New Approaches to International Law
- LAST REVIEWED: 12 April 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199796953-0012
- LAST REVIEWED: 12 April 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2012
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199796953-0012
Introduction
New Approaches to International Law captions scholarly work that has become known under numerous rubrics, such as Critical Legal Studies, New Approaches to International Law, Newstream International Law, Feminist Approaches, Third World Approaches to International Law, Postcolonial Legal Studies, New Approaches to International Economic Law, Critical Race Theory, and more. New Approaches work does not easily fit within traditional classifications. Although discursive or other homologies among authors listed in this article could be discerned, there is no single ideology or methodology that unifies New Approaches work, better characterized by pluralistic politics and eclecticism. One unifying factor is the common desire to rethink the foundations of international law and create space for emancipatory politics, while responding to recent trends in economic, political, and social theory. Far from forming a coherent movement, this work should be seen more as a professional project, held together by a sense of belonging or recognition experienced by some of the participants. Group identity was more important during the late 1980s and until the symbolic creation and then dissolution of the New Approaches movement in 1997 (for example, “Fin de NAIL: A Celebration,” a conference at Harvard Law School in May 1997). Thereafter, New Approaches work has proliferated and diversified, reluctant to accept permanent affiliations. Its sociology has also become immensely more complex. A second generation of critical scholars emerged at the “center” and at the “periphery” of international law, socializing in vibrant international networks. In the meantime, first-generation figures received worldwide recognition and occupy leadership positions. The scope, aims, and objectives have also diversified to the extent that any effort to reduce New Approaches to a canon would be self-defeating. This article merely aims to provide a gateway to some characteristic strands of New Approaches work. One difficulty was the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the work, which evades (and detests) categorization. Another difficulty was how to represent the different influences of scholars belonging to different disciplinary generations. Emblematic figures of the movement are inevitably overrepresented on account of the volume and the seminal nature of their work. Younger scholars are represented with fewer entries per author but in larger numbers, accounting for today’s diversity in style and thematic orientation. Omissions should therefore be understood not as exclusions but as an inherent limitation of the project.
Origins
This section focuses on seminal New Approaches scholarship, meaning work that captures a shared understanding among New Approaches scholars about what constitutes the common intellectual foundation of the movement. The publications listed here originate mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the first major contributions made their appearance. Entries come from general public international law, legal philosophy, legal sociology, gender and identity, or postcolonial studies. One common denominator in this early work is the attempt to stage a comprehensive critique of international law as a whole. We see work that reassesses the most foundational doctrines and assumptions of the discipline, to discern “grammars,” “structures,” or the (gender, colonial, or other) bias of the discipline in its entirety. A second common denominator is the deliberate use of method and epistemology. Authors choose to engage in methodological debates and engage in rigid epistemology in order to emphatically situate themselves in relation to the traditional approaches and thus clearly delineate the disciplinary space in which they operate. The relentless structuralist technique of Kennedy 1987 and Koskenniemi 2009(both cited under Monographs) proves ex post facto to be catalytic for the methodological credibility of their intervention. This early and overt methodological alignment with critical theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction gave way toward the end of the 1990s to a much richer repertoire of approaches and postures toward the law. In this sense, the works listed below are necessary starting points for our attempt to survey the field as a whole.
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Article
- Act of State Doctrine
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- African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the Af...
- Africa’s International Intellectual Property Law Regimes
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- Agreements, Bilateral and Regional Trade
- Agreements, Multilateral Environmental
- Aliens
- Applicable Law in Investment Agreements
- Archipelagic States
- Arctic Region
- Armed Opposition Groups
- Aut Dedere Aut Judicare
- Balance of Power
- Bandung Conference, The
- Boundaries
- British Mandate of Palestine and International Law, The
- Children's Rights
- Civil Service, International
- Civil-Military Relations
- Codification
- Cold War International Law
- Collective Security
- Command Responsibility
- Common Heritage of Mankind
- Complementarity Principle
- Compliance in International Law
- Conspiracy/Joint Criminal Enterprise
- Constitutional Law, International
- Consular Relations
- Contemporary Catholic Approaches
- Continental Shelf, Idea and Limits of the
- Cooperation in Criminal Matters, Cross-Border
- Countermeasures
- Courts, International
- Crimes against Humanity
- Criminal Law, International
- Cultural Rights
- Cyber Espionage
- Cyber Warfare
- Debt, Sovereign
- Decolonization in International Law
- Democracy
- Development Law, International
- Disarmament in International Law
- Discrimination
- Disputes, Peaceful Settlement of
- Drugs, International Regulation, and Criminal Liability
- Early 19th Century, 1789-1870
- Ecological Restoration and International Law
- Economic Law, International
- Effectiveness and Evolution in Treaty Interpretation
- Enforced Disappearances in International Law
- Enforcement of Human Rights
- Environmental Compliance Mechanisms
- Environmental Institutions, International
- Environmental Law, International
- Estoppel
- European Arrest Warrant
- Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties
- Fascism and International Law
- Feminist Approaches to International Law
- Financial Law, International
- Forceful Intervention for Protection of Human Rights in Af...
- Foreign Investment
- Fragmentation
- Freedom of Expression
- French Revolution
- Gender and International Law, Theoretical and Methodologic...
