In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Legal education

19 Jan

Universities are in a topsy-turvy state. They face enormous and often contradictory pressures from a mix of protagonists including governments and parents, corporations and alumni. These pressures are dwarfed only by the worries of our students, anxious about the direction of the global political economy and the implications for their futures. Each group looks to the tertiary sector for...

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08 Dec

As a result of the recent decision by the Harvard Law Review to not publish a commissioned article by Palestinian scholar, Rabea Eghbariah, I have signed the following Open Letter, along with 100 more of my fellow international law scholars. I hope others will sign as well (here). I am attaching the full text below. Academic FreedomOpen...

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10 Oct

If you're not careful, [international lawyers] will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.Malcolm X The Power of Mythmaking  Origin stories are always more fiction than fact, more myth than reality. At times, origin stories serve to redeem a dubious past, while at others they enable us to justify an unwelcoming...

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18 Sep

Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. Ibn Battuta From its vantage point atop the Kasbah in Tangier, Morocco, the Ibn Battuta museum overlooks the meeting point of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea—a vista coloured by myriad beginnings and a few endings as well. More of a memorial than a museum, the site...

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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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