Teaching Of International Law Research Articles

Chapter 2 of Teaching International Law – Course Content

Chapter 2 of Teaching International Law – Course Content

Third World Approaches to International Law and Eurocentrism: Deconstruction-Reconstruction Urgency in International Legal Pedagogy

The field of higher education pedagogy rarely explores the intricate relationship between international law and its teaching. As a branch of law rich in theoretical and doctrinal values, international law should not escape criticism and critical approaches. So far, most of the teachings of international law rely on Western or Eurocentric approaches and thinking. This research uses a normative-empirical method to study the international legal pedagogy of law students in Indonesia and examine the impact of Eurocentric legal pedagogy on students. The findings indicate that Eurocentric teaching has resulted in students possessing narrow critical thinking on international law. As an alternative, the Third World Approach to International Law (TWAIL) can be an effective approach to foster inclusive critical thinking in the teaching of international law.

Teaching International Law in the Time of COVID-19: A View from the Experience and Beyond

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opportunity has arisen to reconsider educational concepts in general and the teaching of international law in particular. International Law professors have been required to participate in mandatory online learning and teaching during the pandemic. The students of today are self-organized learners and active observers who are able to cope with new situations. In the future, is it possible to combine online and in-person teaching? This article aims to describe our experience teaching international law using technologies in a theoretical setting. With current circumstances in mind, it is necessary to consider ways to seamlessly integrate physical and digital methods and tools. The result is a more active, flexible, and meaningful learning experience. To this end, we borrow Pope Francis’ words: ‘Peggio di questa crisi c’è solo il dramma di sprecarla’—the only thing worse than this is the misfortune of wasting it, in the sense of failing to learn from it.

New strategies in the teaching of international law

New strategies in the teaching of international law

A Roundtable Conversation: Feminist Collaborative Ethos in International Law

ABSTRACT This roundtable discussion focuses on the collective commitment and the praxis of a feminist collaborative ethos in international law to imagine and centre alternative futures in the field. This discussion took place as part of the virtual workshop ‘International Law Dis/Oriented: Queer Legacies, and Queer Futures Workshop’ from which this special issue emerged. In this transcript of the roundtable, Shaimaa Abdelkarim, Farnush Ghadery, and Rohini Sen discuss with Lena Holzer how turning to feminist collectivity – focused on care, collaboration, and solidarity – can help to disrupt and push against gendered, racialised, and colonial power structures embedded in academic spaces. They examine their intertwined positionalities along with various pedagogical and methodological approaches to determine the functions of critical feminist and queer thoughts in international law. Inculcating a praxis of feminist collaborative ethos in the scholarship and teaching of international law, they hope to present a challenge to the artificial individualisation of the profession and its increasing neoliberalisation.

Teaching and research of International Law in an expanded world: understanding from the Indian perspective

The teaching and research of international law in India is affected in a manner, which is in many respects, occur different from that of the developed world. There exist salient differences in attitude, focus, approach, interpretation, and resources. The teaching of international law in India has been predominantly Eurocentric, with curriculum dominated by western narratives, and research which is largely detached from the relevant content. For a greater part of Indian legal education there has been a sense of lack of relatability, particularly in addressing local legal issues. This has impacted students, the discipline, and legal pedagogy alike. Furthermore, because of the complexity of Indian society engendered by its own internal contradictions, one finds interesting disparities of substance and methodology adopted for dispersing knowledge. This paper discusses teaching and research methods of international law in India with a background note that provides context within which the approach will be centered around. This will be followed by an attempt to justify the need for teaching and research of international law in India. The paper concludes with a suggestion that in view of severe social and economic limitations, subject of international law should really be given high priority.

Near, far, wherever you are: reflections on studying and teaching international law

ABSTRACT Under the thematic umbrella of A World of Struggle, this article reflects on the struggles we, the Chinese international law researchers, experience and live with. The professional struggles, of mine and of those that I have observed, might offer an easy entry point for discussing Chinese international lawyers and the China topic in a world of struggle. The article further invites my fellow international law teachers in China to imagine a mode of teaching (and engaging with) international law that breaks away from the purely instrumental understanding of law. The article suggests that, it would benefit our approach to international law by paying particular attention to at least concrete episodes of violence in the world around us and in our own assumptions and understandings of the world and ourselves, the material surrounds we inherited, as well as our ways of living and being.

