Taking note of the relatively limited accounts of race in contemporary international legal doctrine, this Article posits a thought experiment: What would international legal theorizing look like not from the place of the metropole or the colony, but rather from the journey of the enslaved, from the barracoon to the hold of the slave ship to the plantation?
“Unwhitening the World”: Rethinking Race and International Law
International law was invented in 1789 when Jeremy Bentham introduced the term to replace the outmoded “Law of Nations.” Since then, international lawyers have spent a lot of time thinking about whether international law is in fact law, and little or no time considering how international law is international, or what international actually means. In this Article, I want to suggest that, with the...
Writing Race and Identity in a Global Context: What CRT and TWAIL Can Learn From Each Other
This Article argues that issues of race and identity have so far been underemphasized, understudied, and undertheorized in mainstream international law. To address this major gap, this Article argues that there is an opportunity for learning, sharing, and collaboration between Critical Race Theorists (CRT) and scholars of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL).
A Prolegomenon to the Study of Racial Ideology in the Era of International Human Rights
Through a study of racial ideology in the history of international legal thought, this Article offers the beginnings of an explanation for how this lack of attention to race and racism came to be, and why it matters today.
Slavery Is Not a Metaphor: U.S. Prison Labor and Racial Subordination Through the Lens of the ILO’s Abolition of Forced Labor Convention
This Article calls for a recalibration, arguing that transnational labor law is deeply historicized, rooted in the persisting presence of a racial capitalism that is too easily relegated to a distant past.
Critical Race Theory Meets Third World Approaches to International Law
By and large, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) exist in separate epistemic universes. This Article argues that the borders between these two fields are unwarranted.
Race and Empire: Legal Theory Within, Through, and Across National Borders
Mainstream and official analysis casts the international system and its hegemonic actors in the role of humanitarian responders to a Libyan crisis not of their making. Instead, we draw attention to the ways in which the racial framing of Libya—and its subordination to imperial prerogatives—proved critical to international governance regimes for managing the country—and the bodies and territory...
Abolishing Racist Policing With the Thirteenth Amendment
This Essay was also published in the UCLA Law Review’s online publication, Discourse. Abstract Policing in America has always been about controlling the Black body. Indeed, modern policing was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy; its roots are found in slavery. Policing today continues to protect and serve the racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. But a string of U.S. Supreme...