Guilherme Leite Gonçalves

The global constitutionalization of human rights: Overcoming contemporary injustices or juridifying old asymmetries?

Recent decades are marked by an impressive expansion of actors and legal structures intended to globally extend a certain ‘Western’ catalog of human rights. Recently, too, legal scholars have developed concepts to justify normatively the expansion of human rights (e.g. Habermas, Walker, Koskenniemi). This article reviews recent legal literature on global constitutionalization of human rights to reveal its blind spots, at two levels: i) the reaffirmation of European precedency for establishing the sources of human rights and ii) a lack of sociological tools for describing interpenetrations between law, power and social inequalities. In order to empirically illustrate these objections, the article analyses the recent global expansion of human rights of minorities, using two examples: cases treated by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Brazilian legalization of ancestral territories of afro-descendants. Finally, the article argues for a decentered perspective that (at the local level) connects human rights with concrete claims for justice.

O ILUMINISMO NO BANCO DOS RÉUS: DIREITOS UNIVERSAIS, HIERARQUIAS REGIONAIS E RECOLONIZAÇÃO

This paper presents a critique on the process of universalization of law, designed by the illuminist project, and foundation for both the modern understanding of human rights and the definition of juridical-political patterns of development for different areas of world society. The critique is drawn from the reception of post-colonial studies in the area of sociology of law. Based on the notion of neocolonialism, contradictions in universal juridical discourse are identified, since its unitary moral foundation becomes a means for establishment of regional hierarchies and re-colonization of southern juridical practices. In conclusion, the alternative global law project based on the notion of heterogeneity is confronted with the authoritarian character of dominant juridical universalism.