T he I nfluence of I nternational L aw on L ocal S ocial M ovements

The inclination to see human rights as an international phenomenon, binding national governments, is strong. Human rights law emerged as a component of modern international law through the founding of the United Nations and the adoption of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Since then, human rights as an area of law has remained in the international realm—subject of a number of important treaties, conventions, and covenants binding national governments. This inclination shows no signs of reversal because, at least in American law schools where new lawyers are trained, human rights law is taught as a component of the public international law curriculum. Human rights law is not taught in domestic public or constitutional law courses or in the traditional first-year private law courses, such as contracts, torts, or property. Human rights started out in the international realm and—to many lawyers and their teachers who have not questioned this phenomenon—there seems to lie its rightful place. While the inclination to reserve human rights discourse to international levels may not at first seem problematic, it does cloud an important development occurring in the field of human rights. That is, over the last decade, there has been increasing evidence that human rights have been powerful in local settings, in small towns and cities in the United States. Organizations with relatively small budgets serving small communities, compared to large bureaucratized governments or corporations,