International Legal Theory Quiz

Overview of International Legal Theory

• International legal theory encompasses various approaches to explain and analyze public international law and institutions and suggest improvements.

• Different approaches focus on compliance, formation of international rules, and policy orientation.

• Classical approaches include natural law, eclectic or Grotian approach, and legal positivism.

• International relations approaches include realism, liberalism, rational choice and game theory, and international legal process.

• Policy-oriented perspectives include New Haven School, Critical Legal Studies, central case approach, and feminist legal theory.

• New Haven School emphasizes the prescription and application of policy to maintain community order and achieve social goals.

• Critical Legal Studies argues that international law is limited and biased due to language and structures of politics and power.

• Central case approach is a method of analyzing human rights issues by comparing an actual situation to an ideal situation.

• Feminist legal theory critiques current legal practice and vocabulary as patriarchal and proposes changes to promote justice and equality.International Law Theory

• The dominant language of international law emphasizes the protection of women's honor over their social, cultural, and economic rights.

• LGBT International Law Theory seeks to integrate queer theory into international law theory to address discrimination and persecution based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

• The challenges for gay legal theory are to move away from the frailties of both formal equality and antisubordination theories and to represent sexual minorities in a broader cultural context.

• Ancient Rome's ius gentium, which began as a Roman recognition of like legal practices and institutions, can be seen as a starting point for modern international law.

• Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) is a critical approach that prioritizes the power dynamic between the First World and Third World and the role of international law in legitimizing the subjugation and oppression of Third World peoples.

• TWAIL scholars aim to avoid presenting the "Third World" as a unified, coherent place but rather use the term to indicate peoples who have the shared experience of underdevelopment and marginalization.

• TWAIL scholarship has its origins in works of jurists such as B. S. Chimni, Georges Abi-Saab, F. Garcia-Amador R.P. Anand, Mohammed Bedjaoui, and Taslim O. Elias.

• Western scholars who have contributed to TWAIL scholarship include C.H. Alexandrowicz, Richard Falk, Nico Schrijver, PJ.I.M. de Waart, David Kennedy, and Martti Koskenniemi.

• TWAIL is a loose network of scholars that has had several conferences thus far.