People, states and hope : cosmopolitanism and the future of international law

Abstract

The term “cosmopolitanism” has been said to have become a key word of our time. The thesis presented here is that the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism is of relevance to, and has a history within, international law, such that it offers international law some hope of moving beyond a concern solely to secure the formal principles of external liberty between states, towards a greater concern for establishing a minimum level of material welfare for all individuals, regardless of their location, thereby engaging international law in an effort to address the greatest human rights problem of today - absolute poverty. This thesis is prompted by a desire to address the problem that, not only do we live in an unjust world, but we continue to persist in doing so, despite the fact that this has been said to be “the least controversial claim in political theory” today. Given that domestic law has generally developed so as to ensure a minimum guarantee of material welfare for all, the question arises as to whether this persistence is an entropy peculiar to the nature of international law and its practitioners?