Global and Local Facets of Justice

Abstract

With the advances of international law on the one hand and modern technologies on the other, the understandings of justice in global and local contexts need to take into account new challenges. The Papers in this Panel examine selected ones with a diverse set of approaches and methodologies, but all combining theoretical considerations of the facets of justice and applying them to a particular, conceptual or empirical, puzzle. Two Papers apply the just war theory to assess the presence or absence of justice in humanitarian interventions and military responses to cyber-attacks. As war is a state in which justice is much more frequently sidelined than in peace, there is a clear link between peace-building efforts and establishing and maintaining just societies which is not sufficiently examined in existing research. The third Paper looks at the case of the Hizmet Movement with the aim to show the strengths and weaknesses of peace-building efforts by this non-state actor. The effectiveness of the UN Universal Period Review (UPR) in local settings is the subject of analysis of the fourth Paper, testing the (absence) of localization of global human rights norms as expressions of universal justice. Finally, the case of the institutional design within the European Union as a unique experiment in creating a supranational just political order is explored, arguing that a new position of an elected ‘President of the EU’ would help overcome the Union’s ‘crises’ and thus contribute to the well-being of EU citizens. Taken together, and without aims for generalizations, these Papers shed light on some facets of justice in various domains of the globalized world.