholarship, aiming to find space in the Chilean constitutional realm for non-extractive perspectives.

Self-Determination and Territorial Integrity: Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-653
Author(s):  
Valerie Muguoh Chiatoh
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Third World ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
Present Issue ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Relationship

African states and institutions believe that the principle of territorial integrity is applicable to sub-state groups and limits their right to self-determination, contrary to international law. The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon has been an ever-present issue of social, political and economic debates in the country, albeit most times in undertones. This changed as the problem metamorphosed into an otherwise preventable devastating armed conflict with external self-determination having become very popular among the Anglophone People. This situation brings to light the drawbacks of irregular decolonisation, third world colonialism and especially the relationship between self-determination and territorial integrity in Africa.

Relativistic particle interactions: a Third World view

1981 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Balachandran ◽  
G Marmo ◽  
N Mukunda ◽  
J Nilsson ◽  
A Simoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Relativistic Particle ◽  
World View ◽  
Particle Interactions

Legal Perspectives

2018 ◽  
pp. 78-103
Author(s):  
José E. Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Soft Or ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Legal Frameworks

This chapter surveys how international legal scholars have catalogued and sought to explain the legal impact of the UN even though its political and judicial organs have not been delegated the power to make law. It explains how the UN attempts to adhere to, but also challenges, the traditional sources of international law—treaties, custom, and general principles—contained in the Statute of the International Court of Justice. It enumerates how the turn to UN system organizations—amidst newly empowered non-state actors, increasing resort to ‘soft’ or ‘informal’ norms, and recourse to institutionalized processes—have led to distinct legal frameworks such as process or deliberative theories, interdisciplinary ‘law and’ approaches, feminist and ‘Third World’ critiques, and scholarly work that renews attention to or revises legal positivism.

scholarly journals Enacting Twailian Praxis in Nonacademic Habitats: Toward a Conceptual Framework

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 20-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Obiora Chinedu Okafor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Peasant Movements

The roles that Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars could play in political and/or socio-economic struggles beyond the academy, and the relationships of these scholars to politicians, diplomats activists, civil servants, peasant movements, civil society, and other nonacademic actors are issues as important to TWAIL as they are understudied and underenacted. The three essays in this TWAIL Symposium take up this theme of praxis.

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