At the Margins of the Modern State: Critical Theory and Law

The international order of the post-WW II period is in disarray.The sounds of war can be heard all around us, from Ukraine to Gaza, from Darfur to the Congo, and there is growing skepticism towards human rights and democracy, the rule of law and peace among peoples. Facile expressions such as “Eurocentrism” and “demise of the West and the rise of the rest” miss the real challenge in this situation: how to extend moral, legal and political universalism to address the experiences of the multitude of humanity for whom western modernity has brought not only equality but also subordination, not only emancipation but also domination.Benhabib argues that rethinking this universalist project and participating in world-building together can be achieved by reconstructing and retrieving the best insights of critical social theory in the Frankfurt tradition and the liberal Kantianism of Rawls and Dworkin.In that spirit, this volume addresses state and popular sovereignty, Third World approaches to