In this concluding article, Gunther Teubner addresses his critics.

This contribution explores how much state is necessary to make societal constitutionalism work. I first ask why the idea of a global societal constitutionalism ‘beyond the state-and-politics’ might be viewed as a significant and controversial, but nonetheless justified innovation. In the second part I discuss what Teubner calls ‘the inclusionary effects of fundamental rights’. I argue that Teubner underplays the mediating role of the state in guaranteeing inclusion or access, and in a way presupposes well-functioning states in the background. In areas of limited statehood there is a problem of enforcing fundamental rights law. It is an open question whether, and under which conditions, constitutional norms within particular global social spheres can provide enough counter-weight when state constitutional norms are lacking.

Violations of human rights by transnational corporations and by other ‘private’ global actors raise problems that signal the limits of the traditional doctrine of ‘horizontal effects’. To overcome them, constitutional law doctrine needs to be complemented by perspectives from legal theory and sociology of law. This allows new answers to the following questions: What is the validity basis of human rights in transnational ‘private’ regimes – extraterritorial effect, colère public or external pressures on autonomous law making in global regimes? Do they result in protective duties of the states or in direct human rights obligations of private transnational actors? What does it mean to generalise state-directed human rights and to respecify them for different social spheres? Are societal human rights limited to ‘negative’ rights or is institutional imagination capable of developing ‘positive’ rights – rights of inclusion and participation in various social fields? Are societal human rights directed exclusively against corporate actors or can they be extended to counteract structural violence of anonymous social processes? Can such broadened perspectives of human rights be re-translated into the practice of public interest litigation?

This contribution raises two questions with regard to Teubner’s view on human rights. First and foremost, it asks how one might conceive of modern society as a threat to human beings. Attention is brought to bear on Teubner’s attempt to describe society as a matter of communication, and more specifically as a set of one-sided communication systems. In this regard, I scrutinise the attempt to describe the threat of society in terms of inclusion/exclusion and criticise the vacuity of the concept of inclusion. Secondly, it questions Teubner’s description of human beings that demand justice and protection by human rights. Are their demands about the bare existence of body and mind? Moreover, are these concerns identical to worries about the destruction of human presuppositions for the self-reproduction of functional social systems, as Teubner suggests? Against Teubner, I contend that human rights are actually about social human beings that ask for justice as acting beings, which claim does not coincide with presuppositions of societal subsystems.

Examining the function of human rights in the semiosphere requires a strategy of differentiation: the dissolution of politics into political moments (politics, it is argued, is not a system, but a form of discourse); the distinction between discourse and communication; the concept of systemic paranomic functionings. Paranomia is a situation generated by the pathological closure of discourses, in which knowledge of valid and observed norms obscures power. Fundamental rights are the movement of communication, claims about redistributing powers, directed against paranomic functionings. Rethinking the debate about the third party effect implies that validity and coherence must be differentiated for the development of the ‘matrix argument’.

This article presents some critical comments concerning the conceptual, normative and institutional foundations of Teubner’s plea for a ‘common law constitution’. My comments question the desirability of the means chosen for attaining this objective as well as their efficacy. In particular, I have difficulties with the ambivalent role that is assigned to man, either as a person or as a human being; with the reduction of social problems to problems of communication; and, finally and most importantly, with the attempt to conceive of law and politics beyond established legal and political institutions, which in my view is doomed to fail. The conclusion offers some tentative suggestions for an alternative approach.

Book review of Paul Cliteur, The Secular Outlook & Paul Cliteur, Het monotheïstisch dilemma

Book review of Stefan Sottiaux, De Verenigde Staten van België

In this article I reconstruct the contribution of some central Hellenistic political thinkers to a theory of human rights. Starting point is the traditional Stoic conception of the law of nature as a power in which only perfect human beings actively participate. In the 2^nd century BC the Stoic Panaetius adjusted this traditional high-minded theory by also allowing for a lower level of human excellence. This second-rate human excellence can be achieved just by following ‘proper functions’, which are derived from ordinary human nature and can be laid down in rules. From here, it was only a small, yet decisive step – presumably to be attributed to one of Cicero’s teachers – to discard the highest level of human perfection altogether. This step, I argue, paved the way for an understanding of the rules of natural law in terms of human rights.

Book review of Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs

Book review of Peter Rijpkema, Gijs van Donselaar, Bruno Verbeek, Henri Wijsbek (red.), Als vuur

Book review of Stefano Bertea, The Normative Claim of Law

Jeff McMahan, one of the leading contemporary writers on ‘just war thinking’, argues in the book under review, Killing in War, that one of the central tenets of the ‘ius in bello’, namely the moral equality of combatants, is both conceptually and morally untenable. This results from a reflection upon and a departure from two basic assumptions in Walzer’s work, namely the idea that war itself isn’t a relation between persons, but between political entities and their human instruments and the idea that the ‘ius ad bellum’ and ‘ius in bello’ are and should be kept distinct. This book merits serious reflection. However, the disadvantages of McMahan’s position are obvious. If the rights of combatants during war depend on the justice of their cause, the immunity of the civilians on the side of the supposed ‘unjust’ enemy is seriously endangered.

In Law’s Empire Ronald Dworkin offers a specific answer to the age old question of political legitimacy. According to Dworkin, legitimacy originates in a ‘true community’ that is able to generate associative obligations among its members. In this article I illustrate how this answer contrasts with the moral and political principle of justice. The question remains how a conceptual link can be found between a community-based view on legitimacy and a more universal demand for justice. I try to answer this question by offering a close reading of Law’s Empire and other basic essays in Dworkin’s philosophy of law. In my attempt to solve this problem I propose an alternative view on community and legitimacy. In opposition to Dworkin I claim that legitimacy is prior to the community.

This paper argues that Somsen’s article, though brave in approach and daring in ideas, suffers from some fundamental flaws. First of all, it remains unclear how Somsen conceptualises the relationship between legitimacy and effectiveness, and what this means for his position towards the argument of a state of exception. Secondly, a plea for regulation by code has serious consequences for the claim to attain justice. Finally, geo-engineering poses some profound difficulties, both because of its consequences and because of its presuppositions.