[opiniojuris] Cristina Rodriguez (Associate Professor of Law, NYU School of Law): Final thoughts on cosmopolitanism

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Posted by Cristina Rodriguez (Associate Professor of Law, NYU School of Law):
Final thoughts on cosmopolitanism
http://www.opiniojuris.org/posts/1210850335.shtml


   I want to wrap up my participation in this on-line symposium by
   thanking Peter again for his great contribution, and the occasion for
   what has been for me an engrossing discussion. I also want to chime in
   on two of the issues raised yesterday.
   1. Peter, I think that many, if not most, Americans have come to value
   their citizenship precisely because of its inclusiveness. The fact
   that it has become relatively easy to obtain and that we have
   eliminated all racial barriers to its acquisition is a reason to
   celebrate it, and to be proud of it. Sure, for some people extending
   its full scope to groups such as women and blacks may have diminished
   its value in the short-term, and the possibility of a Latino plurality
   in the U.S. as the result of contemporary migration may raise anxiety
   in some quarters. But, over time, people accept these reformulations
   of the institution, which make it stronger; exclusion becomes a drag
   on its value. And yes, as Robert Putnam has shown in his work,
   diversity can breed distrust. But adaptable institutions, such as our
   citizenship regime, are the keys to knitting diverse people together.
   Both our jus soli rule and the relatively open path to naturalization
   likely have been crucial to the United Statesâ ability (superior to
   many of our counterpartsâ in Europe and elsewhere) to absorb large
   immigrant populations. I think I share much of Jonathanâs optimism
   about what he calls the American creed, which may be under pressure by
   todayâs version of globalization, but whose institutional expressions,
   such as our citizenship regime as it exists today, are universalist in
   their orientation and therefore likely to survive the explosion of
   loyalties.
   2. Ken, your citation to Michael Ignