Race, Racism, and International Law

Devon W. Carbado is the Elihu Root Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and Distinguished Research Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Unreasonable: Black Lives, Police Power, and the Fourth Amendment (2022). Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is Professor of Law at UCLA and at Columbia Law School, where she is also Founding Director the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS). Justin Desautels-Stein is Visiting Professor at Duke Law School and Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. He is the Founding Director of the University of Colorado's Center for Critical Thought, and the author of The Right to Exclude: A Critical Race Approach to Sovereignty, Borders, and International Law. Chantal Thomas is Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, where she also directs the Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa.

"This volume showcases an impressive array of scholars; and they have produced an unprecedented collection of essays that pose a serious challenge to the traditional conceptions of what constitutes legitimate scholarship in the field of international law. Their ideas are provocative and insightful. Not only do they advance a compelling discourse that theorizes and historicizes issues of race and racism, they also astutely advance discussions about racialized borders and concerns related to the materiality of race and rights. Simply put, it is a groundbreaking contribution." - Luke Charles Harris, Vassar College "This volume is significant and makes a notable contribution to the literature on international law and racism. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and its resonance globally, a volume of this kind is of particular interest both in the USA and abroad. The editors and contributors are leaders in critical race theory or international law." - Penelope Andrews, New York Law School "This volume is long overdue in the field. International lawyers have been complacent about their ethnocentric critical attitude for too long. If there is a chance to salvage international law as a tool to resist the current sinister turns in global governance, colorblindness and the so-called 'perpetrator perspective' must be, as this book invites us to do, fought at all costs." - Jean d'Aspremont, Sciences Po Law School and University of Manchester

• Introduction—Devon W. Carbado, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Justin Desautels-Stein, and Chantal ThomasI. Histories and Structures1. Race and Empire in International Law—E. Tendayi Achiume and Aslı Bâli2. A Racist International Law: Domination and Resistance in the Americas of the Nineteenth Century—Arnulf Becker Lorca3. Racial Panics and the Making of (White) International Law—Frédéric Mégret4. A "World Problem": Apartheid, International Law, and the Domestication of Race—Christopher Gevers5. From Metaphor to Memory:Remembering Dantès Bellegarde and W.E.B. Du Bois in the Legal Definition of Slavery and Forced Labor at the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization—Adelle Blackett6. Transforming the Racialized International System: Intellectual and Political Challenges—Rogers M. SmithII. Peoples, Places, Perimeters, and Powers7. Human Rights, COVID-19, and Global Critical Race Feminism—Adrien K. Wing8. Law and Epidemiology in the Making of Guantanamo—Aziza Ahmed9. White Health and International Law—Matiangai Sirleaf10. Race and Politics in International Criminal Law: Case Studies from the Arab World—Wadie Said11. Ukranian Racial Contracting and the Geopolitics of Welcome in International Refugee Law—Marissa Jackson Sow12. Unsettling the Border—Sherally Munshi13. Race as a Technology of Global Political Economy—Chantal Thomas14. Barbarians at the Gate: The NIEO and the Stakes of Racial Capitalism—Vasuki Nesiah15. Race Consciousness and Contemporary International Law Scholarship: The Political Economy of a Blindspot—Akbar Rasulov16. An Unreliable Friend? Human Rights and the Struggle Against Racial Capitalism—Ntina TzouvalaIII. Critical Race Theory and International Law17. Postracial Xenophobia: An Abbreviated History of Racial Ideology in International Legal Thought—Justin Desautels-Stein18. Toward a Transnational Critical Race Theory: Black Radicalism across the Oceans—Joel Modiri19. Shades of Ignorance: A Critique of the Epistemic Whiteness of International Law—Mohsen Al Attar and Claire Smith20. A Critical Race Theory of Global Colorblindness: Racial Ideology and White Supremacy—Michelle Christian21. The Post-Racial Universalist Framework: Colonial Logic in International Law and Relations—Kehinde Andrews22. Critical Race Theory Meets Third World Approaches to International Law—E. Tendayi Achiume and Devon Carbado