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.

Charles Chaumont’s Third-World International Legal Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 358-380
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Tourme Jouannet
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Important Group ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Marxist Analysis ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Economic Elites ◽  
The Relationship

This contribution explores the works and biography of Charles Chaumont, who influenced an important group of third-world scholars, among them Mohammed Bedjaoui. These scholars were shaped by the neo-Marxist analysis of international legal structures developed by the Reims school in international law headed by Chaumont himself. Chaumont published on decolonization issues and methodologically sought to replace Scelle’s interwar idealism with a highly realistic analysis of the relationship between the interests of Western economic elites and prevailing international legal structures. While using neo-Marxist insights in his analysis Chaumont did not succumb to a determinist perspective on law. Rather, this chapter portrays him as the father of a radical critique of the function of law in exploitative North-South relations both before and after decolonization.

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 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.

scholarly journals TWAIL and the “Unwilling or Unable” Doctrine: Continuities and Ruptures

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 266-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ntina Tzouvala
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
Political Commitments ◽  
The Right ◽  
United Nations Charter

Given the long history of violent encounters between the Global North and the Global South, legal arguments concerning the use of force are a fertile ground for testing the virtues and limits of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) as a theory aspiring to “address the material and ethical concerns of Third World peoples.” This essay examines the usefulness and limits of TWAIL in the context of the “unwilling or unable” doctrine currently promoted by a series of Western scholars and states in order to expand the scope of application of the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Adopting TWAIL’s impulse to historicize, this essay argues that the structure of this doctrine closely replicates the “standard of civilization” that informed international legal theory and practice throughout the nineteenth century. At the same time, widespread resistance to the “unwilling or unable” doctrine indicates that the profound transformation of international law on the use of force after 1945 and the diffusion of sovereignty outside the West put into question certain methodological and political commitments of TWAIL.

The Paris Climate Change Agreement: China and India

Climate Law ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyeeta Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Energy Field ◽  
China And India ◽  
Water Field ◽  
Do So

This paper assesses how the Paris Agreement on climate change affects China and India. Taking a twail (third-world approaches to international law) approach, it argues that patterns of exploitation are repeated in different fields. The unfccc required developed countries to reduce their emissions before developing countries would be required to do so. While some developed countries are keeping to their side of the bargain, others are failing to do so. Nevertheless, China and India have accepted an agreement with targets for all countries which requires considerable sacrifices in the energy field but possible gains in the water field. While both countries have agreed to reduce the rate of growth of their emissions, they have high expectations of climate finance, which are unlikely to be fulfilled. Their commitments require major changes to national policy, scarcely the sort of tinkering that the no-regrets policy in India has achieved.

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 Gone and forgotten: Vinogradoff's historical jurisprudence

Legal Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Lorren Eldridge
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Analytical Models ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Explicit Recognition ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

Abstract Sir Paul Vinogradoff was once well known for his historically contextualised approach to legal theory which held that legal ideas were the contingent products of social factors. Law was necessarily engaged with other subjects, and ‘historical jurisprudence’ could produce real insight into the nature of law – in part by placing theories such as analytical jurisprudence in context, evaluating and modifying theoretical models by reference to the contingent social facts of an era. This was part of the nineteenth-century turn to ‘science’ in history and a focus on methodology. Sir Henry Maine argued that legal history proved the insufficiency of analytic theories, but his method met with many criticisms, some of which Vinogradoff sought to address. However, Vinogradoff's insights have rarely been pursued or developed, with legal history favouring Maitland's more doctrinal approach, and legal theory rejecting historical jurisprudence – at least explicitly. Despite its imperfections, historical jurisprudence offers a rich and valuable way to understand law, including to evaluate analytical models such of those of HLA Hart, and as a methodology for dialogue between comparative and historical legal scholarship. It has, in fact, continued to do so without explicit recognition in the 100 years since Vinogradoff's death.

Theorising the Right to Environment: An Africological Typology

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Godwin E. K. Dzah
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Reflexive Sociology ◽  
The Right

This article is an Africological critique of the emergence of the right to environment and the universality of rights generally. The article draws on Third World approaches to international law, postcolonial legal theory and Bourdieu's reflexive sociology to illuminate this Africological inquiry into the emergence of the right to environment within 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.

Part II Approaches, Ch.15 Marxist Approaches to International Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knox Robert
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Complex Terrain ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
Form Theory ◽  
The Third World ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter attempts to chart a course through the complex terrain of Marxist theory as applied to international law, especially given that Marxist international legal theory can only be understood in relation to a number of other debates. Particularly important are Marxist debates about the relationship between the ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, about the nature and function of the state, and theories of ideology and hegemony. To that end, the chapter explores Marxist theories of imperialism and their understanding of international law, such as the associations between international law and the dynamics of international capitalism, conducted under the rubric of ‘imperialism’. Finally, the chapter takes a specific look at Marxist international legal theory, in exploring the commodity-form theory, the ideology critique, and the positioning of the ‘Third World’ within international law.

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