Illan Rua Wall

On Pain and the Sense of Human Rights

Human rights law inscribes a relation between the political and suffering. This relation is twofold, it facilitates the radical aspect of human rights’ struggle against domination, but at the same time seems to reduce the human rights horizon to the short-term philantropism of humanitarianism. We will argue that this twofold structure is crucial to understanding human rights. We can begin to imagine a different, non-metaphysical, human rights through thinking a different concept of suffering with emphasis on ‘sense’ and ‘vulnerability’. This article is an attempt to think a future of human rights, a future which is not determined by possessive individualism and the closure of the subject.

Notes on an 'Open' Constituent Power

This article examines critical responses to the question of constituent power. Rather than a closed, meaning-giving moment, which originates the constitutional structure, the article looks at the various ways in which constituent power can be viewed as ‘‘open’’ and anti-underdetermined. It looks at two issues in particular: the ‘‘subject’’ of constituent power, and the nature of the ‘‘power’’ involved. The article concludes with the suggestion that we think of these works as a series of ‘‘strategic hypotheses’’ which might structure action, rather than a collection of ‘‘models’’ that would have to be applied faithfully to the world.

Book Review: Being Against the World: By Dr. Oscar Guardiola-Rivera. London: Birkbeck Law Press, 2009. 290 pages. £29.99 (Paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-45946-4

There is no doubt that an understanding of legal citation should be a part of legal training and that some nomenclature is essential, but the question is whether it is defensible for students to spend so much time on this narrow pursuit, one of ever declining value. This is especially so given that so few students know how to write. Just imagine if lawreview editors actually spent their hours of work internalizing the rules of grammar, not of arbitrary abbreviation. Until now, this task was frustrated by, among other things, the lack of a clear and authoritative guide. Books like the Chicago Manual of Style are too large and forbidding and not likely enough to quickly answer a student’s question when all alone in the library late at night. Into this void steps Joan Ames Magat’s The Lawyer’s Editing Manual. The book, modeled on the Bluebook and born of actual practice with law-review editors, answers all central and highly relevant questions about the art of writing, particularly legal writing. The answers are easy to find and to understand. A present hypothetical takes “were” (page 7), hyphenate compound modifiers (e.g., “law-review editor” – page 39), there is no reason not to start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction like “but” (page 12) etc. Best of all, Magat includes sensible advice as to how to proceed on matters that are sure to come up, particularly in legal writing, but admit of more than one answer. Does one put a comma before the last item in a series? Yes, Magat suggests, because this clarifies “that the last two items are not (or are) a pair” (page 27). How does one use “sic”? The better practice is generally to avoid repeating errors and adding “sic,” but instead one should just fix the quotation using brackets (pages 53–54). How does one introduce an abbreviation? Use parentheses after the first mention, but no need to put the abbreviation itself in quotation marks (page 87). No one need follow Magat’s advice on such matters, but one had best have a reason and, most importantly, one should adopt a consistent practice either way. I admit that all of the examples listed above have tripped me up at some point. Magat’s very succinct Manual should get at least as much attention from law students and other writers in law as the Bluebook – clear writing is connected to clear thinking, while maximally compressed citations are clearly connected to, well, I am not sure what.