Chimdessa Fekadu Tsega is a PhD candidate at CUHK Law. Before joining CUHK Law, he has taught international law courses at several universities in Ethiopia.
TWAIL as a Pedagogy: Opportunities and Blind Spots
Abstract:
The Third World Approach to International Law (TWAIL) is an intellectual movement that represents an attempt to understand the history, structure, and process of international law from the perspective of third world states. Since its inception around the end of 1990s, TWAIL has become an accolade for scholars who are peevish of what they see as the globalization of Eurocentric norms disguised as international legal order. It is with such note in mind that recent discussions have adopted the notion of TWAIL pedagogy, a legal education methodology aimed at rethinking and reforming international law starting from classrooms. It refers to the extensive use of materials, teachings, and illustrations of the work of third world scholars to broaden the space of legal education. In particular, TWAIL pedagogy aims at educating not just the structure but also the discontents of the international legal system. While such approach has been praised for adopting a unique, authentic view of legal education, it is also heavily criticized for perpetuating the fragmentation of international law. Moreover, sceptics accuse of TWAIL pedagogy of being unwieldy for blaming the global legal order without offering feasible proposals for reform. Furthermore, some scholars raise the concern that TWAIL pedagogy transforms the law professor into a political activist. My paper discusses TWAIL pedagogy in detail and offers an assessment of its relevance in the future teaching and learning in law.