History and self-reflection in the teaching of international law

Abstract This article is about how international law, and specifically its history, is taught. The article critiques the pedagogy in this area by analysis of textbooks, and then considers the contexts in which international legal texts are written, taught and read. In light of this we suggest how to teach the history of international law, and international law in general, better.

An analysis of the application of flipped classroom in the teaching of international law

The flipped classroom works best only in the appropriate curriculum, and the international law course can fully realize its strengths. Applying this model to the teaching of international law can not only arrange the teaching time reasonably, but also show the subjective status of students and enable students to get more exercise. However, the construction of online and offline teaching systems for flipped classroom is not easy, and more requirements need to be put forward for educators.<br />

Teaching International Law in the 21th Century – Opening up the hidden room in the palace of International Law

Teaching International Law in the 21th Century – Opening up the hidden room in the palace of International Law

Teaching International Law in Times of Change and Crisis

This article is a contribution to scholarship on the teaching of international law, in general, and in Nordic countries, in particular. The article draws on lessons from international law as situated and embedded in national and regional politics and systems of governance. That is, although international law is international, it is approached and implemented differently depending on situation and location. The article emphasizes that contemporary teaching of international law should engage with how situation and location matters for how international law is approached and it should also reflect contemporary global challenges. The article uses the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan as an example, as well as experiences from teaching international law with the help of a peacemaking role-play focused on the conflict in Afghanistan.

Decolonising the Curriculum in International Law: Entrapments in Praxis and Critical Thought

Calls to decolonise the curriculum gain traction across the academe. To a great extent, the movement echoes demands of the decolonisation era itself, a period from which academics draw both impetus and legitimacy. In this article, we examine the movement’s purchase when applied to the teaching of international law. We argue that the movement reinvigorates debates about the origins of international law, centring its violent foundations as well as its Eurocentric episteme. Yet, like many critical approaches toward international law, the movement is smitten with itself and with the regime. As a consequence, the outcome of its activism and critique is predetermined: both must redeem the Eurocentrism of international law and its associated pedagogy. Calls to decolonise the curriculum ultimately validate the epistemological limitations inherent to a stratified, international order, failing to offer a genuine alternative framework or epistemology.

Scholarship on the Teaching of International Law – An Overview of the State of the Art

Scholarship on the Teaching of International Law – An Overview of the State of the Art

International Law Online: How Will the Pandemic Change the Practice of Law?

This panel was convened at 1:45 p.m., Friday, March 26, 2021, by the ASIL-Midwest Interest Group. Through a roundtable discussion, the panel explored the changes that the pandemic has had on the practice and teaching of international law. Professor Brian Farrell and Professor Stuart Ford, Co-Chairs of the Midwest Interest Group, co-moderated the panel discussion and introduced the panelists: Juliet Sorensen of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Lawrence Schaner of Schaner Dispute Resolution LLC; Kanglin Yu of the University of Iowa College of Law; Dr. Robert Eno, Registrar of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights; and Vera Korzun of the University of Akron School of Law.

Decolonising the Curriculum in International Law: Entrapments in Praxis and Critical Thought

Calls to decolonise the curriculum gain traction across the academe. To a great extent, the movement echoes demands of the decolonisation era itself, a period from which academics draw both impetus and legitimacy. In this article, we examine the movement’s purchase when applied to the teaching of international law. We argue that the movement reinvigorates debates about the origins of international law, centring its violent foundations as well as its Eurocentric episteme. Yet, like many critical approaches toward international law, the movement is smitten with itself and with the regime. As a consequence, the outcome of its activism and critique is predetermined: both must redeem the Eurocentrism of international law and its associated pedagogy. Calls to decolonise the curriculum ultimately validate the epistemological limitations inherent to a stratified, international order, failing to offer a genuine alternative framework or epistemology.

