Evaluating the Impact of Politicization, and the Commodification of Juridification, on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Abstract

This research emphasizes the role of the government as an institution designed to uphold public trust and respect that the rights and liberties of the citizenry. However, that is an objective that is militated by corruption and the manipulation of symbolic power. Consequently, juridification plays a significant role in society, judging from the role of law as an instrument of legitimation. Thus, this research concludes that juridification can be a positive, or negative phenomenon. It is positive when utilized as an instrument for advancing and safeguarding human rights and liberties; while it is a negative phenomenon when applied as a tool for legitimizing violent or exploitative practices. Consequently, the legitimacy of laws are determined by their utility in advancing non-derogable standards of human rights law, and the individual right to autonomous action in society. So while law in the purest sense is an apolitical, normative, and substantive instrument/medium designed for the protection, recognition, and advancement of universal principles of human rights; the government is an institutional structure saddled with the procedural/administrative role of  implementation the law through public policy or administrative actions. However the synergy between the normative and administrative role of the State is sabotaged when juridification is corruptly applied for nefarious or exploitative purposes that are antithetical to the rights and freedoms of the human person, as a beneficiary of an equal right to legal recognition, dignity, autonomy, freedom, and social as well as economic development. Thus, the question of the legitimacy of law and juridification must be answered in line with human rights law.