From Crisis to Quotidian: Countering the Temporal Myopia of Jus Cogens
THE TIMES AND TEMPORALITIES OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW (Kathryn McNeilly and Ben Warwick, eds., Hart 2022), https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/times-and-temporalities-of-international-human-rights-law-9781509949908/
16 Pages Posted: 19 Sep 2022
Date Written: September 15, 2022
Abstract
The doctrine of jus cogens has a paradoxical relationship with crisis. In a sense, the doctrine is impervious to crisis due to the non-derogable nature of jus cogens norms: States cannot suspend their obligations with respect to such norms during an emergency. Notwithstanding, the doctrine seems to be constituted and governed by a crisis temporality. Indeed, this chapter argues that jus cogens instantiates international human rights law’s well-established prioritisation of crisis and is underpinned by the discipline’s myopic temporal scheme. The chapter then proposes and applies an alternative temporal approach to inform the doctrine and support the identification of ‘everyday’ jus cogens norms, not dictated by crisis.
Keywords: international human rights, temporality, jus cogens, feminist theory, crisis
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