Human rights in network

This article analyses the development of global human rights adjudication through the lens of Ost and van de Kerchove’s “law as a network” theory. It is submitted that the network metaphor (used liberally, albeit in line with Ost and van de Kerchove’s thought) is useful to describe and interpret the evolution of human rights law as well as the strategies used by its main actors. In that respect, it emphasises three main features of the human rights web, i.e. its fluidity, polycentricity and interdependence. Importantly, these characteristics are not stable properties of human rights law but they are instead the result of endless tensions between openness and closure, centralisation and marginalisation, solidarity and authority. In that sense, the network metaphor keeps us from overdramatizing attempts to establish or restore some hierarchy and borders as well as converse endeavours to usher in an era of human rights oecumenism. These opposing trends are precisely the sign that human rights operate in a network-like environment. To put it differently, these conflicting moves nurture rather than undermine the human rights network