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St. Thomas Law Review

First Page

155

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Despite the prominent contemporary phenomenon of globalization, it has proven difficult for globalists to converge and harmonize fundamental differences in values and belief systems, both within and across national boundaries. Thus, notwithstanding the efforts of human rights advocates and international regime architects, there is as yet no universal consensus as to the existence of a "set of rights and duties that cannot be derogated in the interests of nationality, race, religion, ethnicity or other competing claimants upon individual and group loyalty." The vacuum created by the absence of consensus as to the exact parameters of a corpus of nonderogable rights and duties becomes a space for contestation, at the level of the international system as well as within domestic regimes, even if many human rights norms are widely accepted by a number of states. Bosnia and Kosovo are captivating in no small measure because they are exceptional; most conflicts inspired by efforts to delineate rights and duties are managed not by force but by law. While the naked application of force is proscribed by existing legal regimes and institutions, law, the most important social variable in the globalizing international system, is nevertheless directly "implicated in the production of institutionalized powerlessness and marginalization. '' With subordination in the New International Economic Order now operant across a wider range of conceptual divisions than ever before, the role of law in buttressing privilege and imposing oppression has become all the more subtle and complex, as has the project of reconfiguring law and legal institutions.

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