9 - To Capture the World

Summary

This chapter describes how judicial bureaucrats characterize the state conduct or measure that gave rise to the proceedings. That characterization is a value-laden exercise whereby discrete aspects of reality are captured into the gravitational fields of the various courts and tribunals. In its normal course, state action is irreducibly pluralistic and does not lend itself to univocal labels: no domestic measure is ever only about ‘borders’, ‘investment’, or ‘human rights’. Yet, labels are necessary to attract the measure to the jurisdiction of this or that institution. The choice of the terms by which one describes state conduct determines the normative prism through which one looks at it, and reflects a struggle for appropriation among competing fora.