The chief aim of this article is to unearth, explicate, and contextualize the various techniques on which Mahmut Esat, Turkey's agent before the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Lotus case, drew in order to narrate a fresh understanding of Turkish 'nationhood' during a period of intense vulnerability for the newly established Republic. The argument advanced by Turkey in this case -that it need not demonstrate the existence of a specific jurisdictional exception in international law in order to proceed with its prosecution of the French captain of the Lotus, a French vessel -has often been dismissed as an example of cynical apologetics. Nevertheless, a close reading of Turkey's pleadings reveals that it was inclined to oscillate between a variety of universalistic and particularistic approaches, Esat litigating the Lotus with an eye to exploiting the schism that lies at the heart of the concept of 'civilization' so as to submit Turkey to the normative authority of the international legal system while bolstering its positive power as an independent sovereign state. More specifically, it was by merging two modes of reasoning -the one prizing systematicity, the other prioritizing sovereignty -that Esat sought to construct a new, robustly reconciliatory identity for the 'Turkish nation', one that would enable it to embrace its commitment to international order by securing its place in 'la civilisation contemporaine' while amplifying the ambit of its autonomy as 'un´etat civilis´e'.

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This article lays the groundwork for a Marxist theory of the international law of land-grabbing. It argues that any comprehensive politico-economic analysis of land-grabbing must also be a politico-economic analysis of the law of land-grabbing. It argues further that Marx’s account of ‘primitive accumulation’ in Capital – an account it presents as an historical explanation of the transition to capitalism as well as a general theory of ‘extra-economic’ force deployed through state power, including, crucially, the power of law – is helpful for developing an analytical framework for understanding the legal facets of land-grabbing. Political economists, rural sociologists, and social and political theorists have argued for and against the applicability of Marx’s theory of ‘primitive accumulation’ to the contemporary wave of global land grabbing. Intriguingly, though, no international lawyers have grappled with the question of whether a specifically Marxist approach to the phenomenon can or should be developed. This article does so, contending that contemporary land-grabbing is unintelligible absent a theory of capitalism, and that the processes whereby capitalism transforms land and labour are unintelligible absent a theory of the periodic waves of legally mediated ‘primitive accumulation’ that propel it forward. The article pays particular attention to the work produced by Olivier De Schutter during his tenure as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

This article revisits the work of Mohammed Bedjaoui, the Algerian jurist and diplomat who played a key role in coordinating efforts to garner support for the NIEO. Focusing on his 1979 study Towards a New International Economic Order, it examines Bedjaoui’s attempt to ground his call for a structural transformation of world order in a sustained defense of legal universalism and closely related critique of legal formalism. Further, it argues that this insistence on a wholesale reconfiguration of international life can only be appreciated against the background of Bedjaoui’s decades-long engagement with the Third World, including, crucially, his involvement in the Algerian war of national liberation.

The promulgation of the Turkish