Research Reflection Assignment:
Instructions: Choose one of the options and write a short paper following the prompts.
Your essay should be between four and five pages long (double spaced, no extra space between paragraphs), excluding endnotes and/or bibliography.
Please make sure to explain relevant concepts and theories.
Cite your sources appropriately. You may use any citation format you find helpful, but the page numbers of the texts cited must be indicated. For example, use (Smith 1999: 20) rather than (Smith 1999) to refer to anything found on page 20 of the text.
Your title page should list the essay title, the option you chose (1 or 2), and the citation style.
The essay is due on 10 February 2023 at 11:59pm in the Brightspace drop box.
Extensions and Late Submission Policy
Extensions:
For shorter extensions (up to four days), an email is sufficient.
• You need to email me as soon as you know that you need an extension and no later than 12 hours before the deadline.
• Please tell me (1) how much extra time you need and (2) the general category of the reason (medical, family emergency, etc).
For longer extensions and requests to modify the assignment or evaluation structure due to medical or other urgent issues, please complete this form: https://carleton.ca/registrar/wp-content/uploads/self-declaration.pdf and send it to me via email.
Late Submissions:
For the Research Reflection Assignment, Research Paper Proposal, and Literature Review Assignment, the late penalty is 5 points out of 100 per day for the first four days. If you submit an assignment more than 4 days late without having asked for and received an extension, it will receive a mark of zero. If you submit the final exam late without having asked for and received an extension, it will receive a mark of zero.
If you have any questions, please send me an email: christiane.wilke@carleton.ca.
Option 1: Socio-Legal Approaches to International Law
Background:
The field of socio-legal research has developed with a focus on the social contexts of domestic law: poverty, economic power, gendered and raced inequalities, criminal punishment, and policing. In recent years, researchers in international law have explicitly taken up the project of adapting socio-legal theories and methods to the interdisciplinary study of international law.
Task:
Choose one peer reviewed scholarly article that applies socio-legal approaches to international law. Using this article as an example, reflect on how socio-legal approaches can contribute to our understanding of international law. (If you prefer, you can also compare how two different articles use socio-legal approaches to international law and draw your conclusions about the value and limits of these approaches.)
• Possible strategies:
• Explain key goals of (qualitative) socio-legal research
• Explain relevant features of international law or international humanitarian law
• Make an argument about how or why socio-legal approaches would be suitable (or unsuitable) to researching international law, what insights they can provide
• If you’re focusing on the limits of the article, consider if these limitations are due to the socio-legal approach or due to the author’s choices within this framework.
• In addition to course readings, this article might be useful as an example of socio-legal research: Rebecca Sutton, “Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction,” 33 Leiden Journal of International Law (2020): 429—449.
• You can also pick an article from the TWAIL Review (latest issue: https://twailr.com/twail-review/issue-03-2022/).
• If you have questions about whether an article qualifies as using a socio-legal approach to international law, please email the professor.
Source Requirements:
• At least one scholarly article that uses socio-legal approaches to international law (from the course outline or elsewhere)
• At least three additional articles or books from the course outline
• In addition: any other sources you find relevant
Option 2: Comparing Approaches to International Law
Background:
Scholars of international law have debated whether and how international law shapes the conduct of armed conflict. Some argue that international law has taken crucial steps to prevent or limit armed conflict. Other scholars are concerned that international law legitimizes certain forms of armed conflict. The readings from Cassese’s International Law and Perugini & Gordon’s The Human Right to Dominate are examples of different approaches.
Tasks:
Relying on the assigned chapters from Cassese’s International Law and The Human Right to Dominate, write a paper that includes the following:
1. According to each of the chapters, what is the effect of international law on the conduct and legitimacy of armed conflict?
2. How do the authors’ choices of sources, methods, and theories shape their conclusions?
3. On the basis of the readings from weeks one through four, evaluate the arguments about the relationship between international law and armed conflict. Which argument (or combination of arguments) seems most plausible to you and why? What evidence do you have?
Possible strategies
• This option requires some summary of part of the texts, but keep it short. Focus on answering the questions.
• In order to assess the methods, approaches, and sources of these two chapters, you might want to rely on the methods texts we have been reading: the Socio-Legal Lab textbook and Lieblich’s article.
Source Requirements:
• Cassese’s International Law and Perugini and Gordon, The Human Right to Dominate
• At least two additional sources from the course outline (probably Hesse-Biber, Banakar, and Lieblich)
• In addition: any other sources you find relevant
Last Completed Projects
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