Professor Akbar Rasulov
The Hidden Theology of International Legal Positivism
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This chapter is a study in the critical deconstruction of one of the most popular theoretical paradigms in modern international law and its basic ideological impact on international law as a discipline. The paradigm in question is voluntarist positivism, and the general thrust of its ideological impact on the discipline of international law, I am going to argue, has been to encourage within it the rise and spread of what one might call a theoretical culture of bad faith – a mix of false consciousness, self-censorship, and a “crooked attitude towards truth and knowledge”– particularly, in what concerns international law’s relationship with natural law and Christian theology. The last two sentences use a lot of notoriously ambivalent concepts. For the prevention of doubt, let me explain briefly how I understand them in these pages.
A chapter in "Christianity and International Law" book, Pamela Slotte and John Haskell (eds.), (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
9781108565646
The Discipline as a Field of Struggle: The Politics and Economics of Knowledge Production in International Law
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"International Law's Invisible Frames. Social Cognition and Knowledge Production in International Legal Processes" Edited by Andrea Bianchi and Moshe Hirsch Examines the social cognition and knowledge production processes which form our understanding of what international law is, and how it works Identifies the groups of people and institutions that shape and alter the prevailing discourse in international law An innovative, interdisciplinary approach employing insights from sociology, psychology, and behavioural science
A chapter in Andrea Bianchi and Moshe Hirsch (eds), International Law’s Invisible Frames (Oxford University Press, 2021)
ISBN: 9780192847539
Deep Cuts: Four Critiques of Legal Ideology
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This Article begins an effort to rekindle the intellectual tradition of critical legal theory. The context for the project is significant. On the one hand is the grip of a social crisis, the contours of which continue to confound the commentariat. Racism, xenophobia, gendered violence, migration and nation, climate change, health pandemics, political corruption. The parade is as intimidating as it is spectacular. On the other hand, the very tools of criticism we depend upon in identifying these characters in the parade, much less the spectacle of the parade itself, are themselves in crisis. There is, in a word, a crisis for critique itself. The working assumption of this Article is that these crises—crises in society and the crises of critique—are not unrelated. It is in this context that we believe in the need to revitalize the tools of critical legal studies, an intellectual songbook from the 1970s that deserves a 21st century reboot.
Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, Vol. 31:2, (2021)
ISSN: 1041-6374
International Economic Law: New Voices, New Perspectives
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This book brings together a series of contributions by international legal scholars that explore a range of subjects and themes in the field of international economic law and global economic governance through a variety of methodological and theoretical lenses. It introduces the reader to a number of different ways of constructing and approaching the study of international economic law. The book deals with a series of different theoretical agendas and perspectives ranging from the more traditional (empirical legal studies) to the more alternative (language theory) and it expands the scope of substantive discussion and thematic coverage beyond the usual suspects of international trade, international investment and international finance. While the volume still gives due recognition to the traditional theoretical project of international economic law, it invites the reader to extend the scope of disciplinary imagination to other, less commonly acknowledged questions of global economic governance such as food security, monetary unions, and international economic coercion. In addition to historically-focused and critical perspectives, the volume also includes a number of programmatic and forward-looking explorations, which makes it appealing to a broad audience with a variety of contrasting interests. Therefore, the volume is of particular interest to academics and postgraduate students in the fields of international law, international relations, international political economy, and international history.
Series: European Yearbook of International Economic Law. Springer. (In Press)