ABSTRACT
The rationalists’ picture takes too little account of the internalizing, normative, or constitutive impact of participating in the transnational legal process. For the rationalists, the decision to obey the law remains perpetually calculated, never internally felt. A theory of the transnational legal process seeks to enforce international norms by motivating nation-states to obey international human rights law as opposed to merely conforming to or complying with specific international legal rules when the state finds it convenient. The principal enforcers of the human rights law have always been nation-states, who have always interacted with one another on an interstate, government-to-government level. The “vertical” story of human rights enforcement is a much richer picture: one that focuses on a transnational legal process that includes a different set of actors, fora, and transactions. The vertical step is for national governments to internalize norm-interpretations issued by the global interpretive community into their domestic bureaucratic and political structures.
