Transnational Human Rights Litigation and the Politics of Space
Philip Liste’s project Transnational Human Rights Litigation and the Politics of Space focusses on human rights violations not by states but by private corporations, particularly when operating in places where ‘the law’ is hardly available for victims. The latter may want to resist by means of transnational human rights litigation (THRL) and ‘find the law’ abroad. The project holds that spatial knowledge is a necessary precondition for the making of a legal case. In the field of THRL space is highly contested.
While the Supreme Court decision on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum is arguably a moment of juridico-political gravity, with critical repercussions for the future possibilities of suing transnational corporation before US courts, the core interest of this project is not primarily ‘juridical.’ Instead, the focus is on the ‘politics of space’ at work in the THRL. The project is interested in how space is constructed and thus becomes a technicality of a politics of transnational law.
