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Papers by Ntina Tzouvala

Leiden Journal of International Law , 2019

Since 2008, a global 'land rush' has been unfolding and so have efforts by international, nationa... more Since 2008, a global 'land rush' has been unfolding and so have efforts by international, national and regional actors to position themselves as the principal authorities in the determination of appropriate usages of land. This article examines three of the most influential 'soft law' instruments , the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment, the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems and Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Gov-ernance of Tenure. Despite their substantive differences, all three documents share a specific form of state-centrism. They imagine the host state of such large-scale investments as internally unitary and externally independent and entrust it with the bulk of responsibilities regarding the management of land investments. However, I argue, this particular form of state-centrism obscures the legal and administrative realities of the postcolonial state that is often legally bifurcat-ed and subject to pervasive forms of international authority. Rather, an appreciation of the multitude of actors who claim jurisdiction over the lands of the South enables a better understanding of the legal mechanics of land-grabbing. Sierra Leone, which has been positioned as a 'poster child' for the implementation of such 'soft law' instruments, serves as the focal point of this jurisdictional approach to land-grabbing. In this context, the promise of 'soft law' instruments to make the postcolonial state the guarantor of universally beneficial large-scale land acquisitions is shown to be a false one.

In this chapter I will examine the origins, functions, and consequences of extraterritoriality i... more In this chapter I will examine the origins, functions, and consequences of extraterritoriality in Siam, and its important role in the creation of the modern Thai state. More specifically, I will trace the role of extraterritoriality in the creation of a territorially bound polity governed through bureaucratic mechanisms displaying a high degree of legalisation of social relations and integrated into a global capitalist system. In the first part of this chapter, I will examine the establishment, operation, and abolition of extraterritoriality in Siam, having as my main reference-point the 1855 Bowring Treaty and the subsequent legal, institutional, and economic reforms enacted by the Siamese monarchy in its attempt to have extraterritoriality abolished. In the second part, I will discuss the process of creating a territorialised, centralised state and the assumption of control over former vassal states by Bangkok. Here I revisit imperial struggle and co-operation between Britain and Siam regarding the resource-rich Northern Siam (Lanna). I will argue that extraterritoriality treaties in 1874 and 1883 crystallised the alliance between foreign capital and the Siamese ruling classes, an alliance that drove the process of state-building in Siam. The core of my argument is that extraterritorial jurisdiction was a legal technique through which British capitalists, the Foreign Office, the Siamese monarchy, and the nascent bourgeoisie formed a precarious and contradictory, yet operationally effective, alliance that enabled Siam’s transition to capitalism, the emergence of fixed borders, and the subjugation of northern vassal states and concomitant consolidation of state control over these territories, as well as the mastery over and commodification of nature.

This article revisits the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of national-stat... more This article revisits the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of national-statehood in the Balkans. It traces this transitional process between the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the United Nations involvement in the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). I show that this transition from empire to the nation-state was overdetermined by the partial and fragmented, yet influential, internationalization of significant questions regarding state-building, including decisions about autonomy and independence, the drawing of boundaries, the protection of minorities and the continuation of economic relations. In fact, the Balkans became a site of experimentation for international legal techniques, such as fact-finding, peacekeeping missions or the administration of population exchanges, that would later acquire wider significance in the process of decolonization. The image of international law emerging from this account troubles the liberal understanding of international law and institutions as benevolent , cosmopolitan forces opposing, restraining and taming 'nationalist passions'. Rather, it was precisely because the relationship between nationalism and internationalism was one of cooperation and co-constitution, as much as one of antagonism that this multitude of international legal techniques conditioning sovereignty in the Balkans arose.

This is the final, pre-proofs draft of an article due to appear in the London Review of Internati... more This is the final, pre-proofs draft of an article due to appear in the London Review of International Law as part of a special issue on mega-regionals, neoliberalism and social movements.

