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What Is In A Percentage?: Calculation As The Poetic Translation Of Human Rights, Andrea Ballestero

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Increasingly, the efficacy of human rights, international norms, and commercial standards is deposited in numbers as measures of social and financial value. Taking the form of indicators, goals, and targets, these numbers are active participants in the everyday practices through which the law is constituted around the world. This paper examines the normative ability of percentages as numeric devices that transform measures of value across legal domains. The paper draws on two examples: a) the generation of indicators by NGOs promoting the Human Right to Water, and b) the technical work of regulators attempting to regulate water prices to follow …