Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2007

Abstract

This Article seeks to integrate different strains of knowledge and enlightenment from contradictory and often contentious jurisprudential perspectives. Our approach is to use elements of modern jurisprudence as tools and markers for a more adequate description and intellectual justification of the foundations of modern human rights law. This focus integrates existing literature that surveys law-making outside the context of the State, including the law of non-State groups, such as Jewish Law and Gypsy Law. It also examines the relevance of communications theory to law generated (in a functional sense) by individual interaction on a face-to-face basis (which Professor Harold Lasswell has identified as the micro-social level, and is thus known as “micro-law”), small group law, and international law (which Lasswell has identified as the macro level, and is thus known as “macro-law”). Indeed, the communication of human rights perspectives and operations channeled by signs and symbols are a part of the more general theory of human communications. Communications theory--used either implicitly or explicitly--is a tool to which diverse jurists and legal scholars have continually returned to authoritatively explore human connectivity. This Article explores the implications of a more explicit use of modern communications theory to give focus and orientation to the anthropomorphic foundations of human rights law.

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