Race, Racism, and International Law

What would it look like to place race at the center of international legal scholarship?

From its inception in the 70s and 80s, critical race theory's target was the field of law, revealing it to be a repository for racial power. This particular critique of law was explosive because of law's putatively apolitical status, making it a unique site for an intellectual sit-in that has forever changed the way that race and racism are understood in American society.

Several decades later, as indicators of populism and white nationalism spread across North America and Europe, critical race theory remains markedly absent from discourses in global affairs and international law. This volume opens the door for CRT to enter the international sphere. Featuring contributions from 30 of today's leading scholars from around the world, Race, Racism, and International Law explains how the concept of racial difference sits at the foundation of the legal, political, and social structures of hierarchy that shape the contemporary global order. Helmed by four pioneering experts, two in CRT and two in international law, the volume's approach targets regimes of power and violence that implicate racism, capitalism, and colonialism. This volume lays the groundwork for urgent and provocative new modes of critique and analysis.

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 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

"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 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