Constructions of international law are meant to degrade women to aliens – the epistemology of the 1ac’s process doctrines are methods to keep women out!
Romany 93 * Professor of Law, City University of New York Law School. This Article is part of a joint project with Professor Rhonda Copelon, who addresses gender-based violence as an egregious human rights violation. (Celina, “ARTICLE: WOMEN AS ALIENS: A FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE DISTINCTION IN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW”, 6 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 87, 1993, Nexis Uni via the University of Michigan Library System, DOA: 7/13/24)//LFS – LMH
A feminist analysis must insert itself into the critique of the illusion of coherence projected by international law. By dissecting the structure of international legal argument and exposing its artifactual nature, a feminist critique can reveal how such construction serves to perpetuate the alienation of women within international law. By attacking the doctrinal framework, a feminist critique shows how the interplay of sources and process doctrines keeps women outside the boundaries of the international legal argumentative framework.
Through abstraction, hyperbole, and argumentative equivocation, 38 process doctrines, which delimit actors and their jurisdiction, assert independence from sources and substantive standards of behavior. The two most significant areas of process doctrines, participation 39 and jurisdiction, 40 establish and limit sovereign identity without reference to sources or substance. Participation doctrines, which establish sovereignty, must do so without reference to the substance of law. Sovereignty relies on facts and practices, not on the consensual basis of legal sources. In limiting sovereign authority, jurisdiction doctrines must remain procedural, also without reference to substantive law. [*95] Jurisdiction doctrines are "the ground, the basis, the preexisting supposition of sovereign autonomy;" delimitations of sovereign authority must not abridge the sovereign's ability to act. 41
Process doctrines maintain dominance through an illusory separation from sources and substance doctrine. However, as David Kennedy points out, process doctrines rely heavily on both of them or "at least upon an image of sources and substance." 42
A critique of process doctrines which challenges their independence and which exposes their exclusions has great potential for a feminist reconceptualization of human rights law. Participation doctrines which establish sovereignty rely on facts and practices that encode women's exclusion. Women are the stateless subjects of international law according to such facts and practices. The construction of these facts and practices keeps the alien status of women entrenched. Under this construction, women are aliens within their states and aliens within an international society defined by participation doctrines which do not deem them to be actors. The jurisdiction doctrines -- in charge of delimiting avenues of legitimate interchange where authoritative norms are elaborated, and which must remain procedural and free of sources that rely only on consent -- also relegate the "subjectivity" of women to outer boundaries.