We want LI to be one of the friendliest places on the internet, where lawyers and law students help each other with their career related queries and occasionally discuss other stuff that might affect their lives too. In other words:
1. Be kind, respectful and helpful to each other.
2. Be bona fide, truthful, genuine and curious.
3. Assume the best intention of others.
Therefore, in using the site, you must agree to do your best to uphold these community guidelines.
Note that what you find here is written and moderated by anonymous people on the internet.
Therefore everything you read here is very likely unverified, rumour, speculation and/or downright false.
In continuing to read anything here, you must therefore agree not to take anything you read here as factual and that you will exercise due caution, diligence and common sense before acting on any information you may come across here.
You also agree to report any inaccurate or malicious comments with the buttons. Moderators take action within 24 hours, as required and appropriate under law.
Our full terms and conditions apply too.
Do you solemnly agree to all of the above?
Can tell you about international law certainly:
1. I would first suggest beginning with Malcolm Shaw for the basics, and then reading Malcolm Evans. This gives you a very technical (Eurocentric) view of international law which you can then use to understand the treaty texts. Beginning with the treaty texts devoid of context will bear no fruit.
2. Once you are done with learning international law, it is also important to learn that it is the creator and perpetuator of colonial subjugation. BS Chimni, Usha Natarajan, Antony Anghie and M Sornarajah are people whose articles you should refer to. However, I suggest you refer to this book before going to articles: https://www.routledge.com/Third-World-Approaches-to-International-Law-On-Praxis-and-the-Intellectual/Natarajan-Reynolds-Bhatia-Xavier/p/book/9780367889234.
As for writing papers, I can explain in steps:
1. Do not write a paper to write a paper - write a paper to contribute to knowledge. Quality over quantity. A bad paper will forever stay on the internet to haunt you - do not make that mistake for an imaginary boost to your CV.
2. Always begin with literature review on a topic that you are interested in. 'Why does international investment law have arbitral tribunals enforcing the law, and not international/national courts?', for e.g., but this issue has been extensively covered. Read up everything there is on the topic and then, and only then, try to formulate what the literature does not address.
3. Begin with framing the question - what you ask defines what you search for, and how your article looks like.
4. Then only write the article and always make other people read it to give feedback. Publish drafts on SSRN so that other people can see.
5. Submit it to a journal on the topic - start with a really good journal relative to the quality of the article where you know that even if the article is rejected, the peer review will be immensely helpful. Rinse and repeat.