2020 Grotius Lecture: The Promise of International Law: A Third World View

Sponsored by the American University Washington College of Law
2020 Grotius Lecturer: James Gathii, Loyola University Chicago School of Law Distinguished Discussant: Fleur Johns, University of New South Wales School of Law
This is a moment of repudiation of international law. Some of the leading States that have shaped international law are not only exiting treaties, but also openly declaring and operating outside its rules. One important way to trace the promise of international law at this moment of difficulty is to go outside the beltway of our discipline to places often unfamiliar in our textbooks and the locations where we practice and teach international law. To do that, this lecture will take you to places like Arusha, Tanzania, the seat of three international courts. In doing so, it will bring into the conversation the voices of international lawyers from the Third World and the everyday issues that drive their practice and scholarship often under very difficult political circumstances. To appreciate fully the promise of international law, it is important to go beyond the usual debates, places and canons of the discipline in two ways.
First, this lecture challenges the limited geography of places and ideas that dominate the
beltway of international law. This limited geography and set of ideas is characterized by the law
of Geneva, the law of Strasbourg, the law of New York and the law of Washington DC. These are the places that the discipline celebrates as producers of the type of international law which in turn becomes the benchmark for the efficacy of international law produced elsewhere. These are also the locations where the bulk of international legal practice is produced and which influences and reinforces understandings not only of international practice but also of international law more generally. Second, a Third Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) perspective, speaking from a subaltern epistemic location, questions international law’s presumed universality. TWAIL contests the idea that international law is applicable everywhere and that it should therefore appear as a view from nowhere. Third World States and TWAIL scholars have contested this non−situated, universal status of international law in a variety of ways. Ultimately, the Third World is an epistemic site of production and not merely a site of reception of international legal knowledge. Recognizing and grounding the Third World as a site of knowledge production and of the practice of international law disrupts the assumptions that international legal knowledge is exclusively produced in the West for consumption and governance of the Third World.