Amy Bartholomew - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Amy Bartholomew
Socialist Register, Mar 18, 1990
Legality and Legitimacy in Global Affairs, 2012
Amy Bartholomew argues the 'global war on terror' has generated rightlessness but not law... more Amy Bartholomew argues the 'global war on terror' has generated rightlessness but not lawlessness. Rule by law threatens to produce a constitutive undoing of the post World War II international legal architecture, or 'law's empire'. The current threat to human rights and the future of legality may be understood as 'empire's law,' a development that arms neoliberal globalization with a neoconservative political order of global rule by an American empire. To analyze these developments a critical analysis of international law that can conceptualize the universalist core of legitimate legality which authors like Franz Neumann and, above all, Jürgen Habermas provide is necessary. Both 'egalitarian universalism' as key to legality's internal legitimacy and democratic legitimation as a necessary but still far off condition for external legitimacy are important ideas to further develop in our political theory of legitimate legality and to defend in our struggles to resist empire's law, a form of rule that threatens humanity's future
Socialist Register, 2020
In 1951 Hannah Arendt famously analyzed the ‘calamity’ of rightlessness that accompanied the cris... more In 1951 Hannah Arendt famously analyzed the ‘calamity’ of rightlessness that accompanied the crisis of statelessness, within which she included migrants and refugees, as the ‘deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective’. The stateless, she argued, are treated as the pawn of politics and are ‘forced to live outside the common world’. She also identified camps – the ‘barbed-wire labyrinth into which events’ had driven those who were stateless – as the ‘routine solution for the problem of domicile of the “displaced persons”’. The stateless were treated everywhere as the ‘scum of the earth’, a condition which would go on, she contended, to threaten politics itself. Almost seventy years after Arendt issued her warning on this, the mayor of Lesvos in Greece, Spiros Galinos, echoed her words: ‘Europe’s future is at stake’, pointing to the policies now pursued by the EU, including border closures and deportations to Turkey, which ‘create fear, xenophobia and racism, which in turn leads to fascism’. Indeed, what is widely reported erroneously as the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe today has played out most intensely on its periphery in Greece (and Italy). Confronted with a double crisis – the economic and the ‘refugee’ crises – Greece became the ‘hotspot of Europe’. Focusing on the case of Greece starkly illuminates the injustices of the international and regional regimes of refugee law and politics, and the failures of the international human rights system to protect the rights of all persons (just as Arendt recognized). This essay will juxtapose the Greek state’s continuation and, indeed, intensification of the dystopian regime of border control and refugee camps to migrant-citizen-solidarian spaces and practices, illustrated by the now famous City Plaza hotel squat as a ‘Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space’ in Athens. This provides at least a glimpse of the promise of autonomous, solidarity, prefigurative practices that challenge all the ‘routine solutions’ for mass migration. We will argue that solidarity initiatives like City Plaza hotel show that it could be otherwise, thus challenging both the EU’s near imposition of camp life on Greece and also Syriza’s ‘realpolitik’ in the context of migration. It will go on to argue, however, that, to build on transformations achieved through prefigurative practice and achieve systemic change, action is required at the level of the state and therefore of political organisation. This in turn requires a strategy that recognises in practice the importance of supporting, spreading, and sharing power with those engaged in prefigurative transformative initiatives like City Plaza
Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Distopia, 2020
International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 2004
n the context of the global "war on terrorism," anomalies abound. Alan Dershowitz is in... more n the context of the global "war on terrorism," anomalies abound. Alan Dershowitz is invited by the Canadian government (and paid very handsomely) to give advice on the legitimacy of biometric national identity cards in a liberal democracy after publicly defending the necessity of torture as a tool in the "war against terror." Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian who is director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and long considered a left-liberal, defends a little evil-lite in the name of defending "us" and our "lesser evil" against "them." The Canadian government-appointed commission in the Arar case raises questions about the constitutionality of the anti-terrorism act passed and "charter-proofed" just three years ago. In this context, Kent Roach's serious and sensible book, September 11: Consequences for Canada, is especially important reading. It provides a dispassionate, rigorous, liberal analysis of the legal underpinnings and possible implications of this rapidly metastasizing war for Canada. Seeking to assess its implications for Canadian sovereignty, the rule of law, and democracy, Roach rightly emphasizes that an apocalyptic view which stresses that everything has changed since 9/11 lacks nuance. Canada was moving toward the criminalization of politics and securitization well before 9/11, and democracy was hardly without threat from overzealous governments before that date. The tension implicit in Canada's relationship to the us was also clear long before 9/11. Drawing his inspiration from George Grant, Roach recommends the reassertion of Canadian sovereignty against our neighbour, and not just in response to 9/11. September 11: Consequences for Canada is important for making all these arguments and more. The analysis is also significant for detailing, carefully and lucidly if a bit bloodlessly, the threats to democracy, civil liberties, and human rights-not just here but abroad as well-emanating from the ramped-up security agenda with its spreading tentacles and permanent
Studies in Political Economy, 1993
Despite the importance of this literature for formulating the critique of colonization and for pr... more Despite the importance of this literature for formulating the critique of colonization and for promoting the invigora-tion of civil society as against the "system imperatives" of both the economy and the state, there are significant prob-lems associated with it, not least of which is that it is ...
