Illiterate: An International Law Podcast with Aman Kumar
By Aman Kumar
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Illiterate: An International Law Podcast with Aman KumarApr 03, 2022
On Teaching International Law in India with Swati Singh Parmar
In this episode, Prof. Swati Singh Parmar talks about her experiences of teaching international law in Geographical South. She highlights the structural problems of being a researcher of international law in a third world country, and suggests avenues of further research in the filed. In particular we discuss Swati's 2023 paper on the subject.
Paper discussed in the episode:
Swati S. Parmar, An Anticolonial Dream against the Disaffection and Dissonance: Teaching the (Other) International Law in India, 20(2), Indonesian Journal of International Law, 2023.
Papers mentioned in the episode:
Michelle Staggs Kelsall, Disordering International Law, 33(3), European Journal of International Law, 2022.
R. P. Dhokalia,The Teaching of International Law and International Institutions in Indian Universities, 13(3), Journal of the Indian Law Institute, 1971.
B. S. Chimni, Teaching, Research and Promotion of International Law in India: Past, Present and Future, 5, Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law, 2001.
Srinivas Burra, Teaching Critical International Law: Reflections from the Periphery, TWAILR Reflections, 12 March 2021.
Andrea Bianchi, International Law Theories: An Inquiry into Different Ways of Thinking, OUP, 2016.
Anne Orford and Florian Hoffmann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law, OUP, 2016.
Dr Priya Urs on Erga Omnes Obligations
We take stock of the ongoing cases instituted by South Africa and Nicaragua, regarding the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
We also talk about Priya's latest book - Gravity at the International Criminal Court Admissibility and Prosecutorial Discretion, published by the Oxford University Press.
Priya Urs, Obligations erga omnes and the question of standing before the International Court of Justice, Leiden Journal of International Law, 2021, 34(2), pp. 505-525.
Priya Urs, "Gravity at the International Criminal Court: Admissibility and Prosecutorial Discretion", Oxford University Press, 2024.
Prof. Arudra Burra on 'Colonial Laws'
Hello and Welcome to another episode of IL-Literate: An International Law Podcast. I am your host, Aman Kumar. This is the sixth episode in our Law and History series. I sit down with Dr. Arudra Burra, who is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, to discuss the meaning of "colonial laws". We discuss his ideas on "colonial continuity" presented in two of his papers.
The Cobwebs of Imperial Rule, Seminar, 2010
What is "Colonial" about Colonial Laws?, American University International Law Review, 2016
Other papers mentioned:
Rohit De, Emasculating the Executive: The Federal Court and Civil Liberties in Late Colonial India: 1942–1944, in Halliday TC, Karpik L, Feeley MM, eds., Fates of Political Liberalism in the British Post-Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex, CUP, 2012
South Africa-Israel Genocide Case at the ICJ
Hello and welcome to another episode of IL-Literate: An International Law Podcast. I am your host – Aman Kumar.
The latest development in the ongoing armed conflict between Hamas and Israel, on the Palestinian territory, is the case filed by South Africa against Israel, at the International Court of Justice. In this episode of IL-Literate, I discuss the arguments made by both the sides during the hearings on 11th and 12 of January 2024.
Dr Priyasha Saksena on Sovereignty of the Princely States of Colonial South Asia
Dr Priyasha Saksena's profile:
essl.leeds.ac.uk/law/staff/1090/dr-priyasha-saksena
Papers discussed in the interview:
Saksena, P. (2020). Building the Nation: Sovereignty and International Law in the Decolonisation of South Asia, Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international, 23(1), pp. 52-79
Saksena, P. (2020), Jousting Over Jurisdiction: Sovereignty and International Law in Late Nineteenth-Century South Asia, Law and History Review, Cambridge University Press, 38(2), pp. 409–457
Prof. Kevin Jon Heller on Putin's arrest warrant by the ICC
In this episode, I sit down with Prof. Kevin Jon Heller, who is currently a Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies. He also serves as Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for International Criminal Law Discourse.
