Chantal Thomas

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Cornell University

This Article offers an account of the role of race in global political economy-in particular, how to understand racialization as part of the process by which institutions of economic hierarchy not only were created but continue to be legitimated. It offers the conception of race as a technology: the product of racialized forms of knowing, which ser...

One measure of how and whether the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes the emerging field of international migration law will be the extent to which transnational civil society and activist movements can counteract the intensification of state border controls that the pandemic has triggered. Before the pandemic, transnational efforts to establish a new norm...

This session explored the compatibility of some of the world's most prominent international organizations and legal regimes with three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls); SDG 10 (Reduce inequality within and among countries); and SDG 16 (Promote peaceful and inclusive societies, acc...

Anthem Press, 2019, ForthcomingWorld trade and investment law is in crisis: new and progressive ideas are needed. Rules that facilitated globalization and supported global economic growth are being challenged. A system of global governance that once seemed secure is now at risk as the US ignores the rules while developing countries struggle to esca...

This essay will consider two phenomena emergent within international trade law and policy: multipolarity (the emergence of new global powers alongside existing hegemons) and reterritorialization (the rise, sometimes in quite virulent form, of economic nationalism as a basis for asserting State controls over, and barriers to, cross-border trade). Th...

The world is on the point of a stunning reversal. Nationalism and isolationism have surged against the global laws and institutions that have advanced economic liberalization and integration for half a century. Hostility is rising against international trade and international migration, both of which the new cadre of self-styled “anti-globalists” s...

At a time when global poverty is at its lowest, how can it be that income inequality is higher than it has been since the end of the Second World War? How have global trade and international law shaped these trends? Can we connect economic inequality at the domestic and international levels?

Without further ado, our really fabulous group of speakers. We will begin with Professor Alex Aleinikoff. He is the university professor and director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School in New York City, formerly the United Nations (UN) deputy high commissioner for Refugees, and before that dean of the Georgetown La...

This symposium has marshaled numerous insights regarding the emergence of a general field of inquiry within international law on the movement of people. To move into this conceptual terrain has required a certain amount of defiance of the conventional wisdom that questions of migration are within the purview of the sovereign state, and a matter of...

Today, millions of migrant workers, some of them caught in debt bondage, some victims of fraud or forced migration, and others simply desperate for a better life elsewhere but instead finding themselves working for below subsistence wages or no pay at all, could be called modern-day slaves. Campaigns to end modern-day slavery have taken many forms....

This study places international law on sex trafficking in a broad theoretical and historical context. First, it identifies the international law on sex trafficking as part of an “international law of prohibitionism” that operates as a particular kind of response to and management of globalization. Second, this study identifies dynamic forces both “...

The emergence of an international law of migration has lent ballast to claims by philosophers, such as Benhabib, who contend that “since the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, we have entered a phase in the evolution of global civil society, which is characterized by a transition from international to cosmopolitan norms of justice.” However, m...

Are immigration controls the single biggest legal factor contributing to modern‐day slavery?In a national and international political moment in which immigration law and policy are being hotly debated, participants in the debate should recognize the impact of strict migration controls – one of the clearest results of the current U.S. immigration la...

The Development Agenda of the 2001 Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization in Doha represents an attempt to achieve greater distributive justice among WTO members by enhancing the prospects for development through trade among poorer countries. Development and democratic governance (as between states) intertwine here: Because developi...

Institutionalism propounds a particular set of theoretical assumptions about the role of law in economic growth. In unpacking the development of those assumptions, this Essay adopts a model of intellectual history based on the Kuhnian argument that scientific knowledge evolves through key historical moments that establish theoretical paradigms. The...

This essay will argue that even where disparate treaties converge doctrinally, they may diverge normatively and that normative divergence may be significant in its own right. Section I of this essay seeks to chart out an initial such analysis, conducting a concise comparison of particular rules affecting migrant workers from different realms of int...

This essay links a particular legal case study with a broader set of questions about the “family” in global political and economic context. Part I of this essay clarifies the analytic links between the household, the market and globalization. By studying Egypt, the essay focuses on one part of this global sociolegal continuum and draws out the spec...

This chapter considers the judicial and legislative responses to ‘the linkage question’ within the WTO. First, the chapter recounts why the question has arisen in the first place: The relative weakness of enforcement mechanisms within international labour law. Second, the chapter reviews the range of WTO judicial responses to unilateral linkage eff...