Justice Internationale Et Impunite Le Cas Des Etats Unis 2007 Isbn 978 2296 029248 Pags 121 140, 2007
Women Making Constitutions, 2003
We are currently witnessing struggles for and against the recognition of collective, group-differ... more We are currently witnessing struggles for and against the recognition of collective, group-differentiated, minority or special rights and ‘cultural defences’ for cultural and religious minorities, new immigrants and national minorities in the so-far predominantly liberal democratic societies. These struggles are occurring not only between the movements that have been making demands for such rights and their political opponents but also in intellectual circles. Demands for recognizing collective or group-differentiated cultural rights have now become a matter of heated contention in both liberal and left circles associated with Critical Theory with some of the strongest objections coming from feminist scholars. Following the celebrated defences of group-differentiated cultural rights in the name of virtues like cultural recognition, political equality and the just negotiation of cultural pluralism by authors like Will Kymlicka (1995), Iris Young (1990), James Tully (1995) and Charles Taylor (1994), feminist scholars Seyla Benhabib (1998, 1999) and Susan Moller Okin (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999a, b)1 have expressed serious worries about the dangers, especially for women and children, of extending group-differentiated rights to cultural minorities. The primary worry is that multicultural politics pursued in legal and constitutional terms as collective or group-differentiated rights for cultural minorities threaten individual rights — in particular the autonomy and equality rights of women. At the same time, Okin and Benhabib gesture in the direction of a promising conceptualization of group-differentiated cultural rights, one that I will call procedural, that may be capable of avoiding these dangers.
Theory, Culture & Society, 1992
142 Theory, Culture & Society emphasize the objective conditions of collective action, from w... more 142 Theory, Culture & Society emphasize the objective conditions of collective action, from which also derives the meaning of the action, Melucci argues that both positions share a problematic epistemological assumption; that the collective phenomenon is treated as a 'unified ...
Policy Studies Journal, 1990
Osgoode Hall LJ, 2007
TEXT: International law, and more specifically the juridical fall out of the US-led "War on ... more TEXT: International law, and more specifically the juridical fall out of the US-led "War on Terror," 3 is a topic of abundant literature, both scholarly and popular. 4 In this crowded field, Empire's Law stands out as a rigorous and uniquely engaged collection. Editor Amy ...
Buff. Hum. Rts. L. Rev., 2003
Socialist Register, Mar 18, 1990
Socialist Register, Mar 19, 2009
T]he transition from a nation-state world order to a cosmopolitan world order brings about a very... more T]he transition from a nation-state world order to a cosmopolitan world order brings about a very significant priority shift from international law to human rights. The principle that international law precedes human rights which held during the (nation-state) first age of modernity is being replaced by the principle of the (world society) second age of modernity, that human rights precede international law. As yet, the consequences have not been thought through, but they will be revolutionary.
Socialist Register, 2004
La transición de un orden mundial basado en el estado-nación a uno cosmopolita conlleva un despla... more La transición de un orden mundial basado en el estado-nación a uno cosmopolita conlleva un desplazamiento muy significativo de la prioridad de la ley internacional a la de los derechos humanos. El principio respecto a que la ley internacional precede a los derechos humanos sostenido durante la primera edad de la modernidad (del estado-nación) está siendo remplazado por el principio de la (sociedad mundial) de la segunda edad de la modernidad,que los derechos humanos preceden a la ley internacional.Todavía no se ha pensado extensamente en las consecuencias, pero estas serán revolucionarias.