This paper revisits the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The focus of my analysis is the... more This paper revisits the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The focus of my analysis is the agricultural reforms promoted by the occupying power, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which aimed at the marketisation of agricultural production, at the enhancement of the position of multinational agribusiness and in the total integration of Iraq in global food markets. More specifically, this article maintains that the aggressively neoliberal reform of Iraq's agriculture can be better understood as the extreme end of a wider spectrum of promotion of neoliberal state-building through international law and international institutions post-1990. In the light of the recent cataclysmic events in the Middle East, this paper revisits the occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2004. The focus of my analysis is the agricultural reforms promoted by the occupying power, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which aimed at the marketisation of agricultural production , at the enhancement of the position of multinational agribusiness and at the total integration of Iraq in global food markets. To do so, I first revisit the troubled history of Iraqi agriculture from the late Ottoman Empire to the Mandate System, from the independence to the embargo and finally, to the occupation mapping the devastating impact of local and international elites. Turning to the reforms of the CPA, I attempt an assessment in relation to international law that goes beyond the-plausible, yet simplistic-arguments about the illegality of the said reforms. Revisiting both the relevant UN Security Council Resolution (UNSC Res. 1483) as well as the recent practice of the UN in the area of international territorial administration, this article maintains that the aggressively neoliberal reform of Iraq's agriculture can be better understood as the extreme end of a wider spectrum of promotion of neoliberal Global Jurist 2016; aop Authenticated | konstantina.tzouvala@unimelb.edu.au author's copy Download Date | 11/30/16 7:46 AM state-building through international law and international institutions post-1990. Given the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq, the complicity of international law in the growing food insecurity in the region warrants serious consideration of the dark sides of the discipline.

Reflecting upon critical international scholarship and its evolution through time, this review es... more Reflecting upon critical international scholarship and its evolution through time, this review essay focuses on a volume co-edited by José María Beneyto and David Kennedy, along with as sistant editors, Justo Corti Varela and John Haskell, on the history of the new approaches to international law (NAIL) and the work of David Kennedy. Considering the individual contributions to this book, this essay argues that while the influence of NAIL upon younger scholars, critical or 'mainstream', is beyond contestation, it is questionable to what extent the intellectual priorities and institutional anxieties of the discipline (should) remain the same. Drawing heavily on the theme of professional responsibility that underlies most of the contributions to this volume, this essay proposes a reorientation of critical inquiry in the light of the implication of international law and institutions in the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath. Echoing Kennedy's call to engage with questions of political economy and global governance, this review essay suggests that for critical international law to reclaim its radical and innovative character, it is imperative to engage with the concerns of a post-crash world and to identify and disrupt the role of international law in the constitution of an unstable and unjust international economic order.

There is a certain degree of irony in writing about Brexit for a law journal- a read put together... more There is a certain degree of irony in writing about Brexit for a law journal- a read put together, hosted and read mostly, if not exclusively, by ‘experts’. The irony lies in the fact that the outcome of the UK referendum on the EU was, amongst other things, a rejection of experts; or rather, of current mobilizations of expertize and the political allegiances of a large number of experts. Despite this irony, or precisely because of it, I will reflect on three interrelated questions that, in my mind, determined the content and outcome of this historic referendum. First, I will discuss the discourse of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘control’ at the centre of the Leave campaign. Secondly, I will focus on the role of expertize and (technocratic) knowledge both in the construction of the European project and in the revolt against it. Finally, I will argue that given neoliberal hegemony and its heavily unequal distributive outcomes, revolts against contemporary structures of power, both national and inter/supranational are to be expected. Therefore, the question for progressive lawyers is how to mobilize our expertise so that these revolts do not become the exclusive playing terrain of the extreme right with unforeseen consequences.

Given the long history of violent encounters between the Global North and the Global South, legal... more Given the long history of violent encounters between the Global North and the Global South, legal arguments concerning the use of force are a fertile ground for testing the virtues and limits of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) as a theory aspiring to " address the material and ethical concerns of Third World peoples. " 1 This essay examines the usefulness and limits of TWAIL in the context of the " unwilling or unable " doctrine currently promoted by a series of Western scholars and states in order to expand the scope of application of the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Adopting TWAIL's impulse to historicize, this essay argues that the structure of this doctrine closely repli-cates the " standard of civilization " that informed international legal theory and practice throughout the nineteenth century. At the same time, widespread resistance to the " unwilling or unable " doctrine indicates that the profound transformation of international law on the use of force after 1945 and the diffusion of sovereignty outside the West put into question certain methodological and political commitments of TWAIL. The " unwilling or unable " doctrine has been summarised by Ashley Deeks as follows: " [I]t is lawful for State X, which has suffered an armed attack by an insurgent or terrorist group, to use force in State Y against that group if State Y is unwilling or unable to suppress the threat. " 2 The assassination of Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces in the territory of Pakistan 3 and, more recently, the bombing campaign of the United States against ISIS in Syrian territory 4 and the drone strike of the United Kingdom against three individuals in Syria, 5 are examples of the relatively clear and direct invocation of the principle to justify the use of force. Despite the fact that Deek's account is conceptually unclear at times, the argument appears to be that a customary norm has arisen, according to which the " inherent " right to self-defence can be exercised against a state even when the acts of individuals are not attributable to it under the test set by the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua case, 6 if the said state is " unwilling or unable " to put an end to the use of its * Lecturer in law, Durham Law School (UK). I would like to thank Dr Aoife O'Donoghue and the AJIL Unbound reviewers warmly for their useful comments. Usual caveats apply.

