Critical Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL): Theory, Methodology, or Both?

Abstract This paper engages with the question of whether TWAIL is a theory, a methodology, or both. It takes the mainstream positivist understandings of the concepts of "theory" and "methodology" seriously in order to assess TWAIL scholarship against those (admittedly contingent) measures. It argues that TWAIL offers both theories of, and methodologies for, analysing international law and institutions, before concluding that TWAIL can be usefully thought of in the way suggested by its very appellation: as a broad approach.