Afronomics Law Blog Symposium: International Law and Double Standards

This symposium brings together short contributions that examine how claims of double standards operate across diverse areas of international law. Although the posts address distinct contexts and frameworks, four common threads emerge. First, they highlight competing understandings of what “double standards” means in legal practice, raising questions about how the concept travels across fields as different as international economic law and international criminal law. Second, they illuminate the tension between international law’s universalist aspirations and the realities of power and politics that complicate consistent application. Third, they identify rhetorical and institutional techniques through which states and institutions justify selective action while seeking to preserve legitimacy. Fourth, they probe foundational questions about whether double standards are a remediable pathology of practice or an enduring feature of the international legal system.

Convenors: David Hughes and Patryk I. Labuda

Contributors:

• David Hughes and Patryk I. Labuda: International Law and Double Standards: A Symposium

• Peter Brett: Victors’ Justice, Double Standards, and the Civil Society Tribunals of the Late Cold War

• Steven Ratner: Double Standards in UN Political Bodies: Is Impartiality Possible?

• Pedro José Martinez Esponda: On Formalism and Non-Formalism in International Law: Double Standards, Argumentation, and Legal Change

• Otto Spijkers: Speaking out in China Against the Russian Aggression in Ukraine and Speaking out in the Netherlands Against the Atrocities in Gaza

• Andrea Schüller: Some Reflections on Recent Developments on Double Standards and Selectivity in International Criminal Law

• Olabisi D. Akinkugbe: The Hypocrisy of Special Economic Zones as a Vehicle for Foreign Direct Investment