22.1
Summer
2021

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Essay
22.1
Studying Race in International Law Scholarship Using a Social Science Approach
James Thuo Gathii
Wing-Tat Lee Chair of International Law and Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

I thank my research assistants Michael John Cornell, Romina Nemaei, Caitlin Chenus, and Audrey Mallinak for their invaluable assistance with this ongoing project. I also thank Loyola’s international reference librarian, Julienne Grant, for her important contributions to the research process and methodology. Finally, I would also like to thank Tom Ginsburg, Christiane Wilke, and Mohsen al Attar for their extensive comments on the draft of this Essay. All errors are mine.

This Essay takes up Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg’s invitation to use a social science approach to establish or ascertain some facts about international law scholarship in the United States. The specific research question that this Essay seeks to answer is to what extent scholarship has addressed international law’s historical and continuing complicity in producing racial inequality and hierarchy, including slavery, as well as the subjugation and domination of the peoples of the First Nations.

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Comment
22.1
International Law After Dark: How Legalized Sex Work Can Comport with International and Human Rights Law
Joshua A. Fox
BA, 2019, Washington and Lee University; J.D. Candidate, 2022, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Genevieve Lakier for her advice and support. I would also like to thank the board and staff of the Chicago Journal of International Law, including Will Altabef, Steven Foster, and Casey Jedele, for their help and guidance.

This Comment argues that legal sex work, when regulated adequately, comports with international law and promotes the human rights of sex workers that are curbed when the practice is outlawed.

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Essay
22.1
China and Comparative International Law: Between Social Science and Critique
Matthew S. Erie
Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies, Member of the Law Faculty, and Associate Research Fellow of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.

The author thanks Liu Yiqiang, Wang Chenguang, and Yang Liu for their help in conducting research for this Essay, and Liu Sida for reading an earlier draft. Chinese names are provided with surname first per Chinese language convention. All errors and all translations are the author’s. This work is part of the “China, Law and Development” project, which has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant No. 803763).

This Essay brings Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg’s Lead Essay into conversation with the literature on comparative international law to ask whether the social scientific approach to international law is “international.” In particular, this Essay takes the case of scholarship on international law in China to examine why or why not particular methodological and theoretical perspectives on international law may gain traction in certain jurisdictions’ legal academies.

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Essay
22.1
Herding Schrödinger’s Cats: The Limits of the Social Science Approach to International Law
Simon Chesterman
Dean and Provost’s Chair Professor, National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. This Article was presented at the Chicago Journal of International Law’s symposium on “The Transformation of International Law Scholarship,” held at the University of Chicago and online on February 26, 2021.

Many thanks to Griffin Clark, Tom Ginsburg, Katherine Luo, Ana Carolina Luquerna, and Jared Mayer for their comments and improvements to the draft. Errors and omissions remain the author’s alone.

This Essay argues that an uncritical embrace of social science methods risks losing much of what draws people to international law and what has, over the centuries, given it value. As a work in progress in which academics have a special role to play, a commitment merely to take international law “as it is” is not neutral; it is a value statement in itself.

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Essay
22.1
On Relating Social Sciences to International Law: Three Perspectives
Yifeng Chen
Associate Professor, Peking University Law School.

The author would like to thank the editors of the Chicago Journal of International Law for their valuable editorial input. The author also thanks Xiaolu Fan, research associate with the Peking University Institute of International Law, for her useful research assistance.

This Essay offers a critical yet constructive reading of the social science approach to international law.

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Essay
22.1
Reflections on the Value of Socio-Legal Approaches to International Economic Law in Africa
Olabisi D. Akinkugbe
Assistant Professor at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Canada, and an Adjunct Visiting Assistant Professor, at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, U.S.A. He is also a co-founding editor of Afronomicslaw.org blog which focuses on all aspects of international economic law as they relate to Africa and the Global South, and the African Journal of International Economic Law (AfJIEL).

Thanks to Adam Chilton, Tom Ginsburg, and Daniel Abebe, and the editors of the Chicago Journal of International Law (CJIL) for the invitation to be part of the CJIL 2021 Symposium with the theme: The Transformation of International Law Scholarship.

This Essay critically assesses how and why one might use socio-legally inspired methods (analytical, empirical, and normative) for the study of international economic law (IEL) in Africa.

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Article
22.1
The Social Science Approach to International Law
Daniel Abebe
Vice Provost, Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of Law, Walter Mander Teaching Scholar, University of Chicago Law School.

The authors would like to thank the editors of the Chicago Journal of International Law and participants in the Symposium for helpful comments.

Adam Chilton
Professor of Law, Walter Mander Research Scholar, University of Chicago Law School.
Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, University of Chicago Law School.

This Essay describes the rise of the social science approach in international law scholarship and advocates for its continued adoption.

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