Law and (Global) Order: Towards a Theory of Cosmopolitan Policing

TLDR: In this paper, the authors argue that policing within a cosmopolitan legal order should be conceptualized as a form of societal peacekeeping, which functions to maintain the conditions necessary for the enjoyment of human rights.

Abstract: Cosmopolitans call for the creation of a global legal order based around the principle of universal human rights. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that cosmopolitans have not adequately addressed the issue of how such a global order would be policed. The emergence of stable legal systems has generally coincided with the development of formal and informal methods of policing that function to enforce legal entitlements and maintain societal order. This suggests that the issue of policing should be addressed if cosmopolitanism is to be defended as a desirable and realistic project for reforming the global order. This paper proposes that policing within a cosmopolitan legal order should be conceptualized as a form of societal peacekeeping, which functions to maintain the conditions necessary for the enjoyment of human rights. It rejects the idea of a unitary global police force modelled on the professional agencies established by the modern state, in favour of a plural approach that calls for cosmopolita...