International Law from Below

Human Rights, Hegemony, and Utopia in Latin America

“…This insistence on approaching issues of human rights "from below" is closely related to that suggested by Balakrishnan Rajagopal (2003) as to international law, and by Boaventura Sousa Santos and César A. Rodríguez Garavito (2007) as to the overall relationship between law and processes of globalization. This perspective is rooted in the critical insight suggested by thinkers such as Amartya Sen, Thomas Pogge, and Pierre Sané, and by social movements such as those led by Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev.…”

Dreams and Nightmares of Liberal International Law: Capitalist Accumulation, Natural Rights and State Hegemony

“…As postcolonial and 'third world' approaches to the theorisation of international law point out, both the language of international law (in terms of human rights, self-determination, sovereignty) and institutions of various UN agencies have played an important role in pushing back against American hegemonic power and in imagining alternative forms of a possible international law of the future (Anghie 2005;Rajagopal 2003;Barreto 2013). While the various histories of postcolonial counter-hegemonic contestation over the nature of international law have not always been successful, their radical emancipatory heritage speaks still as much to the future of international law, and the nature of 'development', as it does to the past.…”

Inherent Dignity: The Essence of Human Rights (or How to Get from Dignity to Political Power)

“…It is a second, quite differently perceived configuration that ''empowers'' civil community, specifically in its human rights garb, enjoining it to go over, so to speak, the state's authority; to address and mobilize the international stratum, instead of the state, in order to enforce that which is due individuals as dignity-bearing beings. This perspective has been taken to an impressive, perhaps surprising, unconventional level in the work of Balakrishnan Rajagopal (2003), who faults the institution of international law, as it exists today, for recognizing states and the more formal versions of human rights organizations (''NGOization''), and only them, rather than other more grass-root groups and bodies of civil community, in its dealings with human rights. Surprising -since Rajagopal finds moral justification for the opposition against even development and democratization of many civil community groups, claiming that these constructs (democratization and developments) are traditional, state-sponsored agendas of the old, colonial guard.…”