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 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.

Kelsen – Which Kelsen? A Reapplication of the Pure Theory to International Law

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÖRG KAMMERHOFER
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Pure Theory ◽  
Municipal Law ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Legal Theorist

AbstractHans Kelsen is known both as a legal theorist and as an international lawyer. This article shows that his theory of international law is an integral part of the Kelsenian Pure Theory of Law. Two areas of international law are analysed: first, Kelsen's coercive order paradigm and its relationship to the bellum iustum doctrine; second, the Kelsenian notion of the unity of all law vis-à-vis theories of the relationship of international and municipal law. In a second step, the results of Kelsenian general legal theory of the late period – as interpreted and developed by the present author – are reapplied to selected doctrines of international law. Thus is the coercive order paradigm resolved, the unity of law dissolved, and the UN Charter reinterpreted to show that the concretization of norms as positive international law cannot be unmade by a scholarship usurping the right to make law.

Decolonization in International Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Taha
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Third World

In Gillo Pontecorvo’s evocative film The Battle of Algiers (1966), viewers reach the conclusion that the fight against colonialism would not be fought at the UN General Assembly. Decolonization would take place through the organized resistance of colonized people. Still, the 1945 United Nations Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided some legal basis, albeit tenuous, for self-determination. When Third World leaders assembled in the 1955 Bandung Conference, it became clear that the UN needed to shift gears on the question of decolonization. By 1960, and through a show of Asian and African votes at the General Assembly, the Declaration for the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was adopted, effectively outlawing colonialism and affirming the right of all peoples to self-determination. Afro-Asian solidarity took a different form in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, which founded the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The conference gathered leftist activists and leaders from across the Third World, who would later inspire radical movements and scholarship on decolonization and anticolonial socialism. This would also influence the adoption of the 1974 Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and later lead to UNESCO’s series that starts with Mohammed Bedjaoui’s famous overture, Towards a New International Economic Order (1979; cited as Bedjaoui 1979 under the Decolonization “Moment”). This article situates this history within important international-law scholarship on decolonization. First, it introduces different approaches to decolonization and international law; namely, postcolonial, Marxist, feminist, and Indigenous approaches. Second, it highlights seminal texts on international law and the colonial encounter. Third, it focuses on scholarship that captures the spirit of the “decolonization moment” as a political and temporal rupture, but also as a continuity, addressing, fourth, decolonization and neocolonial practices. Finally, this article ends with some of the most important works on international law and settler colonialism in the 21st century.

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.

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.

The Contribution of West African States to the Legal Development of Maritime Delimitation Law

1991 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard J. Tanja
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
West African ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
Marine Resources ◽  
Legal Development ◽  
Right To Development ◽  
The Right ◽  
Special Notice

One of the objectives of the 1982 Convention on law of the sea (LOSC) is that the Convention will bring about an equitable and efficient utilisation of the marine resources. The Preambule states, inter alia, that special notice should be taken of legitimate Third World aspirations. In order to promote their socio-economic development many developing countries -among them various West-African states have directed their attention to the introduction of a resource related maritime zone regime since the 1970's. Several countries made proposals about an ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’. Many states were able to harmonize their position on essential elements of the regime which contributed to the rapid acceptance of the EEZ-concept in international law. The right to explore, exploit, conserve and manage all natural resources in an area not exceeding 200 nautical miles was acknowleged in Articles 56,1 and 57 of the LOSC. The wide support enjoyed by the EEZ concept did not occur in relation to maritime delimitation. Diametrically opposed views were held by the so-called pro-equidistance and pro-equity groups. Delimiatation conflicts between several African states could only be solved with the help of international arbitral tribunals. In order to reach an ‘equitable’ delimitation solution several factors were found to be of importance; a novum was the factor described as ‘the exercise of the right to development’.

International Law and the Objectivity of Value

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
EMMANUEL VOYIAKIS
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Evaluative Judgement ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe familiar critical claim that propositions of international law cannot be both objective and normative casts a long shadow over international legal theory. The claim relies on the conjunction of two ideas: first, that the truth-conditions of any proposition of international law will include some element of evaluative judgement (about the right or the good) that gives the proposition its normative character, and, second, that evaluative judgements cannot be objectively true or false. International lawyers have two main strategies for defending their discipline against this sceptical challenge. A more modest strategy would accept that legal objectivity and normativity are incompatible and attempt to sidestep the sceptical critique by abandoning the claim to normativity. A second and more ambitious strategy would resist the sceptical challenge by disputing the plausibility of its attack on the objectivity of evaluative judgements. This strategy would rely on the claim that objectivity and normativity are not mutually incompatible and that the aim of producing an account of international law that displays both features is realistic. My aim in this paper is to show that there exists at least one version of this second strategy that can succeed against the sceptical challenge. I argue that scepticism about values is incoherent and, therefore, that the opposition between the objectivity and the normativity of international law is illusory. Setting such scepticism aside will allow international lawyers to concentrate fully on the substantive normative questions that drive theories of international law and on the values that provide the best account of its content.

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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