Human Rights and the Magic of Jus Cogens

There is an almost intrinsic relationship between jus cogens and human rights. Peremptory human rights norms, as projections of the individual and collective conscience, materialize as powerful collective beliefs. As such, they inherently possess an extraordinary force of social attraction that has an almost magical character. This article investigates the legal effects of peremptory human rights norms at both the systemic and contextual levels. If these norms have been successful in providing the societal body with a set of identity values, they have dramatically failed to operate as an ordering factor of social practices. To wonder why this is so and to see what can be done (and by whom) to enhance their impact on the contextual level is the main goal of this article.