Teaching International Law in Jurisdictions with International Law Crisis

Abstract The normally challenging task of teaching international law is amplified when teaching international law in jurisdictions that face ongoing human rights problems and other failures of compliance with international law. In those jurisdictions, the dialectics between the globalized world economy and technology on the one hand and the intensification of hostility to human rights and substantive democracies (ie to the values of public international law) on the other hand are much more pronounced. Students will often resist international law and regard it as the ‘enemy of the state’ or a source of illegitimate foreign influence. The challenge of international law teachers in those jurisdictions is thus not only to teach international law but also to draw the students into – rather than alienate them from – thinking about their resistance to international law and about the relations between law, power and legitimacy. How to meet this and related challenges is the focus of this paper, which is based on the authors’ practical experiences of teaching international law in several jurisdictions with an international law crisis including Hong Kong, Israel, and the People’s Republic of China.

The teaching of (another) international law: critical realism and the question of agency and structure

ABSTRACT In this article I explore the potential of a critical realist approach to the teaching of international law. Critical realist scholars have advanced a compelling account of the importance of paying attention – in designing educational curricula, delivering materials and classroom interactions – to the close relationship between agency and structure, a relationship that has also come to preoccupy international legal scholars. Recent academic work, especially that developed by critical international legal scholars, has revealed and insisted upon the structural dimension of the international legal order. According to these scholars, this dimension should be taken into account in order to explain and challenge some of the ways in which international law has historically constituted, and continues to constitute, our persistently violent and unequal material and social world at all levels, from international to local spaces, and from collective to individual subjectivities. If the aim is to generate another global order, and another international law, teaching international law today requires us to learn how to negotiate the structure and agency divide. The work of critical realists has the potential to help teachers of international law create a more emancipatory learning experience for their students in order to face this crucial task.

Inculcating International Law: the Textbook as Gateway

International students struggle with the lack of hierarchy and enforcement, and the apparent differences between international law and the domestic legal system to which they have been exposed. Sometimes, by drawing analogies with these domestic systems, they impose a legal form that is incommensurable with the reality of international legal structures. Newcomers to international law are altogether perplexed by the very concepts of international legal normativity and how they can be reconciled with insights from other disciplines. In short, textbooks are the vehicle through which the next generation will be initiated into the international legal profession. This paper shares some insights on the writing of an international law textbook that emerged during the writing process. In particular, it focusses on the challenge on how to reconcile the essentially Western, imperial, and colonial heritage of modern international law with a genuine desire to avoid simply reproducing that process of Westernisation. The Eurocentric narrative of international law as a universal legal order is part of its founding myth, and has been integral to the reception and acceptance of international law outside the West. Excavating that myth is a valuable part of international law teaching and scholarship, and not one that can be simply ignored.

Academic perspectives on teaching international family law in higher education institutions in England and Wales

ABSTRACTThe increasing prevalence of family law disputes in England and Wales with an international element is well documented in the development of domestic legislation, case law and family practice. However, despite changes to the legal landscape and the academic recognition of international family law as a legal subject, it is still often disregarded within the undergraduate family law curriculum or as a standalone module. This article explores the development of international family law in England and Wales and presents the findings of a national questionnaire into whether international family law is taught as part of the undergraduate curriculum. The article also explores what barriers exist to including international family law topics. To conclude, the author offers some general advice about incorporating these topics into the curriculum to ensure that students are equipped to deal with the realities of family practice in England and Wales.

Der pädagogische Wert der klinisch-rechtlichen Ausbildung im Bereich des humanitären Völkerrechts: Die Beispiele der IHL-Kliniken in Leiden und Bochum

Teaching international humanitarian law can take many different forms but using clinical legal education in this field of law has proven especially successful. This article describes the benefits as well as the challenges of setting up an international humanitarian law clinic in the traditional teaching environments of the Netherlands and Germany. It highlights the experiences and best practices accumulated during six years of letting students of Leiden University and Ruhr University Bochum successfully conduct research projects with project partners like the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Netherlands or German Red Cross, as well as different human rights NGOs and government agencies. It shows why students love participating in clinical legal education, and why this form of legal training not only enables students to apply their theoretical knowledge to practical situations, but also trains them in soft skills like teamwork, conflict resolution and time management. Lastly, it shows that through setting up IHL clinics all over the world and being part of an international IHL clinic network, the authors contributed to having real impact on the further dissemination, implementation and enforcement of IHL.