The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a de/sacralised text

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jochen von Bernstorff
• Subject Area: Principles of Law and Jurisprudence ; Public Law
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398344141

The research project addresses the question whether and to what extent the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from a practice-theory perspective can be conceptualized as a “sacralised” text being of fundamental importance for international relations (UN) and the lifeworlds in various political and socal communities around the globe. From the perspective of a juridical “community of practice”, the rights enshrined the Declaration and their reproduction in other legal documents trigger ubiquitous discourses of justification for public and private actions. Employing to the concept of de/sacralisation from the joint research framework, this project attempts to analyze how the Universal Declaration has attained a status of transnational textual “authority” throughout diverse communities of practice and how this authority can be conceptionalised.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2828: De/Sacralization of texts