Sovereignty and Associative Obligations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron James
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
Associative Obligations ◽  
Rival View

Conservative American jurisprudence often staunchly maintains that each society—and especially the United States—enjoys an absolute right of sovereignty as against the constraints of international law. This position is often maintained in a philosophically dogmatic way—as a morally unsupported assertion that political authority can only have a domestic source. Yet the social contract tradition, especially in the work of Thomas Hobbes, but also in contemporary arguments by Michael Walzer, offers something of a principled defense of this view. This chapter will outline a fundamental alternative to this conservative position, also located within the social contract tradition. Domestic political authority, on this rival view, partly has its source in the larger state system that constitutes and defines the right of sovereignty with a political social practice of global scope.

On the Evolution of the Northwest Coast Indian Communities (A Soviet-American Discussion and Its Sequel)

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (51) ◽  
pp. 141-172
Author(s):  
Igor V. Kuznetsov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Class Theory ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Public Campaign ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
High Degree

The article is devoted to the discussion among Soviet and U.S. scholars about the social organization of the Indians of the Northwest Coast of North America. In the classic textbooks on “primitive history”, the Indians of this region—the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian and Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl)—are mentioned as examples of a high degree of social differentiation based on a (fishing and maritime) foraging economy and even as instances of pre-state structures. The proposed concepts were, to varying degrees, determined by external factors: personal political views, high-profile events, or government pressure. In 1897, Franz Boas recognized the potlatch ceremony—demonstrative exchanges of gifts and destructions of surplus, a practice exotic to Europeans—as an analogue of a credit operation. This interpretation, not empirically substantiated, originated from a public campaign to legalize potlatch. In the 1930s, Julia Averkieva, a Soviet intern of Boas, interpreted some fragments of her mentor’s teaching through the Marxist class theory framework, shifting the emphasis from potlatch to slavery: the Northwest Indians allegedly began the transition to slavery from a classless system in which the potlatch was an instrument for preserving property equality. Averkieva’s interpretation became canonical in the USSR, whilst also finding some reception outside the socialist camp. In the United States, relativistic cultural interpretations dominated; domestic evolutionary Marxist models were marginal and were not rooted in the Soviet tradition. However, after the collapse of the USSR, they also became part of the research mainstream, being criticized not only from the right, but also from the left—from anarchist viewpoints.

Protection of the right to social security of the migrant worker in international law

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-148
Author(s):  
Kehinde Anifalaje
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Migrant Worker ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Domestic Legislation ◽  
The Right ◽  
International Instruments

The right to social security is recognised as a basic human right in a number of international instruments. While most nations give recognition to social security rights and generally enforce them within the dictates of domestic legislation to their nationals, the narrative is different for non-nationals, particularly the migrant worker. The article examines the measures that have been deployed at international and regional levels to protect the social security rights of migrant workers, with particular attention to the regular ones. It argues that a number of factors, including the doctrines of territoriality and nationality, account for the marginalisation of the migrant worker in the enforcement of these rights. Some migrant-specific international instruments and series of bilateral and multilateral agreements to overcome these perceived challenges are being hindered by the low number of ratifying countries and disparities in the design and level of development of schemes for specific branches of social security across countries. The article concludes that the social security right of the migrant worker would be enhanced if more countries ratify, domesticate and enforce relevant international instruments on the social security rights of the migrant worker and complement same by a much more coordinated bilateral and multilateral social security agreements.

In The Face of Financialization: Cities and the Human Right to Adequate Housing

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Kaara Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Housing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Social Good ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Full Sense ◽  
The Right

The right to housing is a human right with broad but frequently overlooked implications, particularly in the urban environment. This difficulty is heightened in the context of what is known as the “financialization of housing”. Financialization involves the interconnections between global financial markets and housing, and, at the extreme, has prompted a climate in which housing is conceived less as a social good and more as a commodity. The result of the financialization turn is cities with a severe lack of affordable housing, a reality that is now a global phenomenon. This naturally leads to economic exclusions and displacements from cities, but, on a deeper level, also entails major collective consequences for the social and cultural fabric. Financialization thus threatens the right to housing in cities, particularly when the right is examined and understood in its full sense. And yet, cities have a duty to ensure the right to housing even in the face of financialization. Drawing on the jurisprudence of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights through its individual communications procedure, the European Court of Human Rights, and domestic cases from South Africa and the United States, this paper aims to elucidate this duty of cities in the realm of housing. A substantive rather than purely procedural shape of protection for the right to housing is pushed, which deliberates the connections between housing and the wider societal context, and the implicated concerns of resources, property, and urban community. In present times, our appreciation of home as a necessary nexus of safety, comfort, and productivity has come to the fore, as have our fears around economic insecurity, forcing us to confront and closely interrogate the right to housing.

