INDIA, THE WORLD, AND THE FOLDING LAPSES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: Sovereignty, Adjudication, And The Structural Gaps Of A Consent-Based Order

International law rarely collapses outright; it folds. It bends and pleats around concentrations of power, and it lapses—leaving open gaps—wherever consent, enforcement, or institutional design run out. This paper examines India as a particularly insightful example of those folding lapses, as India serves multiple roles: a beneficiary, a critic, a litigant, a respondent, and a potential architect of the international order. It follows India's involvement from its adoption of international norms in its constitution to its cases at the International Court of Justice and arbitral tribunals, and then to the investment-treaty issues of the past decade and the ongoing crises related to the Indus Waters Treaty, Ukraine, and Gaza. It wraps up by asking how these seams might be stitched together: through Third-World jurisprudence of sovereign equality, a structured idea of treaty suspension, and reform of the Security Council.