Vidya Kumar
Dr. Kumar lives in London and is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Leicester. Her research is interdisciplinary in nature, traversing the fields of international law, constitutional law and legal theory. She teaches courses on Constitutional Law (and Theory), Public International Law, Human Rights & Civil Liberties, and Jurisprudence.
Research Expertise and Interest:
1. She is currently researching a monograph on ‘The Relationship between International Law and Revolution’. This work builds on aspects of her doctorate, and on several conference papers discussing this relationship delivered at Birkbeck Law School (2006), LSE’s Department of Law (2011), and the American University in Cairo (2012), and Osgoode Hall Law School (2013). She examines various international political and legal theorists’ understanding and characterisation of revolutionary moments and ideas, and how revolutions have been treated in legal adjudication. The present chapter she is writing explores the historical application of international legal norms and doctrines to revolutionary events (in particular, the application of Kelsen’s ‘doctrine of revolutionary legality’ in the (Southern) Rhodesia, Grenada and Fiji). Her monograph attempts to provide an explanation of why revolution poses fundamental philosophical and practical problems for the discipline and future of international law, using historical and contemporary examples of international law’s encounter with revolutionary events.
2. Dr Kumar also works on the questions of revolutionary constitutions and constitutional legal theory, including a course on advanced constitutional law which focuses on constitutions in the Global South. She is currently writing an article entitled “Global and National Constitutionalism(s): Forging a Constitutionalism of The Wretched”, which is based on a talk she was invited to give in 2016 at Kent Law School's Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL). [https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/law-news/2016/03/08/cecil-guest-lectures-give-global-perspective-to-constitutional-and-labour-law/]
3. Dr Kumar's previous research (see her DPhil, Oxford University) examined the relationship between international human rights and international labour rights, identifying the theoretical incompatibilities between these two regimes and the effect on workers.
Research Expertise and Interest:
1. She is currently researching a monograph on ‘The Relationship between International Law and Revolution’. This work builds on aspects of her doctorate, and on several conference papers discussing this relationship delivered at Birkbeck Law School (2006), LSE’s Department of Law (2011), and the American University in Cairo (2012), and Osgoode Hall Law School (2013). She examines various international political and legal theorists’ understanding and characterisation of revolutionary moments and ideas, and how revolutions have been treated in legal adjudication. The present chapter she is writing explores the historical application of international legal norms and doctrines to revolutionary events (in particular, the application of Kelsen’s ‘doctrine of revolutionary legality’ in the (Southern) Rhodesia, Grenada and Fiji). Her monograph attempts to provide an explanation of why revolution poses fundamental philosophical and practical problems for the discipline and future of international law, using historical and contemporary examples of international law’s encounter with revolutionary events.
2. Dr Kumar also works on the questions of revolutionary constitutions and constitutional legal theory, including a course on advanced constitutional law which focuses on constitutions in the Global South. She is currently writing an article entitled “Global and National Constitutionalism(s): Forging a Constitutionalism of The Wretched”, which is based on a talk she was invited to give in 2016 at Kent Law School's Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL). [https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/law-news/2016/03/08/cecil-guest-lectures-give-global-perspective-to-constitutional-and-labour-law/]
3. Dr Kumar's previous research (see her DPhil, Oxford University) examined the relationship between international human rights and international labour rights, identifying the theoretical incompatibilities between these two regimes and the effect on workers.
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Selected Publications by Vidya Kumar
This chapter can be found in Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought 2019 (Edited by Jean d’Aspremont, Professor of International Law, Sciences Po Law School, France and University of Manchester, UK and Sahib Singh, University of Helsinki, Finland). Concepts shape how we understand and participate in international legal affairs. They are an important site for order, struggle and change. This comprehensive and authoritative volume introduces a large number of concepts that have shaped, at various points in history, international legal practice and thought; intimates at how the many projects of international law have grappled with, and influenced, the world through certain concepts; and introduces new concepts into the discipline.
Contributors: P. Allott, A. Anghie, A. Bianchi, L. Bonadiman, F.L. Bordin, C. Brölmann, B. Çalı, P. Capps, H. Charlesworth, J.K. Cogan, H.G. Cohen, R. Collins, J. d’Aspremont, M. Goldmann, G. Gordon, J. Haskell, K.J. Heller, G.I. Hernández, F. Hoffmann, D.B. Hollis, O.U. Ince, V. Jeutner, F. Johns, O. Kessler, J. Klabbers, R. Knox, N. Krisch, V. Kumar, M.M. Mbengue, F. Mégret, T. Meyer, C.A. Miles, S. Moyn, S. Neff, J. Nijman, A. Nollkginal U. Öszu, A. Peters, M. Prost, Y. Radi, N.M. Rajkovic, A. Rasulov, W. Rech, F.D. Reis, C. Ryngaert, P. Schlag, I. Scobbie, M. Shahabuddin, G. Simpson, S. Singh, T. Skouteris, U. Soirila, T. Sparks, C.J. Tams, A.A.C. Trindade, N. Tzouvala, A. van Mulligen, I. Venzke, G. Verdirame, J. von Bernstorff, I. Wuerth
Books by Vidya Kumar
The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.
