scholarly journals ‘Ourworld’: A feminist approach to global constitutionalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-75
Author(s):  
RUTH HOUGHTON ◽  
AOIFE O’DONOGHUE
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
International Law ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Governance System ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Constitutionalism

Abstract:Global constitutionalism offers a utopian picture of the future of international law. Its advocates suggest a governance system is emergent that will fill the gaps in legitimacy, democracy and the rule of law present in international law. Speculation about the future of international law is shaped, partly at least, by global constitutionalism aspiring to create a better global legal order, by filling these legitimacy gaps with both normative and procedural constitutionalism. But this raises the question ‘better for whom’? Feminist theory has challenged the foundations of both international law and constitutionalism; demonstrating that the design of normative structures accommodates and sustains prevailing patriarchal forms that leave little room for alternative accounts or voices. Both international and constitutional law’s structures support the status quo and are resistant to critical and feminist voices. The question is whether it is possible for constitutionalism to change international law in ways that will open it up to alternate possibilities. Building on a seven-point manifesto of feminist constitutionalism, previously proffered by the authors, which inculcated feminist concerns into global constitutionalism, this article offers an alternative starting point: feminist science fiction. Feminist utopian tracts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness offer valuable lessons for global constitutionalist discourses. The article uses feminist utopias in science fiction to better understand how to dismantle hierarchical structures, how to build feminist societies, and how to find approaches to governance not predicated on patriarchy. It does so by focusing on feminist alternatives for constructing communities, for understanding constituent power and constituent moments, and dismantling manifestations of the public/private divide. This article demonstrates that reading feminist utopian science fiction facilitates the reimagining of global constitutionalism.

Claiming Rights across Borders: International Human Rights and Democratic Sovereignty

2009 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEYLA BENHABIB
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Constitutionalism ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Human Rights Norms

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.

scholarly journals THE STATUS AND POSITION OF THE VATICAN AND THE POPE AT INTERNATIONAL LAW: TRYING TO FIT A RELIGIOUS SQUARE PEG INTO A LEGAL CIRCLE?

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sipho Nkosi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Final Word ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
Minimum Requirements

The final word has not been spoken on the position and status of the Vatican; nor have the intricacies and complexities of its relationship with the Holy See been exhaustively ventilated. In the present writer’s view, the debate as to whether the Vatican, or the Holy See, meets the requirements for statehood will rage on into the future. However, this article does not pretend to be definitive. It merely seeks to demonstrate how international-law concepts and phenomena are being stretched (sometimes beyond their limit) in order to accommodate the Vatican. The Vatican does not meet the minimum requirements for statehood; but it continues to be accorded, by the community of nations, the kind of recognition that more deserving entities such as Taiwan, the Palestine and Somaliland are being denied. Its officials and functionaries enjoy sovereign immunity in the courts of fully-fledged nation states which those of the aforementioned nascent states do not enjoy. 

Organic Global Constitutionalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE E. J. SCHWÖBEL
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The Future ◽  
Global Constitutionalism

AbstractGlobal constitutionalism is becoming increasingly prevalent in international legal discourse. While the various contributions give the impression of a seemingly complex and diverse debate, the contributions in fact all share some significant omissions and biases. It is argued here that the limitations, to be found in the disregard for processes such as fragmentation, and the biases, to be found through such realities as hegemony in international law, give rise to the necessity of a reconceptualization of the global constitutional debate. It is suggested that global constitutionalism should be reconfigured in terms of what is called ‘organic global constitutionalism’. Organic global constitutionalism should be understood as being defined by constitutionalism as process, constitutionalism as political, constitutionalism as a ‘negative universal’, and constitutionalism as a promise for the future. These features would offer an alternative way of framing the debate and a means of redeeming the idea of global constitutionalism.

scholarly journals The Impact of Thoughts in the Creation of International Law Rules: From Former Thinkers to the Future Scholars

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Roghieh Ebrahimi ◽  
Hossein Sharifi Tarazkouhi
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
International System ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Essential Component ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Impact

International law as one of the human sciences which has been formed in the light of governments’ needs for regulation of relations and pertinences is a set of rules which based on the increasing complexity of international life; it has been added to its importance gradually. The international nature of rules in this science leads the main followers of international system namely government to be identified as drafters of aforementioned rules. In this research we will discussed about the status of human thoughts as the smallest subjects of international system and we try to prove this hypothesis that human thoughts had been an essential component in the formation of rules in the international legal system.

scholarly journals Breakout Session: International Treaties, Copyright Law, and the Future of the U.S.A. Presented by Kenneth D. Crews, attorney, Gipson Hoffman and Pancione.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Posie Aagaard
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Breakout Session ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status

Nearly every nation in the world enacts laws that explicitly govern domestic copyright, dictating rights reserved for authors and specifying other important legal terms. Both geographical borders and the less well-defined borders of the internet affect determinations of copyright. On a global scale, nations enact international copyright treaties to achieve harmonization of certain aspects of copyright law that would otherwise create challenges or conflicts in enforcement of policies between individual nations. However, member nations may need to adjust domestic laws to bring them into alignment with the terms of the international treaties. International law expert Dr. Kenneth Crews discussed the evolution of copyright law and described how precedents set by some nations historically influenced geographic and sociopolitical peers. He also discussed how existing international copyright treaties address issues that continue to reveal weaknesses or compelling needs that cannot easily be served through existing copyright law. Lastly, Dr. Crews provided an update on the landmark 2013 Marrakesh VIP Treaty, which establishes special copyright provisions to accommodate individuals with print disabilities, and reported on his work commissioned by WIPO to study the status of copyright law exceptions in nations around the world.

scholarly journals The Mechanics of Engenderneering

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Schwartzman
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Gendered Identity ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
Science Fiction Films

THE MECHANICS OF ENGENDERNEERING: CYBORGS AND ALIENS AS MANUFACTURED EVIL IN SCIENCE-FICTION FILM This essay examines a process called engenderneering, which can be understood as personification with a twist: the investiture of non-human entities with a gendered identity. Science fiction films, despite their futuristic settings, often associate gender markers with assignments of moral value. Manufactured life forms such as robots and cyborgs highlight the extent that gender markers serve as necessary or sufficient determinants of an entity's value. Aliens, although not bound to human gender constraints, still tend to retain explicit, conventional signs of gender. To avoid projecting the negative associations of femininity into the future, perhaps science fiction narratives could transcend gender as a two-valued concept. The american novelist Ursula LeGuin raised a question whether gender was necessary to define an entity as human. To answer this question, LeGuin created in The Left Hand of Darkness the hermaphroditic...

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

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