Symposium Posts

Implementing PBL as a teaching method has its advantages and disadvantages. Until now, this method is still used mainly for small classes and students who opted for specialized courses under international law. Also, due to the exceptional circumstances of the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been a modification of the delivery of the PBL using different teaching tools as noted above. The development of learning methods and learning facilities continues to be carried out from time to time with adjustments to existing conditions in society, including the development of information technology.

As the pandemic continues to take its toll resulting in the rising number of casualties, online teaching inevitably remains relevant. We, therefore, should start to (re-)identify issues of teaching international law with the new scenario in mind. In this rather short essay, I will quickly share my observation based on my experience of teaching Public International Law online during the Spring 2020 semester.

I believe that participating in additional trainings, such as Teaching and Researching International Law (TRILA) of the Centre for International Law (CIL) of the National University of Singapore, is helpful in learning and implementing the most effective teaching methods for international law.

The legal literature on the BRICS countries in English language is scarce and mostly focuses on the national legal systems with limited comparative element. On that point the teaching needs of the course coincided with our research interests and in 2017 we completed an edited volume The BRICS-Lawyers’ Guide to Global Cooperation published by Cambridge University Press.

As a preliminary matter, based on the research that has been done so far to address the primary question as to whether there is an Asian approach to international law that is distinct from international law that was derived from the West, it is too early at this point to make a substantive conclusion that there is a unique perspective to international law that emanates from Asia.

The three issues that I discussed here apropos teaching and researching international law are part of much bigger problems in Asia and Africa: statehood, sovereignty, resource management, knowledge production, to name a few. I believe, more specific examples of how these persistent problems shape (and also fail to shape) teaching and researching international law in these regions will emerge in course of this symposium.

If we are to take decolonization of international legal studies seriously, the production of literature, the history of International Law and especially methods of analysis must be destabilized

My intervention here is premised on my experiences and my relationship to the teaching of CIL. Instead of directly engaging with the question—why teach critical international law—I offer two interconnected accounts of the teaching process. This unpacking takes place at the site of my identity as a pedagogue where these two strands of enquiry intersect—why did I choose to teach CIL and why did I choose to teach CIL. These enquiries are dynamic and through them, I hope to cover some ground on the teleological question.

As part of research, ILRSC introduced a booklet series on international law and Nepal in the beginning of 2020. The first booklet is on the significance of international law. Others are on Customary International Law, TWAIL, and Treaties. These are yet to be published. Student interns work as research assistants for these booklets. This is a small attempt to keep afloat the interest in PIL despite the paucity of resources.

Traditional international law (IL) teaching and research has reached an inflection point (TRILA Report, 24).  Content-wise it has long been monopolised by the usual suspects: sources of law, treaties, statehood, territory, jurisdiction and specific values such as universality and equality among states. The most conservative IL scholars will smirk at the thought of alternative ‘transnational’ or ‘Third World’ approaches to IL. To be fair to them, lawyers are fond of compartmentalising. We have those that do private law, public law, human rights, international economic law, law and development, business and human rights law, health law, dispute resolution law, to name a few. Yet as the current pandemic is showing this type of boxed thinking cannot provide the tools for meaningful teaching and research about today’s legal conundrums. We live in an uncertain world in which one issue can raise a myriad of legal problems that straddle multiple fields of law.