We discuss the arrest warrant issued by the Pre-trial Chamber – II of the ICC, on 17 March 2023, against Mr. Vladamir Putin, President of the Russian Federation and Ms Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation. Among other things, we discuss the child-centric nature of charges, the possibility of Putin getting arrested and the feasibility of war criminals being tried before a special tribunal.
Papers mentioned in the interview:
Geir Ulfstein, "Farewell to Compulsory Jurisdiction", British Yearbook of International Law, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/bybil/brad003
Tom Dannenbaum, "Accountability for Aggression: Atrocity, Attributability, the Legal Order, and Sanitized Violence", Maryland Journal of International Law (forthcoming, 2023)
On Scholactivism with Prof. Tarunabh Khaitan - Part II
Tarunabh Khaitan, "On scholactivism in constitutional studies: Skeptical thoughts", International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2022, moac039; available at academic.oup.com/icon/advance-article/doi/10.1093/icon/moac039/6658154
Liora Lazarus, Constitutional scholars and scholactivism, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 20, Issue 2, April 2022, Pages 559–560; avaialable at academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/20/2/559/6673271
Thomas Bustamante, Reflecting on the ethical commitments of our role, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 20, Issue 2, April 2022, Pages 557–558; available at academic.oup.com/icon/article-abstract/20/2/557/6658122
On Scholactivism with Prof. Tarunabh Khaitan - Part I
Tarunabh Khaitan, "On scholactivism in constitutional studies: Skeptical thoughts", International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2022, moac039; available at academic.oup.com/icon/advance-article/doi/10.1093/icon/moac039/6658154
Dr Kalyani Ramnath on 'Doing Archival Research'
Dr Kalyani's works discussed in the podcast:
Law and the Political Imaginary in Mid-Twentieth-Century Southern India
Intertwined Itineraries: Debt, Decolonization, and International Law in Post-World War II South Asia
Dr Kalyani's suggested readings:
Aparna Balachandran, Rashmi Pant, and Bhavani Raman, Iterations of Law: Legal Histories from India, (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Fahad Ahmad Bishara, A Sea of Debt Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950, (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Cover Image from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:High_Court,_Madras,_from_South.jpg
Prof. Prabhakar Singh on writIng the history of International Law (शोध, लेखनी और जीवन: एक चर्चा प्रोफेसर प्रभाकर सिंह के साथ)
Works of Prof. Singh mentioned in the interview
Power to the environment, Down to Earth, 30 November 2005
From ‘Narcissistic’Positive International Law to ‘Universal’Natural International Law: The Dialectics of ‘Absentee Colonialism’, African Journal of International and Comparative Law, March 2008, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 56-82
Indian Princely States and the 19th-century Transformation of the Law of Nations, Journal of International Dispute Settlement, Vol. 11, Issue 3, September 2020, pp. 365–387
Spinning Yarns From Moonbeams: A Jurisprudence of Statutory Interpretation in Common Law, Statute Law Review, Vol. 42, Issue 2, June 2021, pp. 266–290
The Crow-flight of The New York Times, The Bombay Review
Works of other authors
Antony Anghie, Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth Century International Law, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 40, Issue 1, 1999, pp. 1--80
Dr Surabhi Ranganathan on Political Economy and Law of the Seas
Dr Rohit De on Law and History
"A Peripatetic World Court” Cosmopolitan Courts, Nationalist Judges and the Indian Appeal to the Privy Council" Law and History Review 32, no. 04 (2014): 821-851.
"Between midnight and republic: Theory and practice of India’s Dominion status", International Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 17, Issue 4, October 2019, Pages 1213–1234.
A People’s Constitution: Law and Everyday Life in the Indian Republic (Princeton University Press, 2018)
Mitra Sharafi, "Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947" (Studies in Legal History), Cambridge University Press (2014).