The revelation of a series of child abuse incidents committed by Catholic priests and other membe... more The revelation of a series of child abuse incidents committed by Catholic priests and other members of religious orders has given rise to the question of establishing the responsibility of the Holy See for these acts under international human rights law. This article focuses on the report issued in 2014 by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the monitoring body of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (crc). It is argued that in order to fulfil this task we need to take three steps: first, to establish the relationship between the Vatican City state and the Hole See, a distinct and peculiar international legal subject. To do so, a historical account of the Holy See and its position within the fabric of international law is considered necessary. Secondly, this article argues that the crc was ratified by the Holy See both in its capacity as the government of the Vatican City and as a non-territorial legal subject. Hence, the application of the crc is not confined within the limited territory of the Vatican City, but ‘follows’ the authority of the Holy See irrespective of state borders. Thirdly, it is argued that the vertical, hierarchical structure of the Holy See is homologous to that of the modern state and, therefore, attribution rules can be applied by analogy in this case. The final conclusion is that it is possible to hold the Holy See responsible under the crc for acts of child abuse that occurred under its authority around the globe.

Drafts by Ntina Tzouvala

Institutional and material conditions matter for the production of feminist international legal s... more Institutional and material conditions matter for the production of feminist international legal scholarship as well as for the future of women's engagement with international law. This simple assumption lies at the heart at the heart of this chapter that attempts to map the consequences of the ongoing neoliberalisation of universities and its impacts on the processes of teaching, learning and researching international law in an academic environment. More specifically, I will reflect on how the disciplining of academic endeavours according to market imperatives has contradictory implications for the position of women within the discipline and for the emergence of feminist orientations both in the ways we teach international law and on research and publising. To do so, I will proceed in three steps. First, I will reflect on the need to examine the teaching of international law in higher education institutions as an essential step for safeguarding the future of women in international law. Secondly, I will map the transformation of higher education in Anglophone environments in the course of the last three decades with an emphasis on the rapid subordination of these spaces to the imperatives of neoliberalism. Finally, I will examine the impact of these evolutions on feminist legal scholarship and the position of women within international legal academia. My concluding argument is that even though the marketization of higher education has begun dissolving former status-based hierarchies and has opened up space for heterodox approaches to the discipline, increased emphasis on competition and an emerging consumerist culture are directly antithetical to a meaningfully feminist ethos in academic international law.

Events and event recordings by Ntina Tzouvala

Book Proposals by Ntina Tzouvala

Questions of legal extraterritoriality figure prominently in scholarship on legal pluralism, tran... more Questions of legal extraterritoriality figure prominently in scholarship on legal pluralism, transnational legal studies, international investment law, international human rights law, state responsibility under international law, and a large number of other areas. Yet many accounts of extraterritoriality make little effort to grapple with its thorny conceptual history, shifting theoretical valence, and complex political roots and ramifications.

This book brings together thirteen scholars of law, history, and politics in order to reconsider the history, theory, and contemporary relevance of legal extraterritoriality. Situating questions of extraterritoriality in a set of broader investigations into state-building, imperialist rivalry, capitalist expansion, and human rights protection, it tracks the multiple meanings and functions of a distinct and far-reaching mode of legal authority. The fundamental aim of the volume is to examine the different geographical contexts in which extraterritorial regimes have developed, the political and economic pressures in response to which such regimes have grown, the highly uneven distributions of extraterritorial privilege that have resulted from these processes, and the complex theoretical quandaries to which this type of privilege has given rise.

The volume is edited by Daniel S. Margolies (Professor of History, Virginia Wesleyan University), Umut Özsu (Assistant Professor of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University), Maïa Pal (Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Oxford Brookes University), and Ntina Tzouvala (Postdoctoral Fellow in International Law, University of Melbourne).