Keynotes by Vidya Kumar
This colloquium, which is organised with the institutional support of the Doctoral Candidates Seminar Series of Sciences Po Law School Doctoral Program, is part of a progressive reflection on the role played by geopolitical peripheries in the life of law and lawyers. The colloquium aims at exploring the following three questions:
How does geographical considerations affect global/local legal practices?
How does legal knowledge circulate to/from/within the geopolitical peripheries?
Is centralisation/decentralisation of legal practices possible?
The colloquium will privilege an interactive and conversational format. Keynote Professors Helena Alviar (Sciences Po Law School), Yishai Blank (Tel Aviv University) and Vidya Kumar (Leicester Law School) will make introductory remarks and then the floor will be open for questions and remarks from the audience. Participants to the colloquium may be invited to read short pieces from the speakers in preparation to the event.
Panel Three: Race, Socio-Economic Inequality, and Human Rights - MCLE materials
This panel seeks to interrogate legal protections for economic, social and cultural rights in the seven decades since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from a perspective that centers racial equality, and the rights of the Third and Fourth Worlds. Recent scholarship has asserted that human rights frameworks developed in ways that complement neoliberalism rather than attenuating the gaping inequalities it has produced. Using CRT and TWAIL approaches, panelists will query whether and to what extent the individual conception of rights at the heart of the human rights framework has been implicated in the promotion of free markets at the expense of social welfare.
Moderator: Hannah Appel, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
Adelle Blackett, Professor of Law and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development at the Faculty of Law, McGill University
Vidya Kumar, Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, Law School
Radhika Balakrishnan, Faculty director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, and Professor, Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University
Matiangai Sirleaf, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School
Abstract: I analyse three fundamental critiques of international human rights in international law: theory, history and politics. (NOTE: Paper is on file with author, and is being developed for publication - forthcoming 2017)
Blogs by Vidya Kumar
http://opiniojuris.org/2021/06/17/contingency-in-international-law-symposium-contingency-between-and-beyond-the-prepositional-life-of-international-law/
http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/towards-a-constitutionalism-of-the-wretched/
Cite as: Vidya Kumar, “Towards a Constitutionalism of the Wretched”,
Völkerrechtsblog, 27 July 2017, DOI: 10.17176/20170727-141227.
Monograph: International Law, Theory & Revolution by Vidya Kumar
Talks and Conference Papers by Vidya Kumar
New Directions in Core Subjects of International Law Teaching
Day 4 | Friday 12 March 2021 | 11.00 - 12.45 (UK time)
Dr Vidya Kumar, Associate Professor, Law School, University of Leicester
'The Revolutionary and Utopic Place of International Labour Law in Public International Law'
https://www.biicl.org/events/11460/teaching-international-law-webinar-series
This paper examining the relation between international law, history and time, is forthcoming. Contact me if you would like a copy of this work after it is published: [email protected]
In this paper I argue that a productive way to think about the relationality between Race, Covid and Law is to deploy Ann Stoler's concept of "duress". Specifically, I contend that to understand how these three subjects interrelate we need to speak about "law under duress" rather than merely "law". I develop my argument by examining revolution and how thinking about revolutions can help us understand the relationality of law with other concepts and events.
http://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/iilah/news-and-events/2017-events/international-law-and-revolution-concepts,-categories,-and-history
This chapter can be found in Concepts for International Law: Contributions to Disciplinary Thought 2019 (Edited by Jean d’Aspremont, Professor of International Law, Sciences Po Law School, France and University of Manchester, UK and Sahib Singh, University of Helsinki, Finland). Concepts shape how we understand and participate in international legal affairs. They are an important site for order, struggle and change. This comprehensive and authoritative volume introduces a large number of concepts that have shaped, at various points in history, international legal practice and thought; intimates at how the many projects of international law have grappled with, and influenced, the world through certain concepts; and introduces new concepts into the discipline.
