B. S. Chimni

Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto

* I would like to thank Antony Anghie for his comments on an earlier draft of the paper. The usual caveat applies. First published in: Antony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni, Karin Mickelson and Obiora Okafor (Eds), The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalization (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2003). 1 The word “recolonisation” is being inter alia used to indicate first, the reconstitution of the relationship between State and international law so as to undermine the autonomy of third world States and to the disadvantage of its peoples. Second, the expansion of international property rights which are to be enforced by third world States without possessing the authority to undertake the task of redistribution of incomes and resources. Third, the relocation of sovereign economic powers in international trade and financial institutions. Fourth, the inability of third world states to resist the overwhelming ideological and military dominance of the first world. 2 See UNDP, Human Development Report (1999). 3 We adopt here the definition of domination offered by Thompson: “We can speak of ‘domination’when established relations of power are ‘systematically asymmetrical’, that is, when particular agents or groups of agents are endowed with power in a durable way which excludes, and to some significant degree remains inaccessible to, other agents or groups of agents, irrespective of the basis upon which such exclusion is carried out.” See J. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture, in The Polity Reader in Social Theory (1994) 133 at 136. Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto

International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches

Foreword - Richard Falk Introduction The Realist Theory of International Law The World of Hans Morgenthau The McDougal-Laswell Approach to International Law Richard Falk and the Grotian Quest Towards a Transdisciplinary Jurisprudence The Marxist Theory of International Law In Lieu of a Conclusion

Customary international law: a third world perspective

Abstract The article offers an alternative account of the evolution, formation, and function of customary international law (CIL) from a third world perspective. It argues that there is an intimate link between the rise, consolidation, and expansion of capitalism in Europe since the nineteenth century and the development of CIL that is concealed by the supposed distinction between “formal” and “material” sources of CIL. In fact, both “traditional” and “modern” CIL sustain the short-term and systemic interests of global capitalism. It proposes a “postmodern” conception of CIL that would contribute to the global common good.