Rene Provost

Introduction: Human Rights Through Legal Pluralism

At first glance, human rights and legal pluralism make strange bedfellows. To begin with, they are not conceptual analogues: the first is normative in its essence, capturing a bundle of rights reflecting the interests most fundamental to any human being; the second is conceptual, offering a model of how to construct legal normativity in a society. There are, beyond this distinct nature, further layers of difference which separate rather than unite notions of human rights and legal pluralism, explaining the fact that studies on human rights rarely have embraced a legal pluralism approach and, conversely, that legal pluralistic analysis by and large focuses on norms other than human rights. This book interrogates the chasm that seems to exist between these two notions, to highlight the potential for legal pluralism to bring innovative perspectives to our understanding of human rights, which have become a critical component of modern legal systems. Human rights have experienced momentous growth during the post-World War II era. At the international, state, and local levels, human rights laws, declarations, charters, and covenants have multiplied and endorsed a recurring core of rights and obligations linked to the protection of fundamental human dignity, equality and justice. Nevertheless, there has been a growing concern that simply ratifying or legislating human rights conventions and laws does not lead to the effective enjoyment of human rights in the daily lives of millions of individuals. Legal pluralism offers an approach that translates abstract and broad human rights standards into the vernacular of everyday life, transplanting these norms into ordinary human relations where they can truly achieve their transformative potential.

E Pluribus Unum – Bhinneka Tunggal Ika? Universal Human Rights and the Fragmentation of International Law

The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly in 1948 has been presented as a global embrace of human rights, reflecting an international community united in a coherent statement of its aspiration to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of every individual and, to some extent, groups. The Universal Declaration is now commonly seen as having achieved customary status, and thus to be applicable to every state. To what extent does this signal the existence of a unified human rights regime under international law? Does a finding that the human rights regime is fragmented necessarily lead to the conclusion that it cannot be considered universal? We will argue that universality and unity represent distinct conceptual propositions. A pluralistic understanding of universality, far from an oxymoron, offers a model in which regime fragmentation actually sustains universal values in a manner more effective than a unified regime grounded in nowhere in particular, if not nowhere at all.

Moving from Repression to Prevention of Genocide

Much of history is a tale of humankind’s capacity for organized cruelty and violence . Far from being an aberration, conquest and war have been defining features of our collective past, integral to our conceptions of triumph and heroism . Indeed, the infliction of suffering on others has rarely been considered as necessarily evil. Rather, mass violence is always justified by appealing to higher ideals, if not the sacred. In this somber tale of history, the modern era holds a place of distinction. It is an era in which ancient murderous instincts reached a new stage of perfection, in the ideological guise of progress and civilization. Beyond atavistic hatred , totalitarianism ushered in a new age of extremes that made the violence of the past pale in comparison. It inspired the word “genocide”; a word that captured the transformation of the once unthinkable into historical reality. The challenge in our times is to consider whether this scourge is inevitable, or whether it can be prevented.

Putting the “con” back in the constitution

Edward John Schaefer had been an inmate at the San Quentin State Prison in California for just a few days when, coming out in the yard to enjoy the summer sunshine, he was killed by another inmate....