The book seeks to reinterpret and determine – through global lenses – the
extent to which Black women have impacted and been impacted by transnational
law, norms, doctrine, jurisprudence, policy, processes, and thinking.
It purports to unearth old law and fashion new paradigms born out the
experiences of Black women. To this end, the book falls within the intellectual
rubric of what the eminent international law scholar Henry J. Richardson
III refers to as the Black International Tradition (BIT), which sits squarely
within Pan-African philosophy. The BIT provides a malleable chronological
corridor to Black claims and demands to “outside” or international law that
offers “liberation-promising normative authority” “outside” of law and policy
shaped by the internal vocation of racial and sexual domination and
oppression.1
Traditional international law discourse, as well as, for example, the newly
formed regimes on women and racial discrimination and women and
peace-building, are generally conceived in gender-bias and/or gender- or
race-neutral terms. Black women are rarely specifically referenced or considered
a subject of analysis in international law literature