The article unpacks the notion of western centrism in contemporary international law by developing a framework to capture its varied patterns. It argues that western centrism can have three different manifestations – systemic, evaluative, and professional – depending on whether it refers to the rationality, the narratives, or the actors at play in the international legal field. The article then discusses three theoretical approaches that can help scholars dealing with western centrism in international (legal) scholarship. These are: (i) the critical readings of those scholars that explain international law through the lens of power and domination; (ii) the Stanford school of sociological institutionalism, which explains international institutions and norms through the role of culture and global scripts; and (iii) post-Bourdieusian reflexive sociology, which analyses the roles of transnational legal elites in colonial and post-colonial settings. Finally, the article reconstructs the experience of the Caribbean Court of Justice in the light of western centrism, demonstrating that, different from what is often argued in the literature, the Court is not a failed replica of the Court of Justice of the EU, but an institution in its own right, with its own approach to international law, its own successes and failures.

中文翻译：

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西方中心主义、当代国际法和国际法庭

本文通过开发一个框架来捕捉其不同模式，从而揭示了当代国际法中西方中心主义的概念。它认为西方中心主义可以有三种不同的表现形式——系统的、评价的和专业的——这取决于它是指理性、叙述还是国际法律领域的参与者。然后，本文讨论了三种理论方法，可以帮助学者在国际（法律）学术研究中处理西方中心主义。它们是： (i) 那些从权力和统治的角度解释国际法的学者的批判性解读；(ii) 斯坦福社会制度主义学院，通过文化和全球脚本的作用来解释国际制度和规范；(iii) 后布迪厄斯反思社会学，分析跨国法律精英在殖民和后殖民环境中的作用。最后，文章从西方中心主义的角度重构了加勒比法院的经验，表明与文献中经常争论的不同，该法院不是欧盟法院的失败复制品，而是一个独立的机构，有自己的国际法方法，有自己的成功和失败。