The paper unpacks the notion of western centrism in contemporary
international law by developing a framework to capture the 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 paper then discusses three theoretical
approaches that can help scholars dealing with western centrism in
international (legal) scholarship. These are: 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) the post-Bourdieusian reflexive
sociology, which analyses the roles of transnational legal elites in colonial
and post-colonial settings. Finally, the paper reconstructs the experience
of the Caribbean Court of Justice in the light of Western Centrism,
demonstrating that, different from what foten 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