Richard Falk has been an inspirational figure for scholars of international law and international relations for more than five decades. His seminal writings, drawing on a range of intellectual traditions—anarchist, humanist, feminist, liberal and Marxist—have offered radical thinking on issues ranging from the Vietnam War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. A prolific writer, Falk has made path-breaking contributions in clarifying the role of international law in a turbulent world, reforming the United Nations system and promoting international environmental protection and justice.

This volume brings together 20 of Falk’s landmark essays, each resonating with his commitment towards establishing what he calls a system of humane global governance. Divided into five sections, these essays cover a variety of issues: the major challenges before international legal scholarship today, the failure of the United Nations to take the discourse of global democracy and global justice forward, the need to reform the UN, the international community’s focus on protection and sustainability and the neglect of justice, and the untapped potential of international human rights law to achieve global justice. The way forward, Falk emphasizes, is to establish, through global social movements, democratic global political structures in the new millennium.

The Foreword by B. S. Chimni is a fitting tribute from a well known scholar of international law. He writes, ‘Falk is an embodiment of a critical intellectual who has never hesitated to speak truth to power.’ Published for the first time in India, The Writings of Richard Falk: Towards Humane Global Governance is a must-read for students and scholars of international law, international relations and political science.

Richard Falk is Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, USA. He has authored or co-authored 25 books, and edited or co-edited another 25 books. Falk is also United Nations Special Rapporteaur on Occupied Palestine.

Part 1 The Shaping of International Law: Geopolitical and Democratic Challenges

1. Reframing the Legal Agenda of the World Order in the Course of a Turbulent Century
2. International Law and the Future
3. Orientalism and International Law

1. Where is ‘the Fork in the Road’? Over the Horizon! An Inquiry into the Failure of UN Reform
2. he United Nations and Cosmopolitan Democracy: Bad Dream, Utopian Fantasy, Political Project
3. The United Nations System: Prospects for Renewal

1. The Second Cycle of Ecological Urgency: An Environmental Justice Perspective
2. A Radical World Order Challenge: Addressing Global Climate Change and the Threat of Nuclear Weapons

1. Torture, War, and the Limits of Liberal Legality
2. War and Peace in an Era of Terror and State Terrorism
3. A New Gandhian Moment?

1. Globalisation-from-Below: An Innovative Politics  of Resistance
2. A Worldwide Religious Resurgence in an Era of Globalisations and Apocalyptic Terrorism
3. Geopolitical Turmoil and Civilisational Pluralism

1. The Power of Rights and the Rights of Power: What Future for Human Rights?
2. Pursuing Global Justice
3. Towards Humane Global Governance: Rhetoric, Desires and Imaginaries
4. Towards a Necessary Utopianism: Democratic Global Governance
5. (Re)Imagining the Global Governance
6. The Citizen Pilgrim

- Ashis Nandy, Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi

- Upendra Baxi, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Warwick, UK

- Tom Farer, University Professor, University of Denver

- James H. Mittelman, University Professor of International Studies,
American University, USA

- Hilary Charlesworth, ARC Laureate Fellow, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia