“Either I Close My Eyes or I Don’t”: The Evolution of Rights in Encounters between Sovereign Power and “Rightless” Migrants

Abstract

Harsh migration enforcement has sparked courageous humanitarian reactions and hundreds of criminal prosecutions. Such prosecutions ostensibly seek to vindicate the power of governments to control nation-state borders. But they seem, ironically, to have achieved the opposite: They have vindicated, reinvigorated – and even inspired new forms of – basic human rights. This chapter examines three cases: Cédric Herrou, a French olive farmer who was criminally tried for assisting unauthorized migrants in France; German “rescue” ship captains, Carola Rackete and Pia Klemp, prosecuted for rescuing distressed migrants at sea and bringing them to Lampedusa, Italy; and Scott Warren, prosecuted after allegedly providing food, water, beds, and clean clothes to undocumented immigrants in Arizona. The verdict in Herrou’s case was overturned because fraternity was recognized as a constitutional value. Captains Klemp and Rackete appealed to the ideal of “solidarity.” Warren’s attorney intoned to the jury, “Being a good Samaritan is not against the law ….” These encounters implicate deep questions of constitutional legitimacy and migrant rights, involving the presence of migrants with definable – if not yet enforceable – rights claims. They illustrate a dynamic process of mediating tensions between “sovereign” power and human rights, an essential revitalizing project for constitutional democracy and human rights law.