Books by Prabhakar Singh
in, Prabhakar Singh, and Benoît Mayer (eds), Critical International Law: Postrealism, Postcolonialism, and Transnationalism, 2014
The Paradoxes in International Law Law is not an exact science. 2 Although international law hide... more The Paradoxes in International Law Law is not an exact science. 2 Although international law hides many paradoxes, it provides opportunities to rethink the nature and function of the current world order. Considering the latent paradoxes within the discipline of international law, our edited volume raises more questions than it answers. As such, we endeavour to start a debate rather than settle one as the 'critical' element of 'critical international law' rests primarily in the sense of 'involving or exercising careful judgement or observation'. 3 Discernment is essential to the legal professions. Th e word 'critical' itself stems from the Greek word for 'judge' or 'κριτής'. Discernment is also central to scholars. Th e statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recognizes the 'teachings of the highly qualifi ed publicists 1
The volume brings together scholars from around the world with panache for re-reading internati... more The volume brings together scholars from around the world with panache for re-reading international law.
It deals with both theory of international law and issues of interpretation.
It addresses themes such as the history of international law, policy approach, customary law, human rights, international courts and tribunals, international bureaucracy, and investment law and constitutional approach to international law.
Editors and contributors come from common law and civil law backgrounds.
Papers by Prabhakar Singh
Economic & Political Weekly, 2024
Bangkok Post, 2023
Unilateral maps in international law oscillate between illegality and legal uncertainty. Powerful... more Unilateral maps in international law oscillate between illegality and legal uncertainty. Powerful states use them as fig leaves to hide their imperial ambitions with.
Indonesian JIL, 2022
The dialectics between descriptions and solutions should now animate TWAIL scholarship. A crucial... more The dialectics between descriptions and solutions should now animate TWAIL scholarship. A crucial aspect of TWAIL is to debate racism in south-south relations and law. TWAIL also needs to ask if former victims, having secured sovereignty during de-colonisation, are attempting to secure an empire.
Professor Shivram teaches at the Ayodhya University. Shivram's wish, in India's great Guruteacher... more Professor Shivram teaches at the Ayodhya University. Shivram's wish, in India's great Guruteacher tradition, is to fully lord over young men and women expecting the quality of devotion Raja of Trivandrum gives to the Padmanabha Swamy.
The end of 2020 marks India investing, between the Savarkar and the Jadhav cases, a century of fa... more The end of 2020 marks India investing, between the Savarkar and the Jadhav cases, a century of faith in international law and international dispute resolution.
The Bombay Review, 2020
Forbesganj linked Bihar with New York much like Amitav Ghosh’s magic realism connecting opium-gro... more Forbesganj linked Bihar with New York much like Amitav Ghosh’s magic realism connecting opium-growing Uttar Pradesh with Hong Kong in The Flood of Fire.
Journal of International Dispute Settlement , 2020
The role of the roughly 600 Indian princely kingdoms in the transformation of the law of nations ... more The role of the roughly 600 Indian princely kingdoms in the transformation of the law of nations into international law during the 19th century is an overlooked episode of international legal history. The Indian princely states effected a gradual end of the Mughal and the Maratha confederacies while appropriating international legal language. The Privy Council—before and after 1858—sanctified within com- mon law as the acts of state, both, the seizure of territories from Indian kings and the ossification of encumbrances attached to the annexed territories. After the Crown take- over of the East India Company in 1858, the British India Government carefully rebooted, even mimicked, the native polyandric relationship of the tribal chiefs, petty states and semi-sovereigns with the Mughal–Maratha complex using multi-normative legal texts. Put down in the British stationery as engagements, sunnuds and treaties, these colonial texts projected an imperially layered nature of the native sovereignty. I challenge the metropole’s claims of a one-way export to the colonies of the assumed normative surpluses. I argue that the periphery while responding to a ‘jurisdictional imperialism’ upended interational law’s civilisation-giving thesis by exporting law to the metropole.
Descartes may not have wanted his world to learn from China and Iran.
But now is not the time to... more Descartes may not have wanted his world to learn from China and Iran.
But now is not the time to listen to him. In xenophobia and viral contamination, we have two, not one, curves to flatten.
