TWAIL III: The Third World and International Law

James Gathii of Albany Law School has organized the third annual Third World and International Law (TWAIL) conference, to be held at Albany Law School on April 20 and 21. According to the conference description:

One of the primary goals of this two-day conference, to be held between 20th to the 21st of April 2007, is to bring together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners and others engaged in third world international legal scholarship and practice.

Such approaches include but are not restricted to critical race theory, blackcrit, TWAIL, NAIL, feminist approaches to international law and LatCrit theory…

Though the definition of the third world is contested, the conference is being organized on the premise that the Third World is not simply a temporal geographical or political-ideological space outside the West. Rather, the Third World for purposes of this conference is conceptualized as a contingent and shifting space of engagement and interaction of differences that are irreconcilable sometimes, and overlapping and reinforcing in others.

Panel topics include Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism; War, Sovereignty, and Territoriality; Law and Development, and Globalization at the Margins; International Regimes and Institutions: Emancipation or Emasculation?

Speakers will include Makau Mutua, Anthony Anghie, Marjorie Florestal, Ileana Porras, David Kennedy, Chantal Thomas, Nathanial Berman, James Gathii, Anthony Farley, Bhupinder Chimni and Opinio Juris guest-blogger and IntLawGrrls co-founder Hari Osofsky.

The full speaker list and their bios are here. Moreover, abstracts and/or draft papers are archived here.

This should be a great event. Next week James Gathii will join us with post-conference summary of TWAIL III.