Feminism and International Law: A Reply

Over the past several years, legal scholars have extended feminist theory to many areas of the law, and legal discourse has been enriched by feminist jurisprudence. Until recently, however, international law had not undergone a sustained feminist critique. This gap is now slowly being filled; a notable contribution to that effort is a recent article by Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin, and Shelley Wright. This Essay presents a reply to the Charlesworth-Chinkin-Wright critique. Although much of this reply engages more general issues in feminist theory, it would be impossible, within the scope of this work, to address every important political, cultural, biological, epistemological, and metaphysical issue raised by the various feminist critiques of traditional jurisprudence. I therefore confine the analysis to arguments directly relevant to international law, focusing on the analogies and contrasts between the differing feminist approaches to international law and the Kantian theory of international law defended in my previous writings