University Assistant Professor in International Law
Interests
International law, history and theory of international law, imperialism, anti-imperial movements, piracy, political economy, critical and Marxist legal theory
Research centres and interest groups
CV / Biography
Tor's work is focused on the history and theory of international law, as well as critical and Marxist approaches to international law and left-legal theory more generally. He is currently completing a book manuscript that develops a materialist history of the pirate in international legal thought. The book reconstructs the conceptual history of the pirate in international law, analysing the theorisations of legitimate and illegitimate maritime commerce offered by international legal thinkers in their political-economic contexts. Against common assumptions that the pirate is a timeless legal category stretching backwards for millennia, he suggests that the modern juridical image of the pirate, as the enemy of trade, took shape and crystallised only in the long-16th century, the product of this particular juncture reflecting inter-imperial rivalries and emerging merchant capitalist interests.
He is also developing a research project on the relationship between anti-imperialism and international law, with a particular focus on the anti-imperial movements of the 20th century. A recent book chapter considers the use of international law and legal argument as a mode of anti-imperial political resistance in the form of peoples’ tribunals, while a further paper under work interrogates the treatment of the Third World movement in recent international legal histories, drawing attention to the erasure of political and ideological contestation and fractures within that movement.
Tor’s writing has appeared in a range of publications including New Left Review, the London Review of Books, the Harvard Journal of International Law, Third World Quarterly, the Leiden Journal of International Law, and Law, Culture and the Humanities. He is currently the co-General Editor of the London Review of International Law (Oxford University Press), which publishes critical, historical, socio-legal and other non-doctrinal international law scholarship.
Tor joined the University of Cambridge in 2023. He was previously Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra in Portugal and Visiting Fellow at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. He was educated in Australia, the US and UK, completing his PhD in Law at the London School of Economics. He also holds an LLM from the University of Cambridge, a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil (Development Studies) from the University of Cambridge, and an AB (Social Studies) from Harvard University. He has worked on trade, humanitarian, and development issues at the United Nations in New York, human rights in Palestine, and international criminal law at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague where he assisted with Charles Taylor's defence. In 2011, he was law research clerk to then-Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke of the South African Constitutional Court.
Publications
Articles
"Recovering the radical tradition in the international legal history of decolonisation" Journal of the History of International Law [forthcoming]
"Limits of the portrait (Joseph Fletcher Prize Book Forum)" Cambridge Review of International Affairs [forthcoming]
"الهرولة إلى لاهاي (Scurrying to The Hague)" (2024) 95 Qadaya Isra’iliyya 30-32
"On international law and Gaza: critical reflections" (2024) 12 London Review of International Law 217-301
"Heretical enemy or vanguard of commerce? The pirate in the 16th-century legal and literary imagination" (2024) Law, Culture and the Humanities
"Editorial: Open Access: No Closed Matter" (2023) 11 London Review of International Law 147-155
"Liberalism’s warring souls" (2021) 132 New Left Review 149-157
"A life in human rights: a conversation with Dennis Davis" (2021) 9 London Review of International Law 137-160
"Into the bramble patch" (2020) 126 New Left Review 79-96
"What Europeans Talk about when They Talk about Brexit: Portugal" London Review of Books, 3 January 2019, 5-10
"50 Years after Russell: an interview with Tariq Ali" (2017) 5(3) London Review of International Law 493-500
"Remembering the Russell Tribunal" (2017) 5 London Review of International Law 483-492
"Spectral expertise" (2017) 106 New Left Review 148-160
"Curbing corruption? The efficacy of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act" (2007) 33(1) North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation 83-103
"Global justice? Politics, power and the International Criminal Court" (2016) 6 Revista Portuguesa de Ciência Política [Portuguese Journal of Political Science] 135-154
"A journal of the legal left?" (2015) 9 Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left 1-12
"Law on the left: a conversation with Duncan Kennedy" (2015) 10 Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left 1-35
"Dispensing global justice" (2014) 85 New Left Review 67-97
"International criminal law: an ideology critique" (2013) 26(3) Leiden Journal of International Law 701-723
"Quantifying law: legal indicator projects and the reproduction of neoliberal common sense" (2013) 34(1) Third World Quarterly 131-150
"The legal turn in late development theory: the “rule of law” and the World Bank’s development model" (2011) 52(1) Harvard International Law Journal 287-319
"‘Mopping-up’: UNHCR, neutrality and non-refoulement since the Cold War" (2011) 10(3) Chinese Journal of International Law 587-608
"Calling power to reason?" (2010) 65 New Left Review 141-150
"The relationship between tax reform and political reform in Hong Kong" (2006) 24(2) Law in Context: a Socio-Legal Journal 10-35
"The U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement: the interface between partisan politics and national objectives" (2006) 41(1) Australian Journal of Political Science 51-69
"Will tax reform drive political reform in Hong Kong?" (2006) 41(2) Tax Notes International 197-202
Book Chapters
"Ending impunity or entrenching impunity? International criminal law and the political economy of late capitalism" in Ugo Mattei and John D Haskell (ed(s)), Research Handbook on Political Economy and Law (2nd edition)), forthcoming
"From Vietnam to Palestine: peoples’ tribunals and the juridification of resistance" in Brian Cuddy and Victor Kattan (ed(s)), Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law (University of Michigan Press, 2023), pp. 233-260

"Ideology" in Illan rua Wall, Freya Middleton, Sahar Shah and CLAW (ed(s)), The Critical Legal Pocketbook (Counterpress, 2021), pp. 196-197

"Procurador vs. Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, Julgamento referente ao Artigo 74 do Estatuto (18 de dezembro de 2012)" in João Henrique Ribeiro Roriz and Alberto Amaral Júnior (ed(s)), O Direito Internacional em Movimento: Jurisprudência Internacional Comentada - Tribunal Penal Internacional para a ex- Iugoslávia, Tribunal Penal Internacional, Corte Interamericana de Direitos Humanos e Corte Europeia de Direitos Humanos (Instituto Brasiliense de Direito Civil e Grupo de Pesquisa Crítica e Direito Internacional, 2020)

"The rule of law and the rise of capitalism" in Christopher May and Adam Winchester (ed(s)), The Edward Elgar Handbook on the Rule of Law (Edward Elgar, 2018), pp. 184-200

"Law, development and political closure under neoliberalism" in Honor Brabazon (ed(s)), Neoliberal Legality: Understanding the Role of Law in the Neoliberal Project (Routledge, 2017), pp. 22-42

"Ending impunity? Eliding political economy in international criminal law" in Ugo Mattei and John D Haskell (ed(s)), Political Economy and Law: A Handbook of Contemporary Practice, Research and Theory (Edward Elgar, 2015), pp. 298-314

"Unveiling (and veiling) politics in international criminal trials" in Christine Schwöbel (ed(s)), Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law: An Introduction (Routledge, 2014), pp. 117-137
