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Politics in a Small World 73

to a government ’ s conduct towards its own citizens to apply in times of
peace and war (Held, 1995b : 101 – 2; see also Ratner and Abrams, 2001 :
4). This second principle was carried forward and extended with the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, beginning international human
rights law in the UN human rights system. In contrast to Westphalian
international law, cosmopolitan law reaches inside states, piercing nominal
state sovereignty and enforcing claims against human rights violators.
Where international law governs relations between states, cosmopolitan
law (or what Habermas also calls the constitutionalization of interna-
tional law) is a law of individuals , not of states (Habermas, 2006 : 124;
Hirsh, 2003 ). For political cosmopolitans, the development of the
European Union, though lacking in some respects, is indicative of the
concrete possibilities of these cosmopolitan ideals in practice (Beck and
Grande, 2007 ; Habermas and Derrida, 2005 ; Rumford, 2007 ). The
European Union has achieved the peaceful incorporation of states that
were long - term enemies by external expansion: integrating states into a
supranational organization has been much more effective than a balance
of powers based on mutual fear of the use of force. Although there are
continual political struggles within Europe over sovereignty and national
independence, European human rights law is relatively effective in bring-
ing pressure to bear on member states, and it also infl uences prospective
member states which must show they comply with it before they are
allowed to join the European Union. In this way, the European Union
spreads human rights principles peacefully beyond its own borders. The
international courts that try individuals for crimes against humanity are
also examples of cosmopolitan law: as long as the court ’ s protocols are

observed and there appears to be sufficient evidence against the accused,
the individual ’ s status within a state – citizen or non - citizen, elected or
appointed leader – is irrelevant. According to “ Nuremberg principles ” of
cosmopolitan law, there are no reasons, not even reasons of state, that
can possibly justify certain actions, whether in peacetime or when a state
is at war.
Initially a side - show to the main event of setting up the equal sover-
eignty of states in the UN system, the development of human rights agree-
ments into cosmopolitan law now strikingly contradicts its premises, at
least in some respects. It should be stressed here that, for the most part,
human rights policies are agreements that state actors themselves defi ne
and institutionalize within their own territories. The UN system is designed
to allow maximum autonomy to states in this respect, as we will see in
chapter 5 . Nevertheless, cosmopolitan law is at odds with state sover-
eignty because it is only where state actors are involved that violence