Category: Legal Theory

JÁ¼rgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (TCA) is both the site of and method from which discursive communication and consensus formation occurs to reconstruct civil society.  This transformation emerges from rationale communication, independent from state and market interests, which spark emancipatory progress that reclaims sites of knowledge colonized by the ”system.”  Groups and individuals mobilize… Continue reading Communicative Action and Just Global Institutions

When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species. — Frantz Fanon The overwhelming response of the Western nations to Haiti’s devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010… Continue reading From De-to-Post-to-Neo-Colonization: A Brief History of Haiti’s Occupations

Human rights discourse is often mobilized to justify and reproduce economic inequities through the creation and development of social and governmental institutions for use in developing countries.  Tariq Ali said eloquently in his book Pirates of the Caribbean — Axis of Hope, “the pillars of the new global order [Washington Consensus] were viewed as almost… Continue reading Human Rights vs. Global Capital

Anghie stated in his book Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, ”The philosophy of positivism provided the primary jurisprudential resource for the jurists of the late nineteenth century. In the naturalist scheme, the sovereign administered a system of natural law by which it was bound. Positivism, by way of contrast, asserts, not only… Continue reading Positivism, Law, and Spaces of Exception

Pakistan in 2007 was unlike any other year in Pakistan’s modern history.  It was a year in which the judiciary questioned the legitimacy of Gen. Musharraf’s military regime and instigated a social movement to pronounce the importance of an independent judiciary and a constitutional democracy.  2007 was the year when Gen. Musharraf pressured Chief Justice… Continue reading Pakistans’ Struggle for Judicial Independence

In the 1970’s and 1980’s Jurgen Habermas began to develop the theory of communicative action.  Inherently, humans are communicative beings.  In these works (Communicative Action Vol. 1-2) Habermas analyzes the way in which humans communicate to create, sustain, and develop social relationships.  Habermas suggests that in making any utterances (statements, questions, accusations, etc.), the speaker… Continue reading Habermas and Communicative Action: An Introduction

Despite how a state’s population comes under the coercive control of a political/military group, if that group has the power over natural resources, territory, and means of production, and receives international recognition, then that group receives certain privileges.  The international community allows the group to borrow in the country’s name and to freely dispose of… Continue reading The Global Economic Order and the Reprouction of Inequality

Here is a 3-D video timeline I created for the Documentary: Out of the Ashes 9/11.

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of poverty.  TB is a contagious airborne disease that resulted in the deaths of 1.7 million people and 9.4 million new cases in 2009 (WHO 2010).  The vast majority of these victims are in the developing world where most don’t have the financial means or opportunities to receive healthcare.  Since… Continue reading TB Diagnostic and IP

Human rights, argues Thomas Pogge, should be conceived ”primarily as claims on coercive institutions.” (Pogge: 51). Meaning, ”a human right to X entails the demand that…any coercive social institutions be so designed that all human beings affected by them have secure access to X.” And, ” a human right is a moral claim on any… Continue reading Human Rights: Just Social Institutions, or just social institutions