After Habermas' Der gespaltene Westen was published in Germany in 2004 to wide acclaim, Polity Press published an English language edition of the book in 2006. The Divided West contains Habermas' recent writings on international law and, particularly, his landmark essay on “The Kantian Project and the Divided West – Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” The essay constitutes the most elaborate contribution by Habermas on the challenges facing the international legal order today. While carefully unfolding his inquiry into the dynamics of international law within the current state of transatlantic relations and the role played by the United States in this and the global context, his essay has an objective beyond this. Habermas revisits Kant's concept of cosmopolitan citizenship and a world legal order, as elaborated in the essays “To Eternal Peace” and “Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent.” Habermas explores the chances of a revival Kant's thesis in a (post)-Kosovo and (post)-lraq Era of International Relations. Habermas' essay makes a number of poignant and provocative observations that have already been taken up in an increasingly global discussion.

Social order is the telos of law and politics. This study will present Jürgen Habermas' thought on this topic as one of the most important of the last forty years. By collocating it within the broader discussion on social order, we will highlight the potential, but also some problems of his universalistic proposal in light of challenges at the outset of the 21st century. This article argues that Habermas' communicative paradigm provides a conceptual framework for a universal public law protecting peace and human rights in an effective and legitimate way. It can be understood as a regulative idea, guiding transformative work of scholars, politicians and lawyers, rather than as a theoretical instrument that conceptualises international law in its current institutional setting.

In recent years, a growing chorus of publicists – lawyers, philosophers, political scientists and others – has discussed and often advocated the “constitutionalization” of international law, i.e. the gradual transformation of the whole or at least parts of international law into a world constitution. These “constitutionalists,” many of them having a German background, point to various recent phenomena such as international legal norms with erga omnes effects and peremptory norms (jus cogens) which seem to establish a hierarchical order of global values, going far beyond the classical inter-State relationships of coexistence and synallagmatic exchange. They further list compulsory judicial or quasi-judicial dispute settlement mechanisms (e.g., in the WTO). The constitutionalists put particular emphasis on the human rights revolution since 1945 and the rise of international criminal law that is administered by various international criminal tribunals – phenomena which have transformed individuals into (partial) subjects of international law alongside the states.

“The world truly shares a common fate.” These words seem to resonate with Immanuel Kant's famous statement that “a violation of right on one place of the earth is felt in all.” Yet, they are not from his Toward Perpetual Peace but from the UN Millennium Project report. What makes our world one of “overlapping communities of fate” are first and foremost the “interconnected threats and challenges” we face in our globalizing age. During the last fifty years we witnessed an enormous growth of transboundary problems – climate change, migration, terrorism, infectious diseases, violent conflicts etc.

The third essay in Habermas' collection The Divided West is entitled “February 15, or: What Binds Europeans.” The essay regionalizes the global claims Habermas makes in the longer chapter “Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” That is, in “February 15” Habermas makes the case for a European post-national order that he hopes will become the vanguard for the emergence of universal cosmopolitanism. Habermas concludes that all that is lacking for the achievement of this beachhead from which Europe can, in its turn, champion a “community of free and equal citizens” in a “global public sphere,” is a “European identity.”

We rarely witness wars between states anymore but this does not mean that there are fewer conflicts or less injustice worldwide. The contrary is true. More people than ever have become a victim of civil wars, other sub-state armed conflicts and genocide during recent years. The international community disagrees about how to react to gross human rights violations that occur in the course of these “new wars”: whereas some think this is a genuine task for the United Nations, others stress the argument of unrestrained national sovereignty as essential condition for international peace. Despite unceasing contestation, foreign interventions are nevertheless increasingly seen as an appropriate response to this kind of armed domestic conflicts – at least under certain conditions. The latest testimony in this direction is the emergence of an intense international debate over the “responsibility to protect”, which seeks to justify military invention in cases of a severe violation of individual negative rights of freedom.