History of International Law

[Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. She is the founder and co-editor of the Armed Groups and International Law blog.] [Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, and an Honorary Member of the International Commission of...

Part I set out the fundamentals of the debate, explaining that a key part of the contextualist critique of Orford’s view of legal history centres on the difference between doing history of international law and using history in international law. This is where the two sides get stuck, because Orford presents the TWAIL critique as “correctives to problems with earlier...

I am a big fan of Başak Etkin and Kostia Gorobets’ Borderline Jurisprudence podcast. I am also very interested in the intersection between law and history. Since Borderline Jurisprudence’s latest episode featured a discussion with Anne Orford on her latest book, International Law & the Politics of History(hereinafter ILPH), I could not resist to offer some comments. Anne Orford is, without a doubt, one of...