Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2 | CP 1672 - CH-1211 Genève 1 | +41 22 908 57 00 | graduateinstitute.ch MAISON DE LA PAIX
International Law
Academic year 2021-2022
Global South and International Law: From Colonial Companies to Foreign investment
DI155 - Printemps - 3 ECTS Tuesday 08h15 - 10h00 Course Description Start date: 12 April 2022 End Date: 1 June 2022
Class delivered online. Enrolment capped.
Final essay due: 13 June 2022
The object of this course is to explore the history, structure and process of international law in shaping relations between the European and non-European worlds. Specifically, we will consider the role of international law in facilitating imperialism, and in generating and maintaining relations of inequality both historically and in the present. We will pay particular attention to the role of companies, from the (pre)colonial trading companies and their place in the law of nations, to present day global corporations and their relationship to international law. At the same time, we will consider attempts by actors in the Global South to use, re-orient and transform international law to align with alternative possibilities for how peoples and states could relate to each other and share the earth. We will approach these broad themes from historical, theoretical and doctrinal perspectives by studying cases, classic works, and contemporary texts.
PROFESSOR
Professor Sundhya Pahuja s.pahuja@unimelb.edu.au
Office hours: By Appointment (virtual)
ASSISTANT
Fekade Alemayhu Abebe Office hours
Syllabus
Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2 | CP 1672 - CH-1211 Genève 1 | +41 22 908 57 00 | graduateinstitute.ch MAISON DE LA PAIX
Teaching and Learning
This course is designed to help you think critically about the forms of international legal relations between global North and South. This is a huge question and can be approached in many ways. The course narrows the range slightly by inflecting the study of that relationship through the question of global corporations in historical context. This marks a new approach to the study of international law.
There will be a few mini lectures, but the course will be largely discussion based, so pre-reading and attendance are crucial. It is entirely online. We will communicate with you through Moodle and will provide more explicit guidance about preparation for class in advance of each class. We will make sure any reading questions, pre- class viewing, tasks you need to complete before class or additional readings (or variations) are posted by Wednesday afternoon (Geneva time) of the week before class.
The form of assessment I have designed is for you to write a review essay of a recent book. All of the books are available through the library, or our course page. Being able to write a review essay is an important academic and professional skill. Indeed, throughout the course, we will be learning how to read and write in a range of genres of legal writing, and you will be supported in learning how to craft an effective review essay. By the end, I hope that many of you will be writing with a view to publishing your review essay.
As part of this formation, I have asked you to prepare short reading summaries for one of the texts for three weeks of the course and post them to the discussion board. During the first class, we will distribute the texts and weeks to make sure every text has at least one commentator. This task will help you to engage with the materials, foster a community of learning, and provide training in writing scholarly commentary. It will also allow you to build up a repertoire of commentary on which you can draw for your review essay. In other words, you will be able to draw freely and directly on the summaries you write for your review essay.
Assessment
10% Class participation Oral participation and attendance in class 25% Three Reading
summaries
Weeks 2-6, post to the discussion board, one reading reflection (350-500 words max) for one of the readings for at least 3 of the classes, at least 12 hours before class. (approx. 1500 words in total). We will arrange which weeks and texts in the first class to ensure coverage. You can draw freely on your own summaries (including reproducing sections) of course readings in your review essay.
10% Lead one class With your group, lead the discussion of the readings for one week. Your week will be allocated in Week 1.
55% Review Essay 4,000 – 5,000 words (not including footnotes). Review essay of one book from the list.
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Week Date Topic
1 12 April Approaching International Law Easter Break
2 26 April Rival International Laws and the Question of Empire 3 3 May Empire, Corporations and International Law
4 10 May Techniques of Administration and Indirect Rule
5 17 May Decolonisation
6 24 May Foreign Investment 7 31 May Thematic Recapitulation &
Crafting and Writing a review essay 13 June 2022 Review essay due date
Readings
The following list includes the essential readings you are expected to read before class. We may provide you with additional case study materials or other required readings before the scheduled class. If this is the case, instructions will be available by Wednesday afternoon, the week before class.
Week 1 – Approaching International Law
• Anghie, Antony, ‘Towards a Postcolonial International Law’ in Singh and Mayer (eds.), Critical International Law: Postrealism, Postcolonialism, and Transnationalism (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• Sundhya Pahuja, ‘Laws of Encounter: a jurisdictional account of international law’ (2013) 1:1 London Review of International Law 63-98
In addition to the Anghie and Pahuja readings, please read at least one of these:
• Georges Abi-Saab, ‘The Third World intellectual in praxis: confrontation, participation, or operation behind enemy lines?’, Third World Quarterly (2016) pp.1957-1971
• Siba Grovogui, ‘A Revolution Nonetheless: The Global South in International Relations’ (2011) 5:1 The Global South, Special Issue: The Global South and World Dis/Order 175-190
• Surabhi Ranganathan, ‘Decolonization and International Law: Putting the Ocean on the Map’ (2021) 23 Journal of the History of International Law 161-183
• Silvia Steininger and Tom Sparks, ‘On history, geography, and radical change in international law: An Interview with BS Chimni’, (2018) Volkerrechtsblog 2 May 2018
Week 2 : Rival International Laws and the Question of Empire
• Charles H. Alexandrowicz, ‘Some problems of the history of the law of nations in Asia’ (1963) The Indian Year Book of International Affairs 3-11
• Charles H. Alexandrowicz, ‘Treaty and Diplomatic Relations Between European and South Asian Powers in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law (Volume 100), Chapter 1, Introduction
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• M.W. Janis, ‘Jeremy Bentham and the Fashioning of “International Law”’ (1984) American Journal of International Law 405-418
• B.V.A. Roling, International Law in an Expanded World, 1-16 If you have time, read one or more of these:
• Adil Hasan Khan, ‘International Law’s Invisible Frames Symposium: The Dispositional Formations of International Lawyers – A Commentary on Akbar Rasulov’s ‘The Discipline as a Field of Struggle: The Politics and the Economy of Knowledge Production in International Law’ Part I,’ Opinion Juris, (26 January 2022) available on https://opiniojuris.org/2022/01/26/international-laws-invisible-frames-symposium-the- dispositional-formations-of-international-lawyers-a-commentary-on-akbar-rasulovs-the-discipline-as-a- field-of-struggle-the-pol/
• David Armytage, ‘Globalizing Jeremy Bentham’ (2011) History of Political Thought 63 – 82.
