ABSTRACT
The changes in international reparations norms that followed did not merely reflect Great Power arguments about the scope of existing norms, or the working-out of dynamic tensions between them. The rise of indigenous rights exemplifies the triumph of human rights ideas over the anti-productivist utopias of the 1960s. In the 1990s and early 2000s South Africa was effectively the only African state to promote indigenous rights in pan-African fora. 'Norm cycle' scholars argue that arguments made by the Great Powers following shifts in the international order are crucial in modifying general rules to fit changed circumstances. Since the dual crisis of the 1970s rights have expanded beyond the domain of individual rights, and have begun to regulate inherently political conflicts about representation. Long-running and apparently irresolvable disputes are increasingly adjudicated in legal arenas using political criteria. This is the rule of lawyers, not the rule of law.
