Regime-Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law

Predictions of future events tend to be a rarity within the social sciences. It is an even more rare occurrence when predicted events come to pass. Niklas Luhmann\u27s prediction on the future of global law is a memorable exception. In 1971, while theorizing on the concept of world society, Luhmann allowed himself the speculative hypothesis that global law would experience a radical fragmentation, not along territorial, but along social sectoral lines. The reason for this would be a transformation from normative (politics, morality, law) to cognitive expectations (economy, science, technology); a transformation that would be effected during the transition from nationally organized societies to a global society

Regime-Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law

Predictions of future events tend to be a rarity within the social sciences. It is an even more rare occurrence when predicted events come to pass. Niklas Luhmann\u27s prediction on the future of global law is a memorable exception. In 1971, while theorizing on the concept of world society, Luhmann allowed himself the speculative hypothesis that global law would experience a radical fragmentation, not along territorial, but along social sectoral lines. The reason for this would be a transformation from normative (politics, morality, law) to cognitive expectations (economy, science, technology); a transformation that would be effected during the transition from nationally organized societies to a global society

Gramsci reconsidered : hegemony in global law

"Entre direitos iguais, a força decide", proferiu karl marx ao descrever a antinomia do direito em situações antagônicas das relações de produção capitalistas, em que "o direito [oferece resistência] ao direito" nesse ponto, marx aborda uma questão que se situa no centro de todas as teorias jurídicas críticas: que tipo de violência é velada por meio do mecanismo de ocultação denominado "direito"? Para responder a esta questão, tentar-se-á, a seguir, tornar a teoria da hegemonia de antonio gramsci e seu modelo de direito hegemônico produtivos para o campo da teoria do direito. Tal tarefa tem de lidar com a dupla dificuldade de que, por um lado, gramsci não foi um teórico do direito no sentido mais estrito, razão pela qual o potencial de sua teoria para uma análise do direito raramente foi utilizada. Por outro lado, sua abordagem só pode ser empregada por meio de uma crítica às restrições relacionadas a seu tempo. isso se aplica especialmente à sua concepção de economia como a base e a núcleo essencialista oculto (laclau; mouffe, 2001:69), assim como à sua ideia de 'classismo' sob a forma de um enfoque unilateral das classes, em que há preferencialmente mais de um "pluralismo de poder" e inúmeras lutas (litowitz, 2000: 536). Recuperar-se-á, consequentemente, argumentos-chave, ampliando-os pela utilização das recentes descobertas feitas pelas abordagens feminista e neomaterialista da teoria jurídica, bem como as análises de foucault acerca das tecnologias de poder. por fim, uma interpretação da teoria sistêmica das autonomizações comunicativas."Between equal rights, force decides," said karl marx, describing the antinomy of law in antagonistic situations of capitalist production relations, in which "law [stands] against law". he here addresses a question that lies at the centre of all critical legal theories: what violence is blurred in the medium of the concealment mechanism called 'law'? To answer this question, we shall attempt below to make antonio gramsci's hegemony theory and his model of a hegemonic law fertile for the theory of law. This task has to cope with the twofold difficulty that on the one hand gramsci was no theoretician of law in the narrower sense, which is why the potential of his theory for an analysis of law has only seldom been made use of. On the other, his approach can only be taken up through a critique of restrictions associated with his times. This applies particularly to his conception of the economy as the basis and as the concealed essentialist core (laclau/mouffe 2001: 69), as well as to his 'classism' in the form of a one-sided focusing on classes, where there is instead more of a "pluralism of power" and a multiplicity of struggles (litowitz 2000: 536). We shall accordingly regain key arguments by extending them using current findings of feminist and neo-materialist approaches to legal theory, as well as foucault's analyses of power technologies and finally a systems-theory interpretation of communicative autonomizations

Reply to Andreas L. Paulus Consensus as Fiction of Global Law

Andreas Paulus reminds us correctly that narratives of a world of sovereign states loosely cooperating in \u27coalitions of the willing\u27 no longer tell the whole story. One of the achievements of the 20th century has been the insertion of a vertical dimension within horizontal international law; a dimension created by the ICJ\u27s Traction decision and the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, and within which we can observe obligations arising for states without or against their will. Any narrative that characterizes these legal norms as a simple product of interstate consensus is particularly thin if analysis focuses upon the genesis of international legal norms. Real world processes are far more complex: states are only one of many actors who seek to invoke the existence of international legal norms, and even the ICJ accentuates generalizability rather than real-world uniformity

Reply to Andreas L. Paulus Consensus as Fiction of Global Law

Andreas Paulus reminds us correctly that narratives of a world of sovereign states loosely cooperating in \u27coalitions of the willing\u27 no longer tell the whole story. One of the achievements of the 20th century has been the insertion of a vertical dimension within horizontal international law; a dimension created by the ICJ\u27s Traction decision and the Vienna Convention of the Law of Treaties, and within which we can observe obligations arising for states without or against their will. Any narrative that characterizes these legal norms as a simple product of interstate consensus is particularly thin if analysis focuses upon the genesis of international legal norms. Real world processes are far more complex: states are only one of many actors who seek to invoke the existence of international legal norms, and even the ICJ accentuates generalizability rather than real-world uniformity