• Paul Halliday, 'Law's Histories: Pluralisms, Pluralities, Diversity’ in Benton and Ross (eds), Legal Pluralism and Empires 1500 – 1850’ (NYU Press, 2013)
Week 3 – Empire, corporations and (international) law
• Philip J. Stern, ‘The Ideology of the Imperial Corporation: “Informal” Empire revisited’ in Erikson (ed) Chartering Capitalism: Organising Markets, States and Publics (2015) 15-43
• Janet McLean, `The Transnational Corporation in History: Lessons for Today?’ (2004) 79:2 Indiana Law Journal 363-377
• Koen Stapelbroek,`Trade, Chartered Companies, and Mercantile Associations’, in Fassbender and Peters (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law
Week 4 – Techniques of Administration and Indirect Rule
• Anne Orford, ‘Jurisdiction without Territory: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Responsibility to Protect’, (2009) 30 Michigan Journal of International Law 981 - 1015
• Ritu Birla, ‘Maine (and Weber) Against the Grain: Towards a Postcolonial Genealogy of the Corporate Person’ (2013) 40:1 Journal of Law and Society 92 – 114
• Frederik Lugard, ‘Introduction’, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922)
• Harry Truman, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1949 If you have time, please read this:
• John Ruggie – Multinationals as global institution: Power, authority and relative autonomy (2017) Regulation and Governance 1-17
Week 5 – ‘Decolonisation’: The New States, Corporations, and the New International Economic Order
• Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, UNGA Res 3201 (S-VI) (1 May 1974) UN Doc A/Res/3201 (S-VI).
• Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (1974) 4 Phil.Y B Int’L L. 188
• Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, UNGA Res 3281 (XXIX) (12 December 1974), UN Doc./A/Res/3281(XXIX).
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• Henry Kissinger, ‘Global Consensus and Economic Development’, Address to the seventh session of the UN General Assembly, 1 September 1975. 14 ILM 1538 1975.
• Mohammed Bedjaoui, (1979) Towards a new international economic order, Holmes and Meir: UNESCO pp.
97-115, 125-193.
• Sarah Stockwell, The Business of Decolonization: British Business Strategies in the Gold Coast, Chapter 6, Strategies for Decolonization: The Mining Companies (2000, Oxford University Press).
In addition to the reading above, please read one of these:
• Antony Anghie, ‘Legal Aspects of the New International Economic Order’ (2015) 6:1 Humanity 145-158
• Margot Salmon, `From NIEO to Now and the Unfinishable Story of Economic Justice’, (2013) International Comparative Law Quarterly 31-54
• Sundhya Pahuja and Anna Saunders, ‘Rival Worlds and the Place of the Corporation in International Law’ in Dann and Von Bernstorff (eds) The Battle for International Law: South-North Perspectives on the
Decolonization Era (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Week 6 – Foreign Investment Law
• Foreign Investment Materials (to be provided)
• Kate Miles, ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement: Conflict, Convergence and Future Directions (2016) (7) European Yearbook of International Economic Law 273 - 308
In addition to the required reading above, please choose one of these two texts to read:
• D. Kalderimis, ‘IMF Conditionality as Investment Regulation: A Theoretical Analysis’ (2004) 13(1) Social and Legal Studies 103-131
• D.K Fieldhouse, ‘Chapter 9: The Multinational Corporation and Development’ The West and the Third World: Trade, Colonialism, Dependence and Development (Blackwell, 1999) 253-286
You might like to read one of these if you have time:
• Sarah Stockwell, ‘Imperial Liberalism and Institution Building at the End of Empire in Africa’ (2018) 46:5 Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1009-1033
• Lipson, Standing Guard: Protecting Foreign Capital in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1985, University of California Press). (You may have to get the book from the library)
• Sundhya Pahuja, ‘Chapter 3: From Decolonisation to Developmental Nation-State’ in Decolonising International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 44-94
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Week 7 – Thematic Recap and Crafting and Writing a Review Essay
• Sundhya Pahuja, ‘Methodology: Writing about How we do Research’ in Delplano and Tsagourias (eds) Research Methods in International Law (Elgar 2021)
Assessment
List of Books for Review Essay
Choose one book from this list and write an extended review essay about it, drawing on the course and course materials.
• Doreen Lustig, Veiled Power: International Law and the Private Corporation, 1886-1981 (OUP, 2020)
• Cait Storr, International Status in the Shadow of Empire: Nauru and the Histories of International Law (CUP, 2020)
• Anil Yilmaz Vastardis, The Nationality of Corporate Investors Under International Investment Law (Hart, 2020)
• Gretje Baars, The Corporation, Law and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in the Global Economy (Brill, 2019)
• Kate Miles, The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment and the Safeguarding of Capital (CUP, 2013)