Contributors include Ellen Gutterman (Associate Professor of Political Science at Glendon College, York University), John Haskell (Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Manchester), Richard S. Horowitz (Professor of History, California State University, Northridge), Daniel S. Margolies (Professor of History, Virginia Wesleyan University), Kate Miles (Fellow and Lecturer in Law, Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge), Maïa Pal (Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Oxford Brookes University), Alice M. Panepinto (Lecturer in Law, Queen’s University Belfast), Austen L. Parrish (Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law, Indiana University), Sara L. Seck (Associate Professor of Law, Dalhousie University), Péter D. Szigeti (Assistant Professor of Law, University of Alberta), Mai Taha (Assistant Professor of Law, American University in Cairo), Ntina Tzouvala (Postdoctoral Fellow in International Law, University of Melbourne), and Ezgi Yildiz (Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science and International Relations, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva).

Book Reviews by Ntina Tzouvala

European Journal of International Law

In his pathbreaking 1979 article ‘The Structure of Blackstone’s Commentaries’, critical legal the... more In his pathbreaking 1979 article ‘The Structure of Blackstone’s Commentaries’, critical legal theorist Duncan Kennedy made two important observations about the nature of law and the
role of lawyers under conditions of liberal capitalism. First, he argued that law is fundamentally contradictory as it reflects the fundamental tensions between individual autonomy and state authority. This claim about the indeterminacy at the core of the legal argument is, of course,
familiar to international lawyers. However, Kennedy also made a second, crucial claim. He posited that it is the very job description of lawyers to obscure the existence of these contradictions and to mediate them through the deployment of legal technique. Kennedy, in fact, argued that
since Blackstone the primary mode of mediation for liberal legal thought has been the invocation of ‘rights’. This singling out of rights as the mediating technique of liberal legalism was probably somewhat of an exaggeration. Kennedy’s argument has nonetheless drawn attention
to both the structural features of capitalist legality and to the specific role legal work plays in this context. In fact, Kennedy noted that these mediating functions need not necessarily be apologies for the status quo, even though they certainly gravitate in that direction.
World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined offers a stark example of the promise and peril of legal work that aims at mediating the contradictions of capitalist globalization.

Leiden Journal of International Law , 2019

European Journal of International Law

The financial crash of 2007-2008 brought words like 'capitalism', 'capital', and 'socialism' back... more The financial crash of 2007-2008 brought words like 'capitalism', 'capital', and 'socialism' back in vogue. However, the discipline of international law remains to reflect systematically on its relationship with the ways in which wealth and power are produced and distributed. This thesis examines the relationship between international law, imperialism and capitalism through historical lenses, arguing that the diffusion of capitalist relations is a core function of international law. Analysing the nineteenth-century 'standard of civilisation', I contend that transforming (semi)colonised polities into centralised, territorialised states operating as guarantors of capitalist relations of production was at the core of the concept. Extraterritoriality in Japan and the Ottoman Empire serves as a case study to verify this statement and to highlight the transformative functions of the 'civilising mission'. The Mandates System of the League of Nations established a system of partial internationalisation of this transformative process, while attempting to safeguard the long-term interests of capital through the introduction of limited forms of welfarism. My thesis then argues that decolonisation assumed the form of national statehood due to the transformative functions of nineteenth-century international law. Therefore, the attempt to push for a New International Economic Order was both a challenge to contemporary international law and a reaffirmation of its role in promoting capitalist relations on a global level. These reformist attempts did not succeed, however, and a new model of capitalist accumulation, neoliberalism, became hegemonic after 1990. The quantitative expansion and qualitative refinement of international law during that period was intrinsically linked to the neoliberal aversion to democratic and mass politics. The neoliberal reconstruction of Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion is interpreted in the light of this reality. In so doing, my thesis highlights the ongoing synergies between international law and capitalist expansion.

by Sahib Singh, Jean d'Aspremont, Richard Collins, Ntina Tzouvala, Onur Ulas Ince, Mohammad Shahabuddin, Robert Knox, Christian Tams, Umut Özsu, Fleur Johns, Oliver Kessler, Filipe dos Reis, Johannes Gerald (Anne) van Mulligen, Janne Nijman, Matthias Goldmann, Vidya Kumar, Geoff Gordon, and Iain Scobbie

This is the final table of contents, introduction and all 60 chapter abstracts for the volume "Co... more This is the final table of contents, introduction and all 60 chapter abstracts for the volume "Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought."

