This chapter (Chapter 1) of the book "Is International Law International?" (OUP, 2017) explores three concepts—difference, dominance, and disruption—that play a central role in comparative international law. In examining the extent to which international law is international in the academies and textbooks of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the author makes three arguments. First, international law academics are often subject to differences in their incoming influences and outgoing spheres of influence in ways that reflect and reinforce differences in how they understand and approach international law. Second, actors, materials, and approaches from some states and regions have come to dominate certain transnational flows and forums in ways that make them disproportionately influential in constructing the “international.” Third, existing understandings of the field are likely to be disrupted by factors such as changing geopolitical power that will make it increasingly important for international lawyers to understand the perspectives and approaches of those coming from unlike-minded states.
This chapter (Chapter 3 from the book "Is International Law International?" (OUP, 2017)) identifies and explores some of the nationalizing, denationalizing, and westernizing influences that reflect and reinforce the divisible college of international lawyers. Part I focuses on transnational flows of student and materials, which provide a template for understanding some of the asymmetries that characterize the field. Students are more likely to move from peripheral and semiperipheral states toward core states, and from non-Western states to Western ones, than the reverse. Legal concepts and materials, like textbooks and case law, are more likely to move from core states to peripheral and semiperipheral ones, and from Western states to non-Western ones, than vice versa. Parts II, III, and IV then look at how the educational profiles of international law academics in different states, their publication placements, and their connections to practice reflect and reinforce certain forms of difference and dominance that help to structure international law as a transnational legal field.
