CROSS-FERTILIZATION OF WESTPHALIAN APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONAL LAW : THIRD WORLD STUDIES AND A NEW ERA OF INTERNATIONAL LAW SCHOLARSHIP

The positivist normative content of Western international law was developed among powerful Western states and later extended to non-Western states. Within this contextual framework, it is argued that Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars, in their criticism of international law as a colonial product, extended it beyond the classical approaches adopted by the nineteenth-century positivist scholars. Critical Legal Studies (CLS) scholars provided a conceptual foundation for TWAIL to demystify the enigma of colonialism, showing it to be foundational to international law rather than its byproduct.

This Article explores the possibility of creating new legal paradigms in the changing global context and looks at what it means for Chinese and Indian leaders and scholars to have a TWAIL attitude. In this process, emphasis is placed on the importance of scholars adopting a multidisciplinary approach to fully understand international law in general, as well as to appreciate new Asian paradigms.