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Featured image courtesy Sydesian Transitional justice is a popular term in present day Sri Lanka. It is the means by which the various parties to the conflict have decided to bring about justice an…

This paper explores the various means by which we can overcome the universalism imbedded in international law and international institutions. It asks: How can international lawyers and international law scholars learn from the Global South? This ‘how’ question prompts another, but related question: should we learn from the Global South? There is a rich interdisciplinary body of literature that identifies the Global South, or Europe’s other, as a site of knowledge production. The eurocentrism of the social sciences can be identified by examining the various founding fathers of their respective theories (especially sociology). This paper builds on southern theory in order to learn from these diverse perspectives in theorising global governance. This paper is organised in three sections. First, it sets out the rationale for a reorientation towards the Global South by examining the current state of global governance theory. In the second section, this paper focuses on the broad theoretical foundations of the Third World Approaches to International Law [TWAIL] movement. TWAIL scholarship is a reaction against the colonial and imperial projects of international law. Its main claims are set out and then there is an examination of its proposals as a means to arrive at an answer to the second question: should we learn from the Global South? In the final section, this paper explores the question of how we can learn from the Global South. In answering this question, the author offers two insights. The first is based on the premise of international law as a field of practice. The second attempts to problematise the ethics of international legal scholarship.

This paper explores the various means by which we can overcome the universalism imbedded in international law and international institutions. It asks: How can international lawyers and international law scholars learn from the Global South? This ‘how’ question prompts another, but related question: should we learn from the Global South?       There is a rich interdisciplinary body of literature that signals to the Global South, or Europe’s other, as a site of knowledge production. The eurocentrism of the social sciences can be identified by examining the various founding fathers of their respective theories (especially sociology). This paper builds on southern theory in order to learn from these diverse perspectives in theorising global governance.      This paper is organised in three sections. First, it sets out the rationale for a reorientation towards the Global South by examining the current state of global governance theory. In the second section, this paper focus on the broad theoretical foundations of the Third World Approaches to International Law [TWAIL] movement. TWAIL scholarship is a reaction against the colonial and imperial projects of international law. Its main claims are set out and then there is an examination of its proposals as a means to arrive at an answer to the second question: should we learn from the Global South?      In the final section, this paper explores the question of how we can learn from the Global South. In answering this question, the author offers two insights. The first is based on the premise of international law as a field of practice. The second attempts to problematise the ethics of international legal scholarship.

Editors' introduction to Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) special issue of the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice (Vol. 33:3, 2016) - Conspiring in Cairo & Canada: Placing TWAIL Scholarship and Praxis.

I use the United Nations Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka’s recommendation to create an international mechanism and recent demands for justice as a springboard to argue that the creation of a new ad hoc international or hybrid criminal tribunal for Sri Lanka may not produce the expected results of prosecuting those responsible for mass human rights violations. I argue that such an initiative will not heal the ruptures and cleavages among the different ethnic communities in Sri Lanka. By teasing out the political nature of international criminal law and the embedded nature of the history of international law, this chapter suggests that the creation of an international institution may not bring to justice the divergent perpetrators of war crimes. Rather, the politics of international institutions and the history of international law may allow for ‘regulatory capture’ and the continuing rise of international experts as seen through the illustrative history of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Osgoode Hall Law School, York University’s Challenging Conventions! Speaker Series organized Re-Igniting Critical Race: A Symposium on Contemporary Accounts of Racialization in Canada on November 2, 2012.  The symposium sought to explore critical race theory and its praxis within the Canadian legal academy by inviting emerging scholars and practitioners to engage with the scholarship of Professor Patricia Williams.

Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders (GLP) by Paul Schiff Berman is a legal pluralist’s contribution to the study of local and global regulation. In a tour de force, Berman articulates clear and concise arguments in support of adopting a pluralist lens (coined as a cosmopolitan pluralist perspective). He magnificently traverses the multiple and complex bodies of literature that seek to understand the various inchoate regulatory regimes, actors, norms, and processes, to simply state that we must harness the benefits of the overlapping legal authorities. The overlapping legal authorities for Berman produce legal hybridity, which is a product of globalization(s).

Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders (GLP) by Paul Schiff Berman is a legal pluralist’s contribution to the study of local and global regulation. In a tour de force, Berman articulates clear and concise arguments in support of adopting a pluralist lens (coined as a cosmopolitan pluralist perspective). He magnificently traverses the multiple and complex bodies of literature that seek to understand the various inchoate regulatory regimes, actors, norms, and processes,1 to simply state that we must harness the benefits of the overlapping legal authorities. The overlapping legal authorities for Berman produce legal hybridity, which is a product of globalization(s).2

Professor Ladeur argues that administrative law’s postmodernism (and by extension Global Administrative Law) necessitates that we move beyond relying on ideas of delegation, account- ability and legitimacy. Global Governance, particularly Global Administrative Law and Global Constitutionalism, should try to adapt and experiment with the changing nature of the postmod- ern legality and support the creation of norms that will adapt to the complexities of globalisation. Ladeur’s contestation, similar to GAL’s propositions, can be challenged. By taking the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a significant contributor to the field of international criminal law, as an example, it is suggested that the creation of networks that Ladeur makes visible may not account for ‘regulatory capture’. This paper will argue that from the outside, the proliferation of networks may suggest that spontaneous accountability is possible. A closer look, however, drawing on anthropological insights from the ICTR, reveals that international institutions are suscepti- ble to capture by special interests. Furthermore, there are two central themes that animate the response to Professor Ladeur: the political nature of international institutions and the history of international law, and the role of institutions in this history.

Professor Ladeur argues that administrative law's postmodernism (and by extension Global Administrative Law) necessitates that we move beyond relying on ideas of delegation, accountability and legitimacy. Global Governance, particularly Global Administrative Law and Global Constitutionalism, should try to adapt and experiment with the changing nature of the postmodern legality and support the creation of norms that will adapt to the complexities of globalisation. Ladeur's contestation, similar to GAL's propositions, can be challenged. By taking the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a significant contributor to the field of international criminal law, as an example, it is suggested that the creation of networks that Ladeur makes visible may not account for ‘regulatory capture’. This paper will argue that from the outside, the proliferation of networks may suggest that spontaneous accountability is possible. A closer look, however, drawing on anthropological insights from the ICTR, reveals that international institutions are susceptible to capture by special interests. Furthermore, there are two central themes that animate the response to Professor Ladeur: the political nature of international institutions and the history of international law, and the role of institutions in this history.

Victor Kattan’s “From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949” is an archival excavation of the Israeli-Palestinian (Arab-Israeli) conflict and its origins. This review will examine the contours of Kattan’s book followed by a brief examination of objectivity in academic scholarship often enunciated through the concept of ‘balance’ as it relates to those scholars (like Kattan) working on the conflict. Finally, this review will explore some of the weakness of the arguments that Kattan advances.

With this brief introduction to a special issue of the Osgoode Hall Law School Comparative Law and Political Economy Research Paper Series, we hope to evoke some of the discussions and background preparation that invigorated the 2010 Osgoode Graduate Law Students' Association conference.

Victor Kattan's “From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891–1949” is an archival excavation of the Israeli-Palestinian (Arab-Israeli) conflict and its origins. This review will examine the contours of Kattan's book followed by a brief examination of objectivity in academic scholarship often enunciated through the concept of ‘balance’ as it relates to those scholars (like Kattan) working on the conflict. Finally, this review will explore some of the weakness of the arguments that Kattan advances.