James Thuo Gathii

James Thuo Gathii is the Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. His expertise is in public international law, international economic law, and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). His research examines the relationship between international law, race, empire, global economic governance, sovereign debt, climate finance, sanctions, and international adjudication.

Professor Gathii is the founder and editor of Afronomicslaw and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal of International Economic Law. He has played a leading role in building scholarly and policy platforms focused on international economic law, debt justice, and Global South perspectives. He is a 2025 Honorary Member of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) and previously served as its Vice President. He has also served as an arbitrator in proceedings administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and currently serves on UNIDROIT’s Workstream on Private Law and Agriculture.

His recent work focuses on sovereign debt, climate justice, international financial architecture reform, sanctions, extractivism, and the ways international legal and economic institutions reproduce global hierarchies. He is the editor or co-editor of How to Reform the Global Debt and Financial Architecture (2023), Transforming Climate Finance in an Era of Sovereign Debt Distress (2023), and Rethinking the Global Financial Architecture: Debt, Climate Finance and Justice in Africa (forthcoming). He is currently completing books on epistemic authority at the International Court of Justice and the future of Third World Approaches to International Law.