Afterword Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-272
Author(s):  
Michael O. West
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Republic ◽  
To Come ◽  
A Charge

It is a truism that black folk in the United States are an international people. From the beginning of the republic, they were compelled by force of domestic (national) circumstances to internationalize their struggle for liberation, the founders having excluded them from the US social contract. The initial affidavit of exclusion is right there in the inaugural document of the social contract, the Declaration of Independence, which, ever so cryptically, damned the king of England for having “excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” This was an attack on the self-emancipatory activities of the enslaved descendants of Africa, who were exploiting the chaos caused by the anticolonial rebellion to claim their freedom, sometimes in cahoots with the British colonialists. Unable or unwilling to confront their own contradictions, the authors of the Declaration of Independence condemned the self-determination of the slaves as the doing of outside agitators, a charge that would be hurled at African American movements and activists for generations to come—up to the present time, in fact....

Applied Comparative Law: Researching Foreign Law in an Imperfect World

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Foreign Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
Anglo American

I admit that I am an addict, a compulsive user of libraries and especially law libraries. As a comparative lawyer I need to investigate foreign law, which for me is the law of jurisdictions outside the United States. Since I believe the social and cultural context in which law operates is important to its understanding, I must leave the relative comfort of United States libraries and venture abroad to learn about the features of legal systems not adequately described in books. Beyond common law countries, as the IALL 20th Annual Course illustrates, the language of law is something other than English: yet another hill to climb to understand foreign law. For most of you, United States law is foreign law, which is the other side of the same issue. In addition, public international law lawyers could benefit from the comparative approach. This is particularly true for those from the Anglo-American world who rely almost exclusively on English language materials in their research. This narrow perspective undercuts the fundamental premise of universality behind a truly international legal system.

THE PITFALLS OF UNILATERAL LEGISLATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: LESSONS FROM CONFLICT MINERALS LEGISLATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-717
Author(s):  
Phoebe Okowa
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Conflict Minerals ◽  
Meaningful Participation ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Eu

AbstractThis article examines the compatibility of the extraterritorial application of unilateral legislation with the project of international law. Focusing on two instruments, the Dodd-Frank Act passed by the United States Congress and intended to regulate the activities of US listed companies operating in the Congo and the EU conflict minerals legislation, the article challenges their underlying premises that revenues from natural resources perpetuate conflict and resulting human rights abuses. In so far as these instruments make no provision for meaningful participation by the foreign populations which are the objects of legislation, it is argued that there is a tension between these unilateral instruments and the basic premises of law-making in international law as a democratic enterprise centred around governmental representation. By exclusively directing sanctions and other disciplinary measures at rebels, both legislative instruments have the problematic effect of strengthening the exploitation of natural resources by kleptocratic regimes and undermining the right of populations in conflict zones to civil disobedience as an inescapable component of their right of self-determination.

US Welfare Reform: Rewriting the Social Contract

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEIL GILBERT
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Public Assistance ◽  
Welfare Policy ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Deficit Reduction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Right ◽  
Temporary Assistance ◽  
Welfare Reforms

AbstractThis paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

Benign Discrimination and the Right to Equality

1974 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Evans
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Formal Expression ◽  
Gareth Evans ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

Governments have been increasingly preoccupied with the task of reconciling claims to preferential treatment with the principle of equality. The social and philosophical issues raised by this apparent paradox are considered, and the compatibility of benign discrimination with the concept of equality demonstrated by developing a complex normative notion of equality. An analysis is then undertaken of the various attempts made by lawyers, in nearly one hundred existing bills of rights, to give formal expression to these principles. Ultimately the problem of benign discrimination falls for resolution by the courts, and the jurisprudence developed in this respect by the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States is critically discussed and compared. Having exhaustively developed an appreciation of world experience regarding the interaction of bills of rights equality clauses and benign discrimination, consideration is given to the formulation of the Australian Human Rights Bill—a bill of which Gareth Evans was one of the principal draftsmen.

scholarly journals The Magical Theory of Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egil Asprem
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Effervescence ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Resource ◽  
Charismatic Authority ◽  
The Right

The election of the 45th president of the United States set in motion a hidden war in the world of the occult. From the meme-filled underworld of alt-right-dominated imageboards to a widely publicized “binding spell” against Trump and his supporters, the social and ideological divides ripping the American social fabric apart are mirrored by witches, magicians, and other esotericists fighting each other with magical means. This article identifies key currents and developments and attempts to make sense of the wider phenomenon of why and how the occult becomes a political resource. The focus is on the alt-right’s emerging online esoteric religion, the increasingly enchanted notion of “meme magic,” and the open confrontation between different magical paradigms that has ensued since Trump’s election in 2016. It brings attention to the competing views of magical efficacy that have emerged as material and political stakes increase, and theorizes the religionizing tendency of segments of the alt-right online as a partly spontaneous and partially deliberate attempt to create “collective effervescence” and galvanize a movement around a charismatic authority. Special focus is given to the ways in which the politicized magic of both the left and the right produce “affect networks” that motivate political behaviors through the mobilization of (mostly aversive) emotions.

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