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21 Cardozo L. Rev. 1183 (1999-2000)
Constitutionalism as a Site of State Formative Practices

handle is hein.journals/cdozo21 and id is 1197 raw text is: CONSTITUTIONALISM AS A SITE OF STATE FORMATIVE PRACTICES Upendra Baxi* INTRODUCrION I must, at the outset, express my appreciation to Professors Norman Dorsen, Louis Henkin, and Michel Rosenfeld for the honor of inviting me to this Roundtable. Commenting on the extraordinarily rich and fascinating papers of Professors Kenneth Karst and Yash Ghai enhances this honor. Together, they articulate achievements as well as crises of constitutionalism at the end of the second Christian millennium. Both have as their principal theme the troubled relationship between constitutionalism and state formative practices. Professor Karst explores this relationship in terms of the constitutional survival of American nationhood. Professor Ghai addresses issues concerning constitutional progression and regression in terms of a discourse of human rights in the context of contemporary globalization. Karst and Ghai bring a rich, and often astonishing, array of insights through incredibly diverse circumstances and conjunctures of governance, rights, and justice. Although the practice of intellectual modesty is a forbidden postmodern virtue, I must state at the outset my inability to do justice to the richness of either presentation. Belonging to an adolescent generation of Midnight's Children that made Salman Rushdie an overnight celebrity, and having been shaped at Berkeley (though at Boalt Hall) during the height of the anti- Vietnam protests, I encounter these presentations in the context of many a postmodern nightmare. The very phrase-regimes of nation building, identity, and human rights appear deeply problematic. I am not grounded in the discipline known as American Civilization. Therefore, I am at a considerable * Professor of Law, University of Warwick; Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi (1990-1994) and South Gujarat (1982-1985); Visiting Professor, Global Law Program, New York University (1966-1999). Professor Baxi's major contributions, and concerns, stand directed to development of social theory of human rights and to the effective uses of law by subaltern groups, a site already captured by special or dominant interests. 1183