Claiming Rights across Borders

International Human Rights and Democratic Sovereignty

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3137792
AutoresSeyla Benhabib (0000-0002-7318-028X, Yale University, autor correspondente)
Ano2009
Volume103
Fascículo4
Páginas691-704
Data de publicação2009-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003055409990244
OpenAlexW2129560319
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas68
Referências citadas56

The status of international law and transnational legal agreements with respect to the sovereignty claims of liberal democracies has become a highly contentious theoretical and political issue. Although recent European discussions focus on global constitutionalism, there is increasing reticence on the part of many that prospects of a world constitution are neither desirable nor salutary. This article more closely considers criticisms of these legal transformations by distinguishing the nationalist from democratic sovereigntiste positions, and both, from diagnoses that see the universalization of human rights norms either as the Trojan horse of a global empire or as neocolonialist intentions to assert imperial control over the world. These critics ignore "the jurisgenerativity of law." Although democratic sovereigntistes are wrong in minimizing how human rights norms improve democratic self-rule; global constitutionalists are also wrong in minimizing the extent to which cosmopolitan norms require local contextualization, interpretation, and vernacularization by self-governing peoples

Constitution · Constitutionalism · Cosmopolitanism · Democracy · Human rights · International human rights law · International law · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Popular sovereignty · Sociology · Sovereignty · Universalization · International Law and Human Rights · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics