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[Professor of Law and Philosophy at Georgetown University explains in the Yale Law Journal in 2004: [Frederick Haas
Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center, ARTICLE: A Theory of Crimes Against Humanity, The Yale Journal of
International Law, Winter, 2004, 29 Yale J. Int'l L. 85 p. 126]
The ban on crimes against humanityarising, supposedly, from all humankinds revulsion at the gravest possible offensespresents itself as a more powerful norm than any
international norms are less powerful than domestic norms, because they have
less connection with legitimate political processes of lawmaking.
In domestic law, it is the connection between the
that we can think of. But
state, the legal norms it promulgates, and the community whose values those norms express that makes the state a legitimate party in interest when those norms are
transgressed. Legitimacy arises from the consent of the governedfrom popular sovereignty institutionalized through democratic governance mechanisms. If legitimacy
requires popular sovereignty, then international law, formed by state actions and diplomatic undertakings many steps removed from popular control, necessarily has less
legitimacy than domestic law. As Paul Kahn puts it: The rule of law is not simply a matter of getting the content of rights correct. It is first of all an expression of our sense of
ourselves as a single, historical community engaging in self-government through law. To obey the law, on this conception, is to participate in the project of popular sovereignty.
That project makes us a single community with a uniqueand uniquely meaningfulhistory. It seems plain that just as all humankind has no such common project, neither
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