From Global to Local: Domestic Human Rights Norms in Theory and Practice

In light of the ever-growing dominance of human rights as a normative framework linking conceptions of person with social and political action, the exploration of new theoretical approaches for understanding the nuances and ambiguities of domestic human rights is increasingly important not only to speak more innovatively and effectively about human rights, but also to better understand the future of human rights compliance and implementation. This Article contends that the multidimensional nature of human rights in the United States requires new analysis of the legal, normative, and empirical accounts of norm internationalization. It contributes to the scholarly literature by arguing for a more robust exploration of the conditions under which human rights are expressed, and implemented, and through which compliance occurs within the United States. Presently, domestic human rights scholarship is fragmented into accounts of administrative powers and questions of federalism, the translation of norms from global actors, as well as descriptive accounts of specific human rights campaigns. This leaves open many questions regarding the complex reality of human rights practice, implementation, and compliance at the local, subnational, and national levels within the United States. This also fails to address the increasingly dialogic interactions between each of these levels to influence behavior. While these accounts are incredibly important independently, they do not create an overarching framework, grounded in the local, as opposed to international, for understanding the experience of human rights norm implementation. First-generation constructivist theories have proven indispensible for understanding how global actors practice human rights, but have failed to fully capture the key roles that state and local governments, local politics, and activists play in internalizing human rights norms within the United States. In considering different theories of norm socialization, this Article posits a new approach to understanding normative change and the promotion of human rights in the United States. It is not merely a call for how scholars should study human rights, but instead presents the framework for future scholarship that seeks to illuminate both the architecture of domestic human rights and the processes of internalization of international norms. It aims to move the discourse regarding norm internalization and domestic human rights activities further, by arguing that the scholarship would greatly benefit from new studies that embrace on-the-ground specificity to better understand not just how formal international law is expressed, but how human rights ideas translate themselves into behavior, assumptions, practices, and processes at subnational and national levels. Such expansion in the study of domestic human rights is increasingly important, given the heightened scholarly attention on states as sites of experimentation and innovation. This new research will challenge general theoretical assumptions about diffusion of human rights norms, and provide a means to clarify, convert, and articulate abstract norms into concrete domestic laws and policies.