Interdisciplinarity and LAIL: The Case of International Economic Law

This chapter explores legal scholarship’s slow but essential transformation by referencing the interdisciplinary encounters of international economic law in Latin America. The chapter discusses different methodologies and substantive areas of international law in general. It then provides examples of questions of interest (and the implications of the analysis) in the regional engagement with this area of law and its institutions from a multidisciplinary perspective. The chapter highlights quantitative and qualitative approaches-a contrast with a scholarly tradition in the region that was always assumed to be doctrinal and positivistic (partly as a shield from European claims rooted in natural law). Ultimately, the chapter argues, these interdisciplinary encounters of international economic law cast light on how the method has influenced Latin American international law, the changing role of international law in the region, and the expansion of scholarship as a way to contest the sociopolitical aspects and cultural assumption of international law more generally.