Socialist Register, Mar 18, 1990
Legality and Legitimacy in Global Affairs, 2012
Amy Bartholomew argues the 'global war on terror' has generated rightlessness but not law... more Amy Bartholomew argues the 'global war on terror' has generated rightlessness but not lawlessness. Rule by law threatens to produce a constitutive undoing of the post World War II international legal architecture, or 'law's empire'. The current threat to human rights and the future of legality may be understood as 'empire's law,' a development that arms neoliberal globalization with a neoconservative political order of global rule by an American empire. To analyze these developments a critical analysis of international law that can conceptualize the universalist core of legitimate legality which authors like Franz Neumann and, above all, Jürgen Habermas provide is necessary. Both 'egalitarian universalism' as key to legality's internal legitimacy and democratic legitimation as a necessary but still far off condition for external legitimacy are important ideas to further develop in our political theory of legitimate legality and to defend in our struggles to resist empire's law, a form of rule that threatens humanity's future
Socialist Register, 2020
In 1951 Hannah Arendt famously analyzed the ‘calamity’ of rightlessness that accompanied the cris... more In 1951 Hannah Arendt famously analyzed the ‘calamity’ of rightlessness that accompanied the crisis of statelessness, within which she included migrants and refugees, as the ‘deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective’. The stateless, she argued, are treated as the pawn of politics and are ‘forced to live outside the common world’. She also identified camps – the ‘barbed-wire labyrinth into which events’ had driven those who were stateless – as the ‘routine solution for the problem of domicile of the “displaced persons”’. The stateless were treated everywhere as the ‘scum of the earth’, a condition which would go on, she contended, to threaten politics itself. Almost seventy years after Arendt issued her warning on this, the mayor of Lesvos in Greece, Spiros Galinos, echoed her words: ‘Europe’s future is at stake’, pointing to the policies now pursued by the EU, including border closures and deportations to Turkey, which ‘create fear, xenophobia and racism, which in turn leads to fascism’. Indeed, what is widely reported erroneously as the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe today has played out most intensely on its periphery in Greece (and Italy). Confronted with a double crisis – the economic and the ‘refugee’ crises – Greece became the ‘hotspot of Europe’. Focusing on the case of Greece starkly illuminates the injustices of the international and regional regimes of refugee law and politics, and the failures of the international human rights system to protect the rights of all persons (just as Arendt recognized). This essay will juxtapose the Greek state’s continuation and, indeed, intensification of the dystopian regime of border control and refugee camps to migrant-citizen-solidarian spaces and practices, illustrated by the now famous City Plaza hotel squat as a ‘Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space’ in Athens. This provides at least a glimpse of the promise of autonomous, solidarity, prefigurative practices that challenge all the ‘routine solutions’ for mass migration. We will argue that solidarity initiatives like City Plaza hotel show that it could be otherwise, thus challenging both the EU’s near imposition of camp life on Greece and also Syriza’s ‘realpolitik’ in the context of migration. It will go on to argue, however, that, to build on transformations achieved through prefigurative practice and achieve systemic change, action is required at the level of the state and therefore of political organisation. This in turn requires a strategy that recognises in practice the importance of supporting, spreading, and sharing power with those engaged in prefigurative transformative initiatives like City Plaza
Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Distopia, 2020
International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 2004
n the context of the global "war on terrorism," anomalies abound. Alan Dershowitz is in... more n the context of the global "war on terrorism," anomalies abound. Alan Dershowitz is invited by the Canadian government (and paid very handsomely) to give advice on the legitimacy of biometric national identity cards in a liberal democracy after publicly defending the necessity of torture as a tool in the "war against terror." Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian who is director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and long considered a left-liberal, defends a little evil-lite in the name of defending "us" and our "lesser evil" against "them." The Canadian government-appointed commission in the Arar case raises questions about the constitutionality of the anti-terrorism act passed and "charter-proofed" just three years ago. In this context, Kent Roach's serious and sensible book, September 11: Consequences for Canada, is especially important reading. It provides a dispassionate, rigorous, liberal analysis of the legal underpinnings and possible implications of this rapidly metastasizing war for Canada. Seeking to assess its implications for Canadian sovereignty, the rule of law, and democracy, Roach rightly emphasizes that an apocalyptic view which stresses that everything has changed since 9/11 lacks nuance. Canada was moving toward the criminalization of politics and securitization well before 9/11, and democracy was hardly without threat from overzealous governments before that date. The tension implicit in Canada's relationship to the us was also clear long before 9/11. Drawing his inspiration from George Grant, Roach recommends the reassertion of Canadian sovereignty against our neighbour, and not just in response to 9/11. September 11: Consequences for Canada is important for making all these arguments and more. The analysis is also significant for detailing, carefully and lucidly if a bit bloodlessly, the threats to democracy, civil liberties, and human rights-not just here but abroad as well-emanating from the ramped-up security agenda with its spreading tentacles and permanent
Studies in Political Economy, 1993
Despite the importance of this literature for formulating the critique of colonization and for pr... more Despite the importance of this literature for formulating the critique of colonization and for promoting the invigora-tion of civil society as against the "system imperatives" of both the economy and the state, there are significant prob-lems associated with it, not least of which is that it is ...
