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 Honorable Harry Pregerson Professor of law at UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Acting White? (2015, with Mitu Gulati). 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.