Arnulf Becker Lorca specialises in the global intellectual history of international law. He focuses on international law as a site of engagement that has also opened avenues for resistance.
In an interview, Professor Lorca discusses his background, expectations, and educational goals during his time at the EUI.
Please introduce yourself. What is your background and how did you become an expert in the topic?
I am originally from Chile, but I did my doctoral degree in the US. I have taught in the UK, at King's College London, and in the US. I am also teaching a seminar at Harvard Law School next term. In addition, I have had research positions in Chile, and I worked as a legal adviser in the Chilean Constitutional Convention.
Are you working on any research projects / publications at the moment?
I am an international lawyer, but more specifically I am interested in how international law enables, structures, or prevents encounters and relationships between peoples of different cultures, histories, ideologies, religions, or races. I focus on international law as a site of engagement that has enabled not only colonialism, or domination, or war, but also has opened avenues for resistance.
I have a book called Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842-1933, in which I explore how the contemporary international legal order is not just an order of Western origin that was imposed around the world, but how that order has evolved through the relationships of international lawyers and states from the West and the non-West and through the appropriation of Western juridical ideas by non-Western lawyers.
I have also pursued this type of work exploring the origins of international law in the Spanish Amerindian encounter, and I always try to show that there is a lot of international law that explains colonialism and domination but there is also a story to narrate about who it was on the other side.
As Chair, what will your role entail? Which areas of work will you be focusing on?
My main research for the time I am going to be at the EUI is a book project with the title Combative Solidarity: Redistributive Strategies from the South. The book is about how Western countries, or so-called developed countries from the north, have always opposed redistribution between north and south, and how in light of that opposition diplomats and international lawyers from the south have developed legal strategies to go around that opposition and force redistribution. For example, I show that international lawyers since decolonisation did not envision political self-determination as an ultimate goal, but saw economic self-determination as an essential part of the Third World's struggle for independence. Since decolonisation, international lawyers have used sovereignty in order to extract redistribution, arguing for sovereignty over natural resources, to justify expropriations, or sovereignty over viral samples, to justify benefit sharing mechanisms in relation to vaccines, something that became again relevant in relation to COVID-19.
I also have other research projects that I am currently undertaking. I am writing on race and international law. For more than three decades, Critical Race Theory as well as TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) have foregrounded the role of race in the development of international law. Some have focused on racism as racial prejudice, that is, throughout history you have racist international lawyers that give racist interpretations on international law. On the other hand, others have shown the idea of international law as being colour blind, a neutral legal order that has abolished explicit racial inequality and discrimination, but that continues to operate structurally in racist ways. In light of this previous work, I am exploring something more specific, namely the history of race as a legal argument. I am examining the role of race in legal argumentation in the Americas of the 19th century. As Americans argued that the continent was reserved for the Anglo-Saxon race – deducing legal justifications for continental expansion, Spanish-Americans invented the idea of a Latin-American race, deducing legal justifications to support their independent countries' sovereignty and non-intervention as a continental legal principle. As a legal argument, race became an argument for domination as well as resistance.
Will you be carrying out both of these projects during your time here?
Yes, the project on race will be part of a chapter in an edited volume entitled Race, Racism and International Law (Devon Carbado, Kimberle Crenshaw, Justin Desautels-Stein, and Chantal Thomas eds.). I also have another bigger book project that I am currently undertaking. I mentioned before that what I focus on is the relationship between peoples, how people encounter each other, and how international law has been one of the sites of encounter. So, the book I published focuses from the 19th century, which is when the world became a global world, to the 20th century.
I have also been working on the Spanish Amerindian colonial encounter, because that moment for some is the foundation of international law. What I have been doing for a long time is exploring very concretely what were the laws that governed the mechanics of conquest. I am now focusing on what the indigenous thought about that. One idea is that we don't know because they are completely different. So, in post-colonial thought there is one strand, decolonial theories, that believe that when the Spanish arrived there was an epistemic conquest of the 'other'. And the 'other' has ever since been dominated epistemically. So, we have to go to a pre-colonial ontology or way of thinking to actually decolonise international law or decolonise the world.
I share their normative sensibility regarding colonialism. I agree that colonialism was a violent and morally wrong, to say the least. But I think that they are essentialising the differences between the Spanish, or Western that arrived, and the non-Western or the indigenous. I am doing work on the actual negotiations between Spaniards and indigenous, tracing the ways the Incas for example, appropriated the law of the Spaniards and understood in their own terms what was happening. They knew what war is, what peace is, what a negotiation is.
Will you be teaching courses during your time at the EUI?
Yes, this term I will be teaching a course on the History of International Law, it is a seminar called 'A History of the International Legal Order: Between Colonialism and Self-Determination'. I want to explore the colonial encounter as a foundational moment of international law for both domination and resistance; starting with the 15-16th century in the Americas, then 17th century Dutch Imperialism in East Asia, and then 19th century Imperialism in Africa, after that, we will explore decolonisation.
I will also be teaching a longer seminar called 'The Politics of International Law', which is more like a foundational seminar. We are going to explore different approaches to international law that are more or less linked to a critical legal tradition. So, critical legal studies, feminism, queer theory and international law, as well as race and international law. Then, in the second term, I will be doing a seminar on the book project, about the North-South redistribution.
Wow, a lot on your plate!
Yes, but the seminars are fun! It helps a lot to have very clear ideas about the readings to then have a good seminar, and that forces you to do a good reading of the text that then I will use to carry out my research. The researchers will definitely have different views about their readings, which enrich the discussions as well.
What makes the EUI unique?
One of the things that I think makes this place a unique place is that it is research oriented. I will be supervising researchers on topics that are related to my own research, and that creates a very tight community, where everyone is enjoying the privilege we have here, having resources and time to research.