A New Human Right--the Right to Globalization

Fordham International Law Journal, Dec 1998

This Essay attempts to give globalization an ideology and suggests that global identity and allegiance will use the law to establish these ideals. It argues that the principal tool will be extensions via the legal device of human rights--an individual's human right to globalization. This Essay also argues that national allegiance and globalization cannot stand together. Today, national allegiance is an anachronism and simply wrong. In the past, it was, in many cases, considered a virtue and resulted often in the highest individual self-sacrifice for the common good. Human rights to globalization, it is argued, entail at least the following rights: to international security; to trade across national borders; to non-partisan dispute settlement that is incorporated across borders; to free movement of persons across borders; and to hold dual or multiple nationality.

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A New Human Right--the Right to Globalization

Journal Michael D. Pendleton A New Human Right-the Right to - 1998 Article 6 Globalization Copyright c 1998 by the authors. Fordham International Law Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress). http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ilj A New Human Right–the Right to Globalization Michael D. Pendleton This Essay attempts to give globalization an ideology and suggests that global identity and allegiance will use the law to establish these ideals. It argues that the principal tool will be extensions via the legal device of human rights–an individual’s human right to globalization. This Essay also argues that national allegiance and globalization cannot stand together. Today, national allegiance is an anachronism and simply wrong. In the past, it was, in many cases, considered a virtue and resulted often in the highest individual self-sacrifice for the common good. Human rights to globalization, it is argued, entail at least the following rights: to international security; to trade across national borders; to non-partisan dispute settlement that is incorporated across borders; to free movement of persons across borders; and to hold dual or multiple nationality. A NEW HUMAN RIGHT-THE RIGHT TO GLOBALIZATION Michael D. Pendleton* INTRODUCTION Globalization appears to be an inevitable fact. How much of the daily news is about the country of media publication or broadcast, and how much relates directly or indirectly to other countries? The high proportion of the latter remains much the same, even in the most parochial of media. Globalization is cause for lament for many. This author takes the opposite of this view. This Essay attempts to give globalization an ideology and suggests that global identity and allegiance will use the law to establish these ideals. It argues that the principal tool will be extensions via the legal device of human rights-an individual's human right to globalization. This Essay also argues that national allegiance and globalization cannot stand together. Today, national allegiance is an anachronism and simply wrong. In the past, it was, in many cases, considered a virtue and resulted often in the highest individual self-sacrifice for the common good. National allegiance is wrong today for the following reasons: " it threatens our very survival by making war more likely; " it is no different to racism; " one cannot be a nationalist and act according to individual conscience when the nation is under threat; * it causes us to fail to take non-nationals seriously as people, through the fiction and wrong concept of collective responsibility; * it is contrary to Christian and other religious teaching; and " finally, some nations have exclusive use of a disproportionate amount of the world's resources. Globalization offers a realistic vehicle for escaping from failed nationalism to an expanded concept of global rights and duties. * Professor of Law and Deputy Director, Asia Pacific Intellectual Property Law Institute, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. Globalization is about far more than trade and commerce. It is about individual identity, sympathies, and aspirations. What gives globalization a realistic chance of working, however, is its economic aspects. This economic potential is what gives globalization power even against antagonistic national governments. The case for a human right to globalization as presented in this Essay stands or falls on the validity of three assumptions: * reciprocity in international trade policy does not work; " global markets are necessary for the same reason as market economies, i.e., self-interest ensures efficiency; and * globalization does not commodify people, rather it gives people chances for survival and self-betterment that they otherwise would not obtain. Many see globalization through international trade as an anathema to the development and dignity of persons by somehow "commodifying" them. The villains are the multinationals. To the contrary, this Essay argues that globalization rights are the newest category of individual rights. They are akin to natural rights from which human rights developed. They are also akin to indigenous rights, ethnic minority rights, suppressed nationality rights, and rights to a clean, bio-diverse environment. This Essay maintains that we do not have any multinationals in the world today, but badly need them in order to carry forward globalization. Despite what it may seem, this Essay does not reject citizenship per se. Citizenship involves a concern for neighborliness and the common good, i.e., fundamental aspects of what it is to be human. Rather, this Essay is about a redefinition and expansion of citizenship concepts. Globalization is achievable, even against the animosity of national governments, through the concept of embryonic, though arguably existing, judicially enforceable human rights to globalization. Human rights to globalization, it is argued, entail at least the fo (...truncated)


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Michael D. Pendleton. A New Human Right--the Right to Globalization, Fordham International Law Journal, 1998, Volume 22, Issue 5,