Contributors: P. Allott, A. Anghie, A. Bianchi, L. Bonadiman, F.L. Bordin, C. Brölmann, B. Çalı, P. Capps, H. Charlesworth, J.K. Cogan, H.G. Cohen, R. Collins, J. d’Aspremont, M. Goldmann, G. Gordon, J. Haskell, K.J. Heller, G.I. Hernández, F. Hoffmann, D.B. Hollis, O.U. Ince, V. Jeutner, F. Johns, O. Kessler, J. Klabbers, R. Knox, N. Krisch, V. Kumar, M.M. Mbengue, F. Mégret, T. Meyer, C.A. Miles, S. Moyn, S. Neff, J. Nijman, A. Nollkginal U. Öszu, A. Peters, M. Prost, Y. Radi, N.M. Rajkovic, A. Rasulov, W. Rech, F.D. Reis, C. Ryngaert, P. Schlag, I. Scobbie, M. Shahabuddin, G. Simpson, S. Singh, T. Skouteris, U. Soirila, T. Sparks, C.J. Tams, A.A.C. Trindade, N. Tzouvala, A. van Mulligen, I. Venzke, G. Verdirame, J. von Bernstorff, I. Wuerth
The introduction, entitled 'The Life of International Law and its Concepts', is a standalone piece that grapples with the relation between legal concepts, life and living in international law. First, we briefly explore the contemporary malaise in international law’s disciplinary life, in and for which this book emerges. We urge a sensibility that sees working on international law’s concepts as opening up a range of possibilities in how we may act, live, know, see and understand within and towards the discipline. Second, we offer an overview into how legal thought has, in its diversity, approached legal concepts. We aim to draw out those sensibilities that remain prevalent in today’s legal writings on concepts, whilst also pointing to the limits, nuances and fractures of these sensibilities. In this regard we offer detailed readings, criticisms and extensions of texts by Jhering, Hohfeld, Ross, Cohen, Kennedy, Koskenniemi, and Marks to name but a few. These readings primarily point to the intricate and intractable difficulties of reconciling concepts with social life. They also point to a series of shifting and entwined aesthetic, ethical and political presuppositions that dominate the various ways in which we approach legal concepts today. In showing the diversity of legal sensibilities towards legal concepts, we hope to not only open up the various possibilities and limits of these sensibilities, but to point towards the intellectual cultural resources at the modern scholar’s disposal. Third, and finally, we offer an introduction to the volume itself. Here we outline how we chose its concepts, the types of concepts contained therein, and how we see the complex relations between different concepts.
This colloquium, which is organised with the institutional support of the Doctoral Candidates Seminar Series of Sciences Po Law School Doctoral Program, is part of a progressive reflection on the role played by geopolitical peripheries in the life of law and lawyers. The colloquium aims at exploring the following three questions:
How does geographical considerations affect global/local legal practices?
How does legal knowledge circulate to/from/within the geopolitical peripheries?
Is centralisation/decentralisation of legal practices possible?
The colloquium will privilege an interactive and conversational format. Keynote Professors Helena Alviar (Sciences Po Law School), Yishai Blank (Tel Aviv University) and Vidya Kumar (Leicester Law School) will make introductory remarks and then the floor will be open for questions and remarks from the audience. Participants to the colloquium may be invited to read short pieces from the speakers in preparation to the event.
Panel Three: Race, Socio-Economic Inequality, and Human Rights - MCLE materials
This panel seeks to interrogate legal protections for economic, social and cultural rights in the seven decades since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from a perspective that centers racial equality, and the rights of the Third and Fourth Worlds. Recent scholarship has asserted that human rights frameworks developed in ways that complement neoliberalism rather than attenuating the gaping inequalities it has produced. Using CRT and TWAIL approaches, panelists will query whether and to what extent the individual conception of rights at the heart of the human rights framework has been implicated in the promotion of free markets at the expense of social welfare.
Moderator: Hannah Appel, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles
Adelle Blackett, Professor of Law and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development at the Faculty of Law, McGill University
Vidya Kumar, Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, Law School
Radhika Balakrishnan, Faculty director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, and Professor, Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University
Matiangai Sirleaf, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh Law School
Abstract: I analyse three fundamental critiques of international human rights in international law: theory, history and politics. (NOTE: Paper is on file with author, and is being developed for publication - forthcoming 2017)
http://opiniojuris.org/2021/06/17/contingency-in-international-law-symposium-contingency-between-and-beyond-the-prepositional-life-of-international-law/
http://voelkerrechtsblog.org/towards-a-constitutionalism-of-the-wretched/
Cite as: Vidya Kumar, “Towards a Constitutionalism of the Wretched”,
Völkerrechtsblog, 27 July 2017, DOI: 10.17176/20170727-141227.
New Directions in Core Subjects of International Law Teaching
Day 4 | Friday 12 March 2021 | 11.00 - 12.45 (UK time)
Dr Vidya Kumar, Associate Professor, Law School, University of Leicester
'The Revolutionary and Utopic Place of International Labour Law in Public International Law'
https://www.biicl.org/events/11460/teaching-international-law-webinar-series
This paper examining the relation between international law, history and time, is forthcoming. Contact me if you would like a copy of this work after it is published: [email protected]
In this paper I argue that a productive way to think about the relationality between Race, Covid and Law is to deploy Ann Stoler's concept of "duress". Specifically, I contend that to understand how these three subjects interrelate we need to speak about "law under duress" rather than merely "law". I develop my argument by examining revolution and how thinking about revolutions can help us understand the relationality of law with other concepts and events.
http://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/iilah/news-and-events/2017-events/international-law-and-revolution-concepts,-categories,-and-history