The Misery of International Law: Confrontations with Injustice in the Global Economy
By John Linarelli, Margot E Salomon and Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, OUP 2018.
This book examines the role of international law in constituting and sustaining injustice in the international economic order. While offering a synthesis of approaches to exploring the pathologies across the international legal regimes of trade, investment, and finance combining insights from radical critiques, political philosophy, history, and critical development studies, it also explores ways in which international human rights law works against its own aims in reproducing the underlying terms of socio-economic immiseration. This latter theme is introduced in Dr Salomon’s recent post at Critical Legal Thinking. Hilary Charlesworth remarks that "This arresting book starts where many texts of international law leave off… It is full of unsettling insights and uncomfortable observation, identifying and challenging the law's commitment to the private accumulation of transnational capital, including in the area of human rights”. Makau Mutua calls it a ‘quintessential work of the intellect’ while Fiona Macmillan writes that “[T]his excellent book breaks new ground in critical international law scholarship. Essential reading for scholars of international law and for everyone else who want to understand the size and nature of the slippage between law and justice in the global order”.
Read more about the book here.