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99 B.U. L. Rev. Online 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/bulron99 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MANY INEQUALITIES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW NEHA JAIN* And what should they know of England who only England know?' Kipling's lament finds an unexpectedly radical ally in Anthea Roberts' masterful deconstruction of the universal and universalizing project of international law: what do different national communities of international lawyers, especially those who are educated, trained, and socialized in the developed West, know of international law? Roberts' answer to this question takes the form of a surefooted tour into the world of international law academics in some of the most powerful states - the books they read and write, the places they study and work, the pressures that influence their opportunities and preoccupations, and the languages that divide and unite them. Roberts is explicit about her methodology and characteristically careful in her claims: the project is about the construction of international law as a transnational legal field, with a focus on the role of international law academics and textbooks.2 More specifically, the study looks primarily, though not exclusively, at international law academics at elite universities in, and textbooks from, the five permanent members of the Security Council.3 What becomes apparent in the course of this exercise is not merely that international lawyers in different parts of the world live largely siloed professional lives, but also that their ideas and views on what constitutes international law have greater or lesser purchase depending on their geography and linguistic identity. As Roberts argues, actors and materials in the developed West have a disproportionate reach and impact on the construction of international law but are increasingly being challenged by a shift in global power towards a competitive multipolar world, which includes the normative and political agendas of powerful non-Western states.4 In this mutable new world, international lawyers will need, more than ever, to be self-reflective about their own biases and assumptions and open to the differing perspectives of their interlocutors in other states. * Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School. RUDYARD KIPLING, The English Flag, in BALLADS AND BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS 102, 102 (1892). 2 ANTHEA ROBERTS, IS INTERNATIONAL LAw INTERNATIONAL? 23 (2018) (emphasis added). 3 Id. at 35. 4 Id. at 36-39. 1

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