Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

International Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Maurer School of Law: Indiana University

Political Science

Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in International Law

Fractured Territories And Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within And Beyond The State, Larry Catá Backer Jan 2016

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 Jan 2016

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 Jan 2016

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 …


Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz Jan 2016

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 …