ABSTRACT

In this lecture I examine recent debates concerning the emergence of cosmopolitan norms which protect individuals’ rights regardless of their citizenship status on the one hand, and the spread of what some have called “global law without a state” on the other. What many see as the rise of a new human rights regime, others condemn as the spread of empire or of a global police-state which imposes similar norms on all self-determining societies.

I distinguish between the spread of human rights norms and the emergence of deterritorialized legal regimes, by focusing on the relationship between global capitalism and legal developments. Although both cosmopolitan norms and deterritorialized law challenge nation-states by escaping the consent of the legislatures, I argue that “cosmopolitan norms” can enhance popular sovereignty while other forms of global law do not do so. The latter “fragment the public sphere” and create “privatized” norms of justification.

I end by pleading for a normative vision of “republican federalism” and “democratic iterations,” which interact between the local, the national and the global.

The “translation work” that would be required to think of this paper in the context of Israel is something which I am looking forward to during our conference. Clearly, Israel is a “post- and pre-Westphalian state.” It shows all the markers of established sovereignty and military power and is party to any of a number of international conventions and human rights treaties; yet, since 1948 its borders have been contested and its sovereignty questioned. Israel lives in multiple time-zones of legality and politics all at once: pre- and post-Westphalian sovereignty.

At the same time, Israeli society is dynamic, global, and multicultural. It is part of the global economic and technological system; in fact, it is one of the most dynamic economies in the region extending from Egypt to India (with the possible exception of Turkey). This economic vitality engenders its own problems such as those of migrant workers, growth triangles and lex mercatoria discussed in pp. 7- 19 of my paper.

Please focus on pp. 1-19; 24-30.