Abstract

International human rights law is currently struck by a potentially redefining tension. While the developments of international human rights law have long presupposed the state as its architect, object, and the very condition for its operationalisation, nowadays there have been decisive steps towards extending the purview of international human rights beyond the state by institutionalising them as a normative baseline for the operation of a wide range of global governance regimes. This raises a crucial question: what happens to human rights when they are extracted from their constitutive presumptions? This introductory chapter dwells on this question and tension to elaborate an overall framing for the present volume. Drawing upon the century-old jurisprudence by Santi Romano and Maurice Hauriou, the chapter suggests that this crucial question can be productively approached by tracing the modes of relevance that human rights law has gained in diverse global governance contexts - as the several contributions to this volume illustrate. This century-old jurisprudence nonetheless also entails a theory of crisis. Their insights can largely explain the legitimation crisis that international human rights law is currently experiencing and what is required to overcome it.