We are very happy to bring you Issue 03 of the TWAIL Review. The issue opens with an article from Yilin Wang examining the relationship between TWAIL and Chinese international law scholarship from the 1950s to today, and reflecting on how and why Chinese scholars, for the most part, gradually drifted away from TWAIL. Robert Knox’s article takes the accusations and counter-accusations of hypocrisy produced by Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea as its point of departure for a historical and theoretical engagement with the concept of hypocrisy in international law, and its entanglement with the social relations of imperialism and capitalism. Asma Atique’s piece then explores whether the doctrine and rhetoric of sustainable development are compatible with robust notions of migrant justice, through a focus on Masdar City, an ‘eco-smart’ city in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. After that we have Perpetua Akoth Adar’s insightful TWAIL critique of international space law and space discourse, before Pushkar Reddy engages with contemporary TWAIL scholarship to recast the debates, from a non-statist perspective, about the ‘race to the bottom’ produced by global competition for transnational capital. Jake Okechukwu Effoduh’s contribution reflects on the need for African perspectives to be accounted for in the thought and practice of ethical regulation for self-driving cars. Next up, Vasanthi Venkatesh argues that a radical Dalit/anti-caste tradition — largely overlooked in the arena of international law — offers a critical lens to conceptualise a counter-hegemonic global order. The issue closes with Haris Jamil & Sujith Koonan’s article which critiques the concept of ‘state practice’ and argues that international law fails to recognize that it is only by inquiring into the contradictions between different forces within the state that the specific interests which a ‘state practice’ is serving may be understood.
Producing a fully independent, open-access journal for our community of readers around the world involves a lot of care and labour. We are immensely grateful to our authors for their their work, their writing, and their patience with us. We are likewise hugely thankful to all of our peer-reviewers for their generosity with their time and invaluable contributions, to our advisory board for their encouragement, and to our own institutions for their support, particularly Windsor Law and Maynooth Law.
The contents of this issue and all the articles are freely available to read and download via the links here. We very much hope you like it, please do share it far and wide, and we look forward to receiving your submissions for Issue 04 and beyond.