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22 Chi. J. Int'l L. 71 (2021-2022)
Studying Race in International Law Scholarship Using a Social Science Approach

handle is hein.journals/cjil22 and id is 77 raw text is: Studying Race in International Law Scholarship Using a Social Science Approach James Thuo Gathii* Abstract This Essay takes up Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg s invitation to use a social science approach to establish or ascertain some facts about international law scholarship in the United States. The specific research question that this Essay seeks to answer is to what extent scholarship has addressed international law's historical and continuing complicity in producing racial inequaliy and hierarchy, including slavery, as well as the subjugation and domination of the peoples of the First Nations. To answer this question, this Essay uses the content published in the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) from when it was first published in 1907 to May 2021. It also uses the contentpublished in its sisterpublication AJIL Unbound from when it was first published in 2014 to My 2021. The most significantfinding of this Essay is that only 64, or 1.25%, of 5,109 AJIL documents substantialy engaged with race in the body of their texts. In AJIL Unbound, only 11, or 9.94%, of the 568 documents substantialy engaged ith race in the bodies of their text. To accountfor the extremey low number of documents substantialy engaging ith race in the pages of the leading international law journal, I advance four hypotheses. First, that this absence is a reflection of the conscious exclusion of African Americans in the American Sociefy of International Law in the first six decades of its existence, as the 2020 Richardson Report found. Second, it is the result of the stringent scrutiny race scholarship in international law has faced in AJIL and AJIL Unbound. Third, that the big or defining debates about international law in the United States have focused on issues other than race, and fourth that color-blindness has been the default view of American international law scholarship as represented in thejournal. Ultimately, the point of this Essay is threefold. First, to show that the social science approach that Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg advance can be useful to answer questions that * Wing-Tat Lee Chair of International Law and Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. I thank my research assistants Michael John Cornell, Romina Nemaei, Caitlin Chenus, and Audrey Mallinak for their invaluable assistance with this ongoing project. I also thank Loyola's international reference librarian, Julienne Grant, for her important contributions to the research process and methodology. Finally, I would also like to thank Tom Ginsburg, Christiane Wilke, and Mohsen al Attar for their extensive comments on the draft of this Essay. All errors are mine. 71

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