Course Descriptions List

This seminar critically examines how international law helped establish racial regimes in a global order using an approach known as TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law). Topics to be covered include how legal cases involving indigenous peoples laid the foundations for global racial exclusion; the evolution of the principle of self-determination from the League of Nations to the 1970s; abolition and imperialism using Haiti as a primary case study; repressive inclusion in the international order using Ethiopia and Liberia as case studies; Third World revolt featuring the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the American Indian Movement, and the US-based Black Power movement; the neoliberal underbelly of human rights; and laws of war for irregular combat tracing how guerrillas became combatants in the language of law. The class will meet once a week for 3 hours. Grades will be assessed based on class participation, a midterm, and a final paper.

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