The Spirit of Laws is Not Universal: Alternatives to the Enforcement Paradigm for Human Rights

Drawing on the contested legacy of Montesquieu in 'The Spirit of the Laws', this essay questions the efficacy of state-centric legality in the enforcement of human rights, and proposes an alternative approach of cultural transformation and political mobilization. The author begins by exploring whether Montesquieu’s thought may have inspired European powers to seek to impose his model of the nation-state and its positive laws through global colonial projects. Second, the author discusses the structural inadequacy of the current treaty-based state-centric enforcement paradigm while highlighting the viability of a universally realistic alternative of cultural transformation and political mobilization for the implementation of consensus-based human rights norms. Third, the author explores his proposed people-centered alternative to the state-centric enforcement model for human rights. This paradigm shift is necessary because the current legalistic approach has totally failed in providing any protection of human rights for the vast majority of humanity around the world

Ordem política e sujeito de direito no debate sobre direitos humanos Political order and subject of right in the debate about human rights

O debate teórico sobre os direitos humanos durante os anos noventa é analisado a partir de dois eixos: a ordem política que garante esses direitos e a relação do sujeito à regra de direito. Estes eixos têm como pontos extremos: o primeiro, a ordem estatal e a ordem global e o segundo, uma concepção institucional e uma concepção sociológica da relação do sujeito à regra de direito. Isso permite identificar quatro posições polares, juntamente com os problemas teóricos e práticos que enfrentam.<br>The theoretical debate about human rights during the nineties is analyzed according to two axis: the political order that grants those rights and the relation between the subject and the rule of law. The ultimate questions those axis point out are: first, the state order and the global order and, second, an institutional conception and a sociological conception about how the subject is related to the rule of law. Four polar positions are, then, identified, along with the theoretical and practical problems they face