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Legality of Protest Movements Revolt against Authority <UN> Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor David Fasenfest (Wayne State University) Editorial Board Chris Chase-Dunn (University of California-Riverside) G. William Domhoff (University of California-Santa Cruz) Colette Fagan (Manchester University) Matha Gimenez (University of Colorado, Boulder) Heidi Gottfried (University of Bremen) Karin Gottschall (Warsaw University) Bob Jessop (Lancaster University) Rhonda Levine (Colgate University) Jacqueline O’Reilly (University of Brighton) Mary Romero (Arizona State University) Chizuko Ueno (University of Tokyo) VOLUME 65 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss <UN> Revolt Against Authority By Laura Westra LEIDEN | BOSTON <UN> Cover illustration: “Massacre” by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, (http://gaelart.net/) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Westra, Laura. Revolt against authority / by Laura Westra. pages cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences ; Volume 65) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26820-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Protest movements. 2. Social movements. 3. Human rights. 4. Authority. I. Title. HN17.5.W47 2014 303.48’4--dc23 2014008066 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1573-4234 isbn 978-90-04-26820-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-27383-2 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. <UN> For my son Peter Christopher Westra ∵ <UN> Contents Foreword XI Introduction 1 part 1 The (Il)legality of Protest Movements 1 Introduction to the Authority of Law and Social Protest 7 Introduction 7 The Basis of Authority 8 Civil Disobedience or Conscientious Obligation? 12 Self-Determination and Legal Protests 18 State Authority and the Importance of the Rule of Law 21 The Rights of Citizenship and Collective Human Rights 24 2 The Occupy Wall Street Movement: Attack in a “Lawless” World? 29 Introduction 29 The Occupy Movement’s Legal Aspects: Symbolic Speech and Practical Difficulties 32 The Geopolitical Aspects of Free Speech 36 Expressive Conduct and the Law 40 Occupy as Revolt against Law and Injustice 42 Collective Human Rights against Authority 45 Resistance to Plunder 48 Protests, Injustice and the Rule of Law 51 3 Non-Governmental Organizations and Social Movements: Substance and Roles 53 Introduction 53 unesco, the Common Heritage of Mankind and the Principled Defense of Humanity’s Arts and Sciences 57 The Civil Rights Movement: Restoring Justice in Legality 61 Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence 64 “Civil Resistance” and the Law 67 Citizens’ Resistance and Declining Allegiance to State Sovereignty 70 Community over Individuals and Justice 70 <UN> viii contents The End of Politics and the Rise and Role of Social Movements 73 Corporate Power and Cosmopolitan Democracy 74 Corporations, the State and the “Two Constitutions” 75 4 International Citizenship under Siege 79 Introduction 79 Constructing Global Citizenship 81 Citizenship, Authority and the Law 85 Idle No More and the Canadian First Nations: “Frozen Rights”? 86 The Crown’s Obligations: Local Issues or Fundamental Principles? 88 Civil Disobedience against Environmental Harms: Forceful or Not? 92 Revolt and Self-Defense beyond the Right to Survive 94 Citizens’ Misinformation and Misguided Activism 98 Transnational Citizens: Further Considerations beyond their Legal Status 100 5 The Limits of the Power of ingos, Social Movements, and Associations, and the Authority of Law 103 Introduction 103 The Security Council and the Mandates and Principles of the un Charter 104 The Weakened United Nations and the Struggles of the “Multitude” 107 The Collective and the “Multitude” 110 The Commons and the Collective 111 The Multitude and the “Common” 115 Protest for the Rule of Law 117 Illegalities Sustain Protests: Structural Violence against Society 120 Self-Defense? The Moral Response to “Threats” 121 Self-Defense and Protests against Violence in International Law 124 Concluding Thoughts for Part I 127 part 2 Victims of Structural Violence 6 Victims of “Non-Intimate Violence” and the Law 133 Introduction 133 What is Protected by International Human Rights Charters and Jus Cogens Norms? The Question of Shue’s “Basic Rights” 135 Galtung on Structural/Cultural Violence 140 Conclusions 413 <UN> contents ix 7 Victims of Human Rights Law and of Legal Persons: Where Justice and Equal Rights Do not Apply 145 Introduction: The “Original Sin” 145 Corporate Responsibility and Accountability 149 Multinational Corporations: Their Nature, Their Role, and Their Victims 154 Crimes against Humanity? The Principles of Nuremberg and the Victims of Corporate Crimes 158 Nuremberg and Equality: Victims of Non-Observance of Principles 160 Victim Protection and Corporate Rights: Deterrence or Compensation? 