The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.

Contemporary Politics, 2018

Regulatory governance frameworks have become essential building blocks of world society. From sup... more Regulatory governance frameworks have become essential building blocks of world society. From supply chains to the regimes surrounding international organizations, extensive governance frameworks have emerged which structure and channel a variety of social exchanges, including economic, political, legal and cultural, on a global scale. Against this background, this special issue sets out to explore the multifaceted meaning, potential and impact as well as the social praxis of regulatory governance. Under the notions rules, resistance and responsibility the special
issue pins out three overall dimensions of regulation and governance thereby providing a theoretical and conceptual framework for grasping the phenomenon of regulatory governance. This is combined with extensive case studies on a number of regulatory governance settings ranging from the World Bank to agricultural reforms carried by the International Transitional Administrations (ITAs) in Kosovo and Iraq as well as global supply chains and their impact on the garment industry in Bangladesh.

https://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3241117 A conversation between Ntina Tzouvala and me ab... more https://upload.sms.csx.cam.ac.uk/media/3241117

A conversation between Ntina Tzouvala and me about the role that international has played in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, orangised and hosted by Francisco José Quintana and Marina Veličković as part of the International Law and Political Engagement series. In the conversation we touch of questions of capitalism, imperialism, racism and resistance.

Third World Approaches to International Law Review, 2020

Our purpose in creating the TWAIL Review is to provide a space for critical scholars, mainly from... more Our purpose in creating the TWAIL Review is to provide a space for critical scholars, mainly from the global South and their allies oriented to the South, to participate in the project of international law, to produce knowledge creatively through interdisciplinarity, and to push our discipline towards becoming more just, more radical, and more responsive to the collective challenges we face.

Third World Approaches to International Law Review, 2020

We launch the first issue of the Third World Approaches to International Law Review (TWAILR) in t... more We launch the first issue of the Third World Approaches to International Law Review (TWAILR) in the throes of a global pandemic, transnational uprisings demanding racial and socioeconomic justice, a determined worldwide campaign against sexual assault, sexual harassment and patriarchy, and a growing international climate justice movement. At such a time, Third World Approaches to International Law, commonly known as TWAIL, are more important than ever. TWAIL understands each of these challenges not as unforeseen emergencies, but as a long time in the making, and the inevitable result of international law structures of violence against nature, women, racialized peoples, queer peoples, and Indigenous peoples. While international law is, of course, not the only reason such problems exist, TWAIL draws attention to how injustice is enabled and structured through law and its institutions, not only in local and domestic arenas but transnationally and globally. Through identifying the legacies of colonialism, genocide, slavery, apartheid, and the ongoing racial, class, gender, and sexual discrimination within contemporary international law, TWAIL problematizes and breaks down conventional disciplinary distinctions between the national and the international, the public and the private, and the legal and the political. Through broadening our analytical scope in both time and space, TWAIL helps guard against reactive responses and crisis-based thinking, so as to more accurately identify and combat global injustice.

Australian Yearbook of International Law, 2021

This paper is framed by Neil Smith’s insight that ‘there is no such thing as a natural disaster’.... more This paper is framed by Neil Smith’s insight that ‘there is no such thing as a natural disaster’. By this Smith meant that seemingly ‘natural’ disasters are always mediated through social, political and economic processes, which influence the course of such disasters, and help determine who will bear their burdens. We argue that an important dimension of this wider social context is international law: which constitutes and conditions the global economy, state behaviour and borders. Nowhere is this clearer than in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the spread, fatality and social impacts of the virus has been mediated through the particular arrangements of global capitalism.

However, we argue that international law has occluded its own role in the social mediation of the pandemic, and in fact has occluded the role of these social processes more generally. The state-form embedded in international law has subsumed the complex functions and context of global capitalism into the question of ‘state responsibility’. In this way, the pandemic is abstracted complex social antagonisms, processes of integration and fragmentation and even socio-biological processes, and is either understood as a ‘natural’ event, or one that can be traced back to the intentional or negligent action of a particular state, notably China.

To highlight this we explore the growing literature of China’s international legal responsibility for the Covid-19 outbreak. We argue that this debate mis-recognises the question of pandemics in an unevenly connected world. In so doing, it frames the pandemic in a manner which cannot call the existing order into question. At the same time, this framing itself maps onto a series of emerging rivalries between Chinese, US and other capitalisms.