- Gender and International Security
- General Customary Law
- General Principles of Law
- Genocide
- Georgia and International Law
- Grotius, Hugo
- Habeas Corpus
- Hijaz and International Law, The
- History of International Law, 1550–1700
- Hostilities, Direct Participation in
- Human Rights
- Human Rights and Regional Protection, Relativism and Unive...
- Human Rights, European Court of
- Human Rights, Foundations of
- Human Trafficking
- Hybrid International Criminal Tribunals
- Immunities
- Immunity, Sovereign
- Indigenous Peoples
- Individual Criminal Responsibility
- Institutional Law
- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and Inte...
- International and Non-International Armed Conflict, Detent...
- International Committee of the Red Cross
- International Community
- International Court of Justice
- International Criminal Court, The
- International Criminal Law, Complicity in
- International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
- International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia ...
- International Fisheries Law
- International Humanitarian Law
- International Humanitarian Law, Targeting in
- International Investment Agreements, Fair and Equitable Tr...
- International Investment Arbitration
- International Investment Law, Expropriation in
- International Law, Aggression in
- International Law, Amnesty and
- International Law and Economic Development
- International Law, Anthropology and
- International Law, Big Data and
- International Law, Climate Change and
- International Law, Derogations and Reservations in
- International Law, Dispute Settlement in
- International Law, Ecofeminism and
- International Law, Espionage in
- International Law, Hegemony in
- International Law in Greek
- International Law in Italian
- International Law in Northeast Asia
- International Law in Portuguese
- International Law in Turkish
- International Law, Marxist Approaches to
- International Law, Military Intervention in
- International Law, Money Laundering in
- International Law, Monism and Dualism in
- International Law, Peacekeeping in
- International Law, Proportionality in
- International Law, Reasonableness in
- International Law, Recognition in
- International Law, Self-Determination in
- International Law, State Responsibility in
- International Law, State Succession in
- International Law, the State in
- International Law, The Turkish-Greek Population Exchange a...
- International Law, the Turn to History in
- International Law, Trade and Development in
- International Law, Unequal Treaties in
- International Law, Use of Force in
- International Regulation of the Internet
- International Rule of Law, An
- International Territorial Administration
- International Trade and Human Rights
- Intervention, Humanitarian
- Investment Protection Treaties
- Investor-State Conciliation and Mediation
- Iran and International Law
- Iraq War, Britain and the
- Islamic Cooperation, International Law and the Organizatio...
- Islamic International Law
- Islamic Law and Human Rights
- Islands
- Jerusalem
- Jurisdiction
- Jurisprudence (Judicial Law-Making)
- Jus Cogens
- Just War
- Landlocked Countries and the Law of the Sea
- Law of the Sea
- Law of Treaties, The
- Law-Making by Non-State Actors
- League of Nations, The
- Lebanon, Special Tribunal for
- Legal Status of Military Forces Abroad
- Liability for International Environmental Harm
- Liberation and Resistance Movements
- Mandates in International Law
- Maritime Delimitation
- Martens Clause
- Medieval International Law
- Mens Rea, International Crimes
- Middle East Boundaries and State Formation
- Migration
- Military Necessity
- Military Occupation
- Minorities
- Modes of Participation
- Most-Favored-Nation Clauses
- Multinational Corporations in International Law
- Nationality and Statelessness
- Natural Law
- Neutrality
- New Approaches to International Law
- New Haven School of International Law, The
- Non liquet
- Noninternational Armed Conflict (“Civil War”)
- Nonstate Actors
- Nuclear Non-Proliferation
- Nuremberg Trials
- Organizations, International
- Pacifism in International Law
- Palestine (and the Israel Question)
- Peace Treaties
- Piracy
- Political Science, International Law and
- Positivism
- Private Military and Security Companies
- Protection, Diplomatic
- Public Interest, Human Rights, and Foreign Investment
- Queering International Law
- Rational Choice Theory
- Recognition of Foreign Penal Judgments
- Refugees
- Rendition, Extraterritorial Abduction, and Extraordinary R...
- Reparations
- Russian Approaches to International Law
- Sanctions, International
- Sanctions, International
- Secession
- Self-Defense
- Slavery
- Soft Law
- Space Law
- Spanish School of International Law (c. 16th and 17th Cent...
- Sports Law, International
- State of Necessity
- Superior Orders
- Taba Arbitration, The
- Teaching International Law
- Territorial Title
- Terrorism
- The 1948 Arab-Israeli Conflict and International Law
- The Ottoman Empire and International Law
- Theory, Critical International Legal
- Tibet
- Tokyo Trials, The
- Torture
- Transnational Constitutionalism, Africa and
- Transnational Corruption
- Treaty Interpretation
- Ukrainian Approaches
- UN Partition Plan for Palestine and International Law, The
- UN Security Council, Women and the
- Underwater Cultural Heritage
- Unilateral Acts
- United Nations and its Principal Organs, The
- Universal Jurisdiction
- Uti Possidetis Iuris
- Vatican and the Holy See
- Victims’ Rights, International Criminal Law, and Proceedin...
- War Crimes
- Watercourses, International
- Western Sahara