In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Legal education

05 Apr

Dr Mohsen al Attar and (Dr) Omar Kamel Academics are professional thinkers. We might be charitable and describe ourselves as specialised communicators as well. We engage in a variety of roles, ranging from the advancement of knowledge to the teaching and mentoring of students, from guiding policymakers to supporting social movements. Some of these tasks are mundane—setting assessment questions—just as others...

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23 Mar

Dr Mohsen al Attar and Dr Rafael Quintero Godínez** Modern legal education has been criticised for trying to make itself harmless. Law professors provide students with a sanitised view of the field that camouflages the cracks and contradictions on offer. This approach leads to the circulation of parochial knowledge that overlooks the nuances of the societies we inhabit and the struggles...

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24 Feb

[Tania Ixchel Atilano, born in Mexico City, has a Juris Doctor from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research interests lie in the fields of history of international humanitarian law, international criminal law and criminal law. The author kindly thanks Professor Vivianne Weng for her invaluable feedback and comments.] Due to copyright issues, the images discussed have not been reproduced here. A link...

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22 Feb

1 Experimentation is the lifeblood of a pedagogue. Without this, our craft is at risk of going stale: the materials will become anachronistic, just as the methods will falter. Law schools, however, are not ideal sites for experimentation. Staunchly grounded in professional practice—we might say jealously guarded by the guild—the curriculum constricts space for pedagogical adventure, bounded by the demands of an absentee landowner. Law students are not...

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23 Jan

[Abhijeet Shrivastava and Aryaman Kapoor are students at Jindal Global Law School and members of the JFIEL Editorial team.] Introduction As students from the Global South who hope to participate in the international legal system and academy, it has been encouraging to see recent efforts by ‘Opinio Juris’ to help critique systemic biases in these spaces. For example, Radhika Kapoor reminds us of how unpaid internships have...

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22 Dec

[Shahab Saqib (@sufi_shahab) is a Visiting Lecturer at the SOAS University of London and a PhD Scholar of law at King’s College London] Introduction In a bizarre conversation with an established colleague on international law, I was told, ‘you should run away from being a critic of international law as I did. It won’t earn you a dime’. The discussion was long and covered various other issues,...

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21 Dec

[Marie Badarne is Coordinator of the Critical Legal Training at the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Claire Tixeire is Senior Legal Advisor at ECCHR. Both have co-led ECCHR’s Critical Legal Training since its founding in 2012, now a part of ECCHR’s Institute for Legal Intervention.]    Over the past decade, the co-authors have led the Critical...

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19 Dec

[Radhika Kapoor (Twitter: @Radhikaaah) is a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.] This piece has been written in the author's personal capacity and does not reflect the views of the author's institution. The author thanks Professor Naz Modirzadeh, Sapan Parekh, and Ashrutha Rai for helpful comments, and Shashankaa Tewari for research assistance. The terrain of...

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14 Dec

[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law whose research focuses on the laws of humanitarian assistance. Before turning to law, he worked as an aid worker focusing on disaster risk, with placements in Niger and Senegal.] Each year, as the holidays roll around in winter and summer, I’m...

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30 Sep

1- White Supremacy and the International Legal Order Writing in 1997, Charles Mills threw a grenade into political theory. With a touch of hyperbole, we might even say he collapsed the contours of the social sciences. Standard undergraduate philosophy courses, he tells us, cover two thousand years of political thought. Mainstream philosophers introduce students to liberalism and libertarianism, capitalism and communitarianism, socialism...

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02 Jun

Call for Papers Robert Cryer - A Life in Law and a Law unto Himself: We greatly miss Professor Rob Cryer, who passed away in 2021 at the age of forty-six. We aim to channel this loss, those missings, into an event, and a book, that celebrates his oeuvre, research, mentorship, teaching, insights, idiosyncrasy, laughter, vim, and wit. We plan an eclectic...

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