International Law

This symposium presents two interesting memoirs of African students who have participated in these moots and have chosen paths of graduate studies that are related to international economic law and development studies. Mr Mishael Wambua a student at Strathmore University Law and last year winner and best oralist at the John H. Jackson writes about his experience and advice to future mooters. Ms Purity Maritim a former participant of the same moot and now a masters student at the Graduate Institute in Geneva also writes about her experiences and what she learnt from the moot. The other two contributions are from Mr Christian Campbell the Assistant Director FDI moot and Tsotang Tsietsi lecturer and moot coach from the National University of Lesotho. These two contributions present two interesting perspectives on the many directions that moot court competitions can take for Africa in the near future.

Given the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the present need for online educational materials and resources, the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law (AVL) is happy to draw our attention to their free online educational resources. 

In this brief post, I want to make sense of Prabhash Ranjan’s brief critique of TWAIL perspectives on international investment law. My main aim is not to mount a defense of TWAIL project(s) on investment law because that might be done more eloquently by others. Instead, I want to make some brief comments about the political valence of, and the assumptions behind, the reservations that Professor Ranjan articulated in this post, and which also appear in his recent book on India and Bilateral Investment Treaties.

Without losing sight of the gaps in the PAIC, it is submitted that, even though it is not yet officially adopted as a binding instrument (given the uncertainty surrounding its official adoption), the PAIC can be important for African states. Primarily, as envisaged in its Article 2 (1), it can serve as a guideline for preparing model BITs as well as negotiating BITs with African and non-African states.

Third world approaches to international law (TWAIL) is part of the critical branch of international legal scholarship and an intellectual and political movement. It is not easy to engage with TWAIL because of its heterogeneity. TWAIL serves as a kind of umbrella category that includes different theoretical and often conflicting ideological traditions. However, at the cost of oversimplification, it may be argued that TWAIL represents an endeavour to comprehend the history, structure, and process of international law from the perspective of third world countries that includes both third world governments and third world people

As social movements and civil society continues to seek support within international law in their claims for justice, the reflection on the absence of international corporate accountability mechanisms is an open field for human rights discourse dispute.

Narratives are stories that get embedded in the general understanding of why and how a phenomenon takes place. Many narratives exist within International Investment Law (IIL) concerning its role in the international legal order, particularly in development. However, what if these narratives were to get turned on their head?

The newly-formed International Economic Law Collective has already brought something new to how we understand economic thought in international law. Compared to other groups in international law, the Collective is distinct because it places the concept of equality as both an analytical focal point in the work its members produce and as a main feature of how the group organizes itself.

The successful International Schulich Law Visiting Scholar will spend a minimum of 4 weeks and a maximum of one term in residence at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University.

The past three decades have seen a growing scholarship on international law addressing legal and policy discussions on investment, trade, financial services and regulation, intellectual property right, tax, energy, competition law and even the environment. Despite this growth in the teaching and scholarly research of IEL, there remains question over the plurality and diversity of methodologies, voices and viewpoints in the discipline.