The right to have private rights

Hannah Arendt, famously, was no believer in human rights. Human rights, she thought, are unsatisfactory because they are territorially unlimited but ineffective. Her own alternative - the right to have rights, through membership in a political community - is not satisfactory either: such rights are effective but territorially limited and subject to the state's discretion. Drawing on Karen Knop's 'private citizenship,' this article suggests that a private international perspective may provide answers to these shortcomings. First, we should view private rights and private international law as the private side of human rights. Second, in times of great stress for a state, private international law can sometimes protect rights more subtly, more precisely, than human rights. And, third, the central role of private law in the protection of human rights provides a new lens on human rights more generally. By giving rights granted by states transboundary effectivity, private international law enables a third way beyond human rights that are ineffective and national rights that are territorially confined. It is by no means a panacea. But an analysis of human rights law, or of Arendt's right to have rights, is incomplete unless it includes the right to have private rights as established by private international law.