No abstract

Much has been made of the Agambenian framework of exception and the regime of legal suspension it establishes. This paper ethnographically examines the hard work that is required to produce legal suspension within the parameters of the law by looking at the practice of property restitution of transitional institutions in post‐war Kosovo. Kosovo’s ‘black hole state’ reveals how the legal bureaucracies established to usher in human rights serve to perpetuate the state of suspension rather than realising their utopian goals.

No abstract

Political leaders and legal thinkers across the globe have unanimously defended the rule of law as an essential, universal good. In fact, it has become "the preeminent legitimating political ideal in the world today" (Tamanaha 2004: 4), as compelling as it is seemingly self-evident: a "ubiquitous and 'natural' formulation" (Rajkovic 2010: 35).Yet the rule of law eludes any clear definition. Whether the rule of law includes the protection of individual rights or ideals of democracy, whether it is to be understood in strictly formalistic terms (i.e. abiding by written legal rules and limiting law-making power), or whether it refers to the conditions for the fulfillment of humanity's "legitimate aspirations and dignity" (International Commission of Jurists 1959: vii, in Tamanaha 2004: 2) remains open to question. What is clear, however, is that the more the rule of law is invoked (and the more money is spent on its realization worldwide), the more concerns emerge regarding its forms of implementation, especially in contexts of post-conflict and massive humanitarian responses.Since the early 1990s, humanitarian and "transitional" settings have been underpinned by a lingua franca of combined economic and legal development in the name of the rule of law. International donors started seeing the rule of law (in terms of government accountability and transparency, and the independence of the judiciary) as indispensable for, and inseparable from, economic development and the creation of a "'level playing field' for economic actors" (Channell 2005: 3). The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed the implementation of the rule of law as a condition of financial assistance on recipient countries, and millions have been spent on legal reforms, largely via humanitarian channels, in places such as Kosovo, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Moreover, a renewed United Nations focus on civilian protection has led humanitarian actors to postulate a strong link between protection and the rule of law, and thus to include access to justice programs geared at displaced and war-affected populations in their postwar reconstruction efforts.

No abstract