163 Victims of Corporate Power and Inequality 165 Victims of “Toxic Trespass” 166 8 Victims of Legal Bombardments, Drone Attacks and Other Forms of Collateralism 170 Introduction 170 International Law Eliminated and Betrayed: The Case of Bombardments as Unlawful Means of Combat 172 Non-combatant Immunity and the Victims of Collateralism 173 Victims of Illegal Weapons, Indiscriminate Means of War, and Environmental Hazards 175 Victims of Drone Attacks 177 The “War on Terror” and Its Victims 179 Victims of the Conduct of War 181 State Terrorism and Its Victims 183 Aggression and Terrorism in International Law from 1972 to 2005: Working on an Impossible Definition 183 One Source: Two Major Global Phenomena 186 The Issues: Terrorism and Collective Human Rights 188 More Victims of State Terrorism and Counter-terrorism Measures 191 George W. Bush “Indictment for Torture” 193 Khalid El-Masri and the Case of Extraordinary Renditions 196 The Background of “Extraordinary Renditions” and Some International Implications of the “CIA’s Long-Term Detainees” 199 The Canadian Position: Maher Arar and State Interests 200 Concluding Thoughts on “Abandoning the Victim” 201 “Abandoned” Victims in Other Countries 204 <UN> x contents 9 Responsibility to Protect or Obligation to Prevent: Whose Responsibility? 207 Introduction 207 The Argument of the Previous Chapters: Victims in a Lawless World 208 Legal Redress for Victims? 210 Responsibility to Protect for Collective Obligations 212 Sovereignty as Responsibility? 214 Responsibility to Protect: Downward Spiral or Best Hope for Victims? 216 The “Crime of Silence” and the Activities of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine 220 The Responsibility of Global Civil Society 225 The “Criminalization of Dissent” 228 10 Current Changes and Concluding Thoughts 234 Current Changes: Positive and Negative 234 Concluding Thoughts 239 Appendix I Cases 241 Appendix II Documents 243 References 246 Index 263 <UN> Foreword Participants in the demonstrations outside the global climate talks that took place at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen in December of 2009 were shocked to find themselves confronted by 6000 militarized police in full riot gear. After all, they were only demonstrating peacefully in an effort to persuade the world’s leaders to adopt stricter greenhouse gas emission controls in order to save the planet for this and future generations. They were equally shocked to learn that the Danish government, in the lead-up to the conference, had passed new laws for police to arrest and detain people on mere suspicion of trying to enter the conference and that they could be held in a series of cells (preventive deten- tion) set up for that purpose in an abandoned warehouse for up to forty days. What had happened to traditionally peaceful Denmark to elicit such a draco- nian response from the government? For that matter, why have we seen equally militarized responses to largely peaceful protests by civil society in cities like Seattle, Washington, DC, Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Quebec, Madrid, Genoa and cities in other supposedly liberal, democratic states? Aren’t free- dom of speech and assembly among the bedrock values of the liberal state? Weren’t these and other human rights guarantees what we had fought the Second World War to preserve? These are among the questions Laura Westra asks and seeks to answer in this remarkable book which examines the intersec- tion of social protest and the law. The literature on social movements is voluminous, as is the literature on international law. What has been largely missing in the literature, however, is the mutual interrogation of these two distinct bodies of scholarship one by the other, a feat this volume admirably achieves. No one is more qualified than Laura Westra to undertake this task. A legal theorist as well as a philosopher by training, she is no arm chair
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