Object:
The practice and, to some extent, the very fabric of international law is
circumscribed to a few languages amongst which English and French are
undoubtedly the predominant ones.
They bestride all the fields of international law. Those who do not have a reasonable command of English and/or French can be de facto excluded from the microcosm of international law studies and practice.
For instance, the judgments of the International Court of Justice are published in English and French. This makes an important corpus of the international case law inaccessible to many scholars and students worldwide.
Depending upon one’s standpoint, the access to international law as a field of study and as a professional market is blocked by linguistic walls. These longstanding walls are sometimes considered as insurmountable and it is this conundrum which the workshop intends to discuss, namely in the following areas: (i) Linguistic walls in the practice of international law; (ii) linguistic walls in the teaching of international law; (iii) linguistic walls in international law as a research field; (iv) linguistic walls in international law journals.
For this purpose, we look for paper suggestions on topics such as:
● Problems arising from monolingualism and bilingualism in international
adjudication.
● Problems related to research and access to information in international law.
● Problems related to teaching international law to non-English/French speaking students.
● Advantages and disadvantages of using a certain language in international law practice.
● Access to market: linguistic problems in relation to publishing in international law books and journals.
● Access to market: linguistic problems in relation to working in the international law field.
● Issues regarding some non-dominant languages and the fabric of international law.
Submission Rules and Deadlines:
Eligibility:
We invite submissions from scholars, practitioners and advanced PhD students
Procedure:
Interested participants must submit an abstract (450 words) before the 2nd
February 2021. Selected speakers will be notified before the 30th March 2021 and are expected to submit a draft paper (4000 words – inclusive of footnotes) by the 15th August 2021. The workshop’s working language will be English, but the abstracts and papers can be written in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Abstracts and draft papers must be sent to: [email protected].
The workshop will be held online on the 29th October 2021. Following the
workshop, Authors are invited to submit, by 31st March 2022, a final version (7000 words, including footnotes) of their papers to be part of a special publication.
Publication
Authors will be invited to submit the final version of the selected papers to a Special Issue of the Brazilian Journal of International law, subject to a double-blind peer-review procedure. The Brazilian Journal of International Law publishes in Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French and has a pool of reviewers for submissions in these languages.
Organizers
Nitish Monebhurrun (University Centre of Brasilia, Brazil)
Lucas Carlos Lima (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
André Nunes Chaib (Maastricht University)
Paula Baldini Miranda da Cruz (Leiden University)