It is good to take stock from time to time and to see how things stand in jurisprudence. So, what... more It is good to take stock from time to time and to see how things stand in jurisprudence. So, what is the relationship of doctrine and theory with jurisprudence? Is private law theory apolitical while public law contains politics for the very many constitutional ends in the Global South? In India, legal theorist Chhatrapati Singh very originally asked if legal systems and normative systems were the same? Chhatrapati’s enquiry was however a species of the classical approach to the law that promotes the law’s purity. On the contrary, the postcolonial approaches account for the historical life as well as the political proclivities of the law. The private law theory often seen as impersonal and non-imperial comes under scrutiny in the postcolonial approaches. Duncan Kennedy and Roberto Unger notably problematized contract theory, while Upendra Baxi argued for mass tort as public law—contract and tort are both private law—to offer, if you will, a jurisprudence of the South. A southern jurisprudence essentially rejects an impersonal reading of the private law.
Territorially, Kashmir’s reorganisation isn’t unprecedented in post- colonies. Asian states need ... more Territorially, Kashmir’s reorganisation isn’t unprecedented in post- colonies. Asian states need to, however, think people-centrically.
Völkerrechtsblog, 2019
Oppenheim’s International Law (1905) said Siam, although independent, was a “doubtful” case in so... more Oppenheim’s International Law (1905) said Siam, although independent, was a “doubtful” case in so far as its sovereignty is concerned; it was not a “civilized” nation. What is “civilization” in international law? Many conflate the “racist” with the “legal” meaning of civilization just as many talk of colonialism and imperialism interchangeably. That is legally inaccurate.
Statute Law Review , 2021
What methods, if at all, do Indian judges deploy in their law reading? In their abundant refer- e... more What methods, if at all, do Indian judges deploy in their law reading? In their abundant refer- ences to the term “jurisprudence”, the Indian judge gives neither precise meanings nor meth- ods to ascertaining what is jurisprudence; the judges declare when purposively breaking new grounds, or, the state constitutively roots for a strict, even a conservative, reading of its will and legislative intention. Judges while read penal and taxation statutes strictly, at the Indian Supreme Court the "ends of justice" clearly override, as it should, positivist interpretations. The legislature and the executive therefore tolerate the Supreme Court’s purposive reading down of the colonial statutes, just as, conversely, they reject the Court’s "reading down and reading wide" of politically sensitive public law statutes to defend their postcolonial intent. I aim to map the uncertain landscape of the Indian Supreme Court’s use of “jurisprudence” and jurisprudence’s relationship with statutory interpretation.
For Thailand, “unequal treaties rest on a fundamental injustice and the international legal order... more For Thailand, “unequal treaties rest on a fundamental injustice and the international legal order cannot insist on their prolongation”.
I argue that contextually reading two disputes involving Siam—Cheek v. Siam (1898) and the Temple... more I argue that contextually reading two disputes involving Siam—Cheek v. Siam (1898) and the Temple of Preah Vihear (1962)—proves that both private law and public international law are structurally rigged against ex-semi-colonial nations. Nineteenth-century Siam was a political ferment known variously as a semi-colonial, semi-peripheral, non-colonial, or uncolonized polity. Siam bargained under imperial shadows her political independence by the tactical grants of concession contracts, as well as by negotiating treaties with competing European powers. In the post-colonial Temple of Preah Vihear case, colonial sta-tionery—maps, photographs, and communiqués—as well as imperial customs offered evidentiary support to Cambodia, an ex-colonial state, against Thailand. In the early twentieth century, while authors picked Cheek v. Siam as a precedent for the law of international claims, textbooks offer the Temple of Preah Vihear case as a precedent on the form of treaties and estoppel. Conclusively, these two cases allow us to locate, if not exorcise, the ghosts of empires in Asian legal history, exposing, at the same time, Judge Koo's orientalization of customary international law.
"As compassion wanes, states rise, Buddha cries, as a nation dies"
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Books by Prabhakar Singh
It deals with both theory of international law and issues of interpretation.
It addresses themes such as the history of international law, policy approach, customary law, human rights, international courts and tribunals, international bureaucracy, and investment law and constitutional approach to international law.
Editors and contributors come from common law and civil law backgrounds.
Papers by Prabhakar Singh
But now is not the time to listen to him. In xenophobia and viral contamination, we have two, not one, curves to flatten.
It deals with both theory of international law and issues of interpretation.
It addresses themes such as the history of international law, policy approach, customary law, human rights, international courts and tribunals, international bureaucracy, and investment law and constitutional approach to international law.
Editors and contributors come from common law and civil law backgrounds.
But now is not the time to listen to him. In xenophobia and viral contamination, we have two, not one, curves to flatten.