Justice Internationale Et Impunite Le Cas Des Etats Unis 2007 Isbn 978 2296 029248 Pags 121 140, 2007
Women Making Constitutions, 2003
We are currently witnessing struggles for and against the recognition of collective, group-differ... more We are currently witnessing struggles for and against the recognition of collective, group-differentiated, minority or special rights and ‘cultural defences’ for cultural and religious minorities, new immigrants and national minorities in the so-far predominantly liberal democratic societies. These struggles are occurring not only between the movements that have been making demands for such rights and their political opponents but also in intellectual circles. Demands for recognizing collective or group-differentiated cultural rights have now become a matter of heated contention in both liberal and left circles associated with Critical Theory with some of the strongest objections coming from feminist scholars. Following the celebrated defences of group-differentiated cultural rights in the name of virtues like cultural recognition, political equality and the just negotiation of cultural pluralism by authors like Will Kymlicka (1995), Iris Young (1990), James Tully (1995) and Charles Taylor (1994), feminist scholars Seyla Benhabib (1998, 1999) and Susan Moller Okin (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999a, b)1 have expressed serious worries about the dangers, especially for women and children, of extending group-differentiated rights to cultural minorities. The primary worry is that multicultural politics pursued in legal and constitutional terms as collective or group-differentiated rights for cultural minorities threaten individual rights — in particular the autonomy and equality rights of women. At the same time, Okin and Benhabib gesture in the direction of a promising conceptualization of group-differentiated cultural rights, one that I will call procedural, that may be capable of avoiding these dangers.
Theory, Culture & Society, 1992
142 Theory, Culture & Society emphasize the objective conditions of collective action, from w... more 142 Theory, Culture & Society emphasize the objective conditions of collective action, from which also derives the meaning of the action, Melucci argues that both positions share a problematic epistemological assumption; that the collective phenomenon is treated as a 'unified ...
Policy Studies Journal, 1990
Osgoode Hall LJ, 2007
TEXT: International law, and more specifically the juridical fall out of the US-led "War on ... more TEXT: International law, and more specifically the juridical fall out of the US-led "War on Terror," 3 is a topic of abundant literature, both scholarly and popular. 4 In this crowded field, Empire's Law stands out as a rigorous and uniquely engaged collection. Editor Amy ...
Buff. Hum. Rts. L. Rev., 2003
Socialist Register, Mar 18, 1990
Socialist Register, Mar 19, 2009
T]he transition from a nation-state world order to a cosmopolitan world order brings about a very... more T]he transition from a nation-state world order to a cosmopolitan world order brings about a very significant priority shift from international law to human rights. The principle that international law precedes human rights which held during the (nation-state) first age of modernity is being replaced by the principle of the (world society) second age of modernity, that human rights precede international law. As yet, the consequences have not been thought through, but they will be revolutionary.
Socialist Register, 2004
La transición de un orden mundial basado en el estado-nación a uno cosmopolita conlleva un despla... more La transición de un orden mundial basado en el estado-nación a uno cosmopolita conlleva un desplazamiento muy significativo de la prioridad de la ley internacional a la de los derechos humanos. El principio respecto a que la ley internacional precede a los derechos humanos sostenido durante la primera edad de la modernidad (del estado-nación) está siendo remplazado por el principio de la (sociedad mundial) de la segunda edad de la modernidad,que los derechos humanos preceden a la ley internacional.Todavía no se ha pensado extensamente en las consecuencias, pero estas serán revolucionarias.