Third World Approaches to International Law

It is accepted that legal doctrine is a normative discipline, which is not only describing and systematising norms, but also predominantly a discipline which takes normative positions and makes choices among values and interests. Consequently, the quest to find “better law” by adopting certain interpretative or normative positions often leads to elements external to law and legal doctrine such as philosophy, morals, history, sociology, economy, and politics. Hence, looking for better law involves empirical research particularly as better, in the context of this post, refers to a historical and sociological perspective on the balancing of the Eurocentric make-up of international law. Thus, the teaching of precolonial African trade usages should be explicitly embedded into the public international law (and international trade law) curriculum in Nigerian universities. This has already been done in international relations programmes in some Nigerian universities.

This symposium aims to encourage a more systematic and critical scholarly engagement with the delocalization of justice in BHR cases involving harms suffered in African states, and the Global South more broadly. It is our contention that until now, with some notable exceptions, scholarly debates in the BHR sphere have insufficiently focused on the justification for, effectiveness of, and alternatives to this uprooting strategy. Yet, this delocalization lies at the heart of many legal processes and regulatory mechanisms aimed at delivering justice (or corporate accountability) in the Global North for harms that occurred in the Global South. Interrogating this delocalization, and imagining alternative strategies that would enable local populations to gain greater agency through local political and legal processes, should be at the core of scholarship and activism in the BHR field.

The lecture was fascinating because it provided various ways of moving forward. These include the questioning of international law as amateurs, the need to produce ‘African’ international law, and the duty we have in promoting and protecting our epistemic locations.

The “Research Symposium” is an initiative of the ILA-Brazil International Law Agendas blog to stimulate the debate on ideas that emerge from research projects in international law in Brazilian law schools. In this inaugural symposium, we present the research project “International law 'in the palm of our hand’: reading between the lines of Brazilian International Law textbooks.”

April 22, 2021

The Afronomicslaw.org Academic Forum invites you to join their next guest lecture series.

Guest Speaker:

Harrison Mbori, Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute Luxemburg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law

John Nyanje, International Lawyer, Kenya and Switzerland

Even though Africa has proven to be a fertile ground for testing international legal regimes, most scholarly accounts remain pessimistic in assessing these experiments. This book seeks to counter these depictions in a manner consistent with epistemologies of the Global South - arguing that theories and concepts developed in the Global North do not transfer with ease to other regional settings and prompts scholars to identify alternative ways of knowing

I am delighted to present this symposium for my textbook entitled: International Investment Law: National, Regional and Global Perspectives (Wolf Legal Publishers, Nijmegen, the Netherlands: 2020). The textbook could not have come at a better time given the compelling need for scholars from the Global South, particularly Africa, to contribute to international investment law scholarship to help reshape and redefine international investment law for the mutual advantages of foreign investors/enterprises and the host States.

To mark the 2021 International Women’s Day themed #Choose to Challenge, Afronomicslaw.org celebrates Dr Sara Seck’s brilliant contributions to International Law. Dr Seck is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Research at Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University.

We invite scholarly interventions, from established, mid-career, young faculty, doctoral candidates and practitioners to analyse Nigeria’s engagement with the scholarship and praxis of international law.

The overarching argument made in the book is that there is a pressing need to reconceptualize the interpretation of the FET standard, taking into account the particular developmental circumstances of the developing countries in investor-State disputes. The book explores these challenges and issues that the developing countries face arising from overly broad interpretations of the FET standard.