Transnational Human Rights: Exploring the Persistence and Globalization of Human Rights

Abstract

This review considers how a socio-legal approach may be used to explore the relationship between human rights and law in the new century. Drawing on the classic traditions of law and society research, including gap studies, rights consciousness, public interest lawyering, and legal resource mobilization, as well as more recent approaches to legal globalization and epistemic communities or nongovernment networks, this paper begins to define a field of transnational human rights. The review traces the idea of transnational human rights to the struggles between social movements, in national and international fora, and the impact these struggles have had on the relationship between state power or sovereignty and the quest for legitimate and effective forms of governance. A key element of this endeavor, the paper concludes, is the need to integrate and understand the interaction between three traditionally separate domains of rights: international human rights, humanitarian law, and constitutional rights. It is this focus that defines the emerging field of transnational human rights.