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Full-Text Articles in International Law
Introduction: Global Human Rights Law And The Boundaries Of Statehood, Daniel Augenstein, Hans Lindahl
Introduction: Global Human Rights Law And The Boundaries Of Statehood, Daniel Augenstein, Hans Lindahl
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
The contributions collected in this Special Issue are the outcome of a colloquium on "Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood" held at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa in March 2015. The colloquium is the first in a series of topics to be addressed within the STIAS research project, "Boundaries and Legal Authority in a Global Context," coordinated by Hans Lindahl and Louise du Toit. We would like to express our gratitude to STIAS for the funding and logistics of the colloquium. Our particular thanks are due to the director of STIAS, Hendrik …
The Temporal Rivalries Of Human Rights, Fleur E. Johns
The Temporal Rivalries Of Human Rights, Fleur E. Johns
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
Nation-states' "boundaries" are produced in time: around official working hours and terms of office, for instance, and in the historicomythic "life of the nation." Global human rights practices affirm and depend on nation-states' temporal authority, while also calling that authority into question. In different ways, global markets do likewise. In recent decades, the ubiquity of both finance capital and international human rights law, among other factors, may have encouraged the fracturing of time into intervals of ever-decreasing length. Temporal authority premised on the long-term seems to have declining purchase, even as historicism and futurism abound, discouraging some modes of state-based …
Fractured Territories And Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within And Beyond The State, Larry Catá Backer
Fractured Territories And Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within And Beyond The State, Larry Catá Backer
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
The problem of representation has become a central element for the development of human rights norms, not just within international organizations, but within states as well. The problem has been made acute by two significant changes in the organization of power that became visible after the 1950s. On one hand, the idea of the individual became more abstract. Mass democracy became symptomatic of a general trend toward the dissolution of the individual within a mass population, which was incarnated as the aggregation of its group characteristics, its statistics, and data. On the other hand, states were becoming less solid; the …
Some Newly Emergent Geographies Of Injustice: Boundaries And Borders In International Law, Upendra V. Baxi
Some Newly Emergent Geographies Of Injustice: Boundaries And Borders In International Law, Upendra V. Baxi
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
This conversation examines the relationship between the boundaries and borders in international law and the production of geographies of injustice through the lens of the colonial epistemologies, especially of private international law in the face of mass social disasters like the archetypal Bhopal catastrophe. I also address the languages and logics of coloniality and postcoloniality, as states of consciousness and social organization, under the complex and contradictory unity of neoliberalism.
Statehood, Power, And The New Face Of Consent, Sheldon Leader
Statehood, Power, And The New Face Of Consent, Sheldon Leader
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
Individuals and groups are often subjected to power, both public and private, by eliciting their consent. Debate usually focuses on whether or not that consent is freely given or is vitiated by imbalances of strength between the bargaining parties. This essay focuses on a different issue, one that is largely passed over in legal and moral analyses: how far does and should consent bind one to accepting in advance changes in the future? There are signs of a fundamental shift in answering this question-a shift that particularly concerns the control of power in the economy. Industrial democracies may be abandoning …
Decentering Human Rights From The International Order Of States: The Alignment And Interaction Of Transnational Policy Channels, Radu G. Mares
Decentering Human Rights From The International Order Of States: The Alignment And Interaction Of Transnational Policy Channels, Radu G. Mares
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
This article accounts for recent developments in corporate social responsibility, international trade and investment law, international human rights law, development aid, and the laws of home states reaching extraterritorially in order to advance a regulatory perspective on commerce and human rights. While these developments are remarkable, the analysis documents the prevalence of softer strategies and a corresponding scarcity of coercive legalization strategies. The question, then, is how to reason about these recent developments and their genuine potential for human rights protection. The article proposes two elements-a root-cause orientation and the interaction of policy channels-as indispensable for a regulatory and systemic …
Human Rights And Global Public Goods: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?, Neil Walker
Human Rights And Global Public Goods: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?, Neil Walker
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
Each operating in a presumptively general or universal register, 'public goods" and "human rights" are among the most popular and visible contemporary carriers of ideas of global law and governance and are therefore prime sources for any broader project of global justice. Their combination, moreover, holds out the prospect of a fertile engagement between the two core concerns of modern political morality our collective requirements and potential (public goods) and our individual dignity and well-being (human rights). Yet for all their ambition, public goods and human rights each face the formidable challenge of placing considerations of political authority and political …
Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz
Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
At the heart of international law lies a central tension. On the one hand, the fundamental rights recognized in international treaties protect the fundamental interests of individuals, obligating all actors who can affect these rights. One the other hand, international law has often been conceived of as a system in which the only legitimate actors are states. In turn, only states can be bound by the fundamental rights obligations in international treaties. To address this tension, two models have been proposed. The first is an "Indirect duty" approach, whereby the state remains the primary duty-bearer and must itself "create" the …
One Pillar: Legal Authority And A Social License To Operate In A Global Context, Hans Lindahl
One Pillar: Legal Authority And A Social License To Operate In A Global Context, Hans Lindahl
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
The claim that businesses have a social license to operate acquires concrete form in the second pillar of the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the fundamental distinction between "compliance with all applicable laws" and "respect for human rights." The aim of this paper is to critically examine the presuppositions that undergird this distinction and to explain how and why moving beyond state-centered thinking about law, in response to violations of human rights by globally operating businesses, requires acknowledging that there is one pillar that embraces states and businesses: the legal obligation to comply with international …
To Whom It May Concern: International Human Rights Law And Global Public Goods, Daniel Augenstein
To Whom It May Concern: International Human Rights Law And Global Public Goods, Daniel Augenstein
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
Public goods and human rights are sometimes treated as intimately related, if not interchangeable, strategies to address matters of common global concern. The aim of the present contribution is to disentangle the two notions to shed some critical light on their respective potential to attend to contemporary problems of globalization. I distinguish the standard economic approach to public goods as a supposedly value-neutral technique to coordinate economic activity between states and markets from a political conception of human rights law that empowers individuals to partake in the definition of the public good. On this basis, I contend that framing global …