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The Anonymous Matrix: Human Rights Violations by ‘Private’ Transnational Actors
Author(s) -
Teubner Gunther
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the modern law review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1468-2230
pISSN - 0026-7961
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2230.2005.00587.x
Subject(s) - fundamental rights , autonomy , human rights , rights of nature , political science , great rift , law and economics , international human rights law , law , sociology , right to property , physics , astronomy
Do fundamental rights obligate not only States, but also private transnational actors? Since violations of fundamental rights stem from the totalising tendencies of partial rationalities, there is no longer any point in seeing the horizontal effect as if rights of private actors have to be weighed up against each other. On one side of the human rights relation is no longer a private actor as the fundamental‐rights violator, but the anonymous matrix of an autonomised communicative medium. On the other side, the fundamental rights are divided into three dimensions: first, institutional rights protecting the autonomy of social discourses – art, science, religion ‐ against their subjugation by the totalising tendencies of the communicative matrix; secondly, personal rights protecting the autonomy of communication, attributed not to institutions, but to the social artefacts called ‘persons’; and thirdly, human rights as negative bounds on societal communication, where the integrity of individuals' body and mind is endangered.