International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations

In “Constitution-Making as a Technique of International Law: Reconsidering the Post-war Inheritance,” Anna Saunders highlights that the study and practice of constitutionalism exhibit a reluctance to consider the relationship between national constitutions and international economic relations. She a...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Michele Krech
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press 2023-01-01
Series:AJIL Unbound
Online Access:https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2398772323000417/type/journal_article
_version_ 1797653409519632384
author Michele Krech
author_facet Michele Krech
author_sort Michele Krech
collection DOAJ
description In “Constitution-Making as a Technique of International Law: Reconsidering the Post-war Inheritance,” Anna Saunders highlights that the study and practice of constitutionalism exhibit a reluctance to consider the relationship between national constitutions and international economic relations. She argues that the prevailing epistemic boundaries of constitutionalism—understood as a self-contained project, separate from projects of global economic ordering—have largely insulated it from critiques raised by scholars concerned with the material and distributive implications of reshaping the global legal order through the making and revising of constitutions. This essay takes up Saunders's call to de-insulate constitution-making as a technique of international law from such critique by pointing to the family as an institution that is central both to constitutional ordering and to economic ordering, and thus can help overcome the epistemic boundary between the two. To this end, the essay brings together various strands of critical thought that identify one particular family structure—the nuclear family—as an exploitative institution that has (re)produced structural inequality both within and between states. Described as the “original sin” of modern constitutionalism and as an essential “instrument of colonization,” the nuclear family model represents an apt entry point to reconceiving constitution-making as Saunders suggests—in a way “that both acknowledges the discipline's past collaboration with forms of dispossession and exploitation, and that actively reconsiders its future boundaries.”
first_indexed 2024-03-11T16:44:08Z
format Article
id doaj.art-40cc112f7d22430cb8b90293ef57e4d0
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2398-7723
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-11T16:44:08Z
publishDate 2023-01-01
publisher Cambridge University Press
record_format Article
series AJIL Unbound
spelling doaj.art-40cc112f7d22430cb8b90293ef57e4d02023-10-23T06:06:31ZengCambridge University PressAJIL Unbound2398-77232023-01-0111724525010.1017/aju.2023.41International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic RelationsMichele Krech0Harry A. Bigelow Fellow & Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, Illinois, United States.In “Constitution-Making as a Technique of International Law: Reconsidering the Post-war Inheritance,” Anna Saunders highlights that the study and practice of constitutionalism exhibit a reluctance to consider the relationship between national constitutions and international economic relations. She argues that the prevailing epistemic boundaries of constitutionalism—understood as a self-contained project, separate from projects of global economic ordering—have largely insulated it from critiques raised by scholars concerned with the material and distributive implications of reshaping the global legal order through the making and revising of constitutions. This essay takes up Saunders's call to de-insulate constitution-making as a technique of international law from such critique by pointing to the family as an institution that is central both to constitutional ordering and to economic ordering, and thus can help overcome the epistemic boundary between the two. To this end, the essay brings together various strands of critical thought that identify one particular family structure—the nuclear family—as an exploitative institution that has (re)produced structural inequality both within and between states. Described as the “original sin” of modern constitutionalism and as an essential “instrument of colonization,” the nuclear family model represents an apt entry point to reconceiving constitution-making as Saunders suggests—in a way “that both acknowledges the discipline's past collaboration with forms of dispossession and exploitation, and that actively reconsiders its future boundaries.”https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2398772323000417/type/journal_article
spellingShingle Michele Krech
International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations
AJIL Unbound
title International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations
title_full International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations
title_fullStr International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations
title_full_unstemmed International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations
title_short International Constitution-making as a Technique of Gender Ordering: Considering the Role of the Family in Global Economic Relations
title_sort international constitution making as a technique of gender ordering considering the role of the family in global economic relations
url https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2398772323000417/type/journal_article
work_keys_str_mv AT michelekrech internationalconstitutionmakingasatechniqueofgenderorderingconsideringtheroleofthefamilyinglobaleconomicrelations