ABSTRACT

As the human rights system has developed over the last fifty years, it has contributed to creating a global system of law, a new level of legal pluralism. Offences ranging from genocide and torture to discrimination against women and children are now governed by international conventions. These conventions, along with a wide variety of non-binding resolutions, declarations and policy statements, form a body of law and jurisprudence that exists outside and above state legal systems. The emergence of this global law poses new questions about the intersections among global, national and local levels of law. How does this global system interact with national and local level systems? How is global law imposed on states? Is it adopted locally, and if so, is it redefined to fit into local cultural understandings? When it is adapted to local situations, does its underlying system of meanings remain unchanged, or does it retain the emphasis on autonomy, choice, equality and secularism that is basic to the human rights system? These are values basic and compatible with global capitalism and neoliberalism as well, of course.