Given that the Constitution is ambiguous about how to enter into international trade agreements, what process squares best with the nation’s general constitutional and democratic commitments? Most opinion polls on the subject have shown that, in popular American political culture, concern persists regarding the legislative framework for expanding n...

Increased labor migration from Mexico to the United States between 1980 and 2000 stemmed in large part from macroeconomic policy reforms, implemented at the domestic and international levels, that we now associate with economic "globalization." These reforms were ushered in by the era of "deep economic integration" - the period beginning in the ear...

With contributions from some of the leading experts in international trade, law, and economics, this book looks at the positioning of developing countries within the WTO system. The chapters address some of the most pressing issues facing these countries, while reflecting on Robert E. Hudec's book, Developing Countries in the GATT Legal System. Hud...

With contributions from some of the leading experts in international trade, law, and economics, this book looks at the positioning of developing countries within the WTO system. The chapters address some of the most pressing issues facing these countries, while reflecting on Robert E. Hudec's book, Developing Countries in the GATT Legal System. Hud...

This paper explores the idea that distributive justice in the multilateral trade regime is best served, at the moment, by democratizing its governance procedures.Part I of this paper focuses on the explanatory question - from a trade and development perspective, how can we understand the breakdown in Doha negotiations? This paper draws attention to...

The "Weberianism" of the modern age derives from the influence of three theoretical concepts in Weber's work. First, Weber described the development of "logically formal rationality" in governance as central to the rise of Western capitalist democracy. Second, Weber posited that Protestant religious ethics had helped to promote certain economic beh...

The "Weberianism" of the modern age derives from the influence of three theoretical concepts in Weber's work. First, Weber described the development of "logically formal rationality" in governance as central to the rise of Western capitalist democracy. Second, Weber posited that Protestant religious ethics had helped to promote certain economic beh...

IntroductionThe Trade versus Nontrade DistinctionThe Problem of Underenforcement Common to the IP, Labor, and Environmental RegimesLine-Drawing Revisited: Is There Any Good Reason for Excluding Labor and the Environment?Conclusion

Question 2 - Volume 101 - Chantal Thomas, Alex Aleinikoff, Joseph Weiler

Questions - Volume 101 - Chantal Thomas, Joseph Weiler, William Alford, Alex Aleinikoff

An Introduction: The Future of International Law - Volume 101 - William J. Aceves, Charles A. Hunnicutt, Chantal Thomas

Under the legislative procedure – the so-called fast track – that the Trade Act of 1974 established to expedite the process of negotiating and implementing international trade agreements, trade legislation occurs in two phases. First, Congress statutorily authorizes the president to negotiate an international trade agreement and articulates what th...

This Article is the result of an intense series of text and telephone exchanges among the four of us, taking place from December 2005 to April 2006. Each of us has her own project which forms the basis of her contribution to this conversation. Janet Halley is working on new rules governing wartime sexual violence in international humanitarian law,...

Predominant political theory holds that legislators are protectionist regarding international trade because susceptibility to minority interest groups leads them to vote in ways that protect domestic industries at the expense of free trade. Because free trade is widely regarded as beneficial to the majority, the protectionist tendency of the legisl...

In this presentation I shall describe (i) a process of expanding the institutional frameworks of economic and social development that apply on a global scale principles found in the Anglo-American world; (ii) the reinterpretation of these institutional frameworks by ascribing to them a narrow – to a certain extent ideological – meaning which does n...

Labor and environment standards resemble intellectual property standards in terms of their relationship to trade flows and their international legal status. Despite these similarities, only intellectual property standards have been incorporated into the WTO. Once conventional defenses for excluding labor and environment standards from the WTO are c...

This Essay begins by describing the technology transfer needs arising from both international economic integration and related international law. The Essay then examines the existing international rules for technology transfer and finds them insufficient to address these needs. The goal of this Essay is to advocate the formulation of a viable inter...

This article discusses the relationship between the international debt crisis and global poverty. The author argues for an expansion of coordinated international effort, bolstered by fundamental principles of public international law, to address global poverty by substantially reducing the foreign-denominated debt owed by developing countries to mo...

Comparing the “1990s-Style” and “1980s-Style” Debt Crises - Volume 93 - Chantal Thomas

_______________________ This Paper tries to show the effects of a central challenge of contemporary global governance: the ―interaction between normative orders that are fundamentally different in their underlying conceptual structure.‖ 1 The argument is that the dynamics of globalization create and accentuate particular social phenomena as well as...