ABSTRACT
On 16 October 1998, British police arrested the former Chilean head of state General Augusto Pinochet in London in response to an extradition request issued by a Spanish judge. The House of Lords decisions and the public debates that followed this arrest in the months that followed brought out a number of issues related to unilateral attempts by individual states to enforce justice norms that are incorporated in international law and carry universal jurisdiction provisions. It exposes the central confl ict between order and justice that are both values incorporated in the rules of international society at a concrete level: Chile’s sovereign right to grant immunity to its former state offi cial confl icted with the UK’s attempt to extradite him to Spain to face prosecution for international human rights abuses.1 The case can be seen as an example of the norm life cycle’s second stage, the norm cascade, which follows the initial institutionalization of new norms into international law. International human rights norms have emerged, given legal specifi city in the cycle’s fi rst stage and thereby provide the normative context which shapes states’ identities and behaviour. In line with the norm cascade the UK and Spain engaged in norm affi rming action by applying these codifi ed justice norms in their justifi cations for prosecuting Pinochet in their national courts. The House of Lords decisions have great political signifi cance, because for the fi rst time a UK court exercised jurisdiction over a matter that did not directly involve UK nationals or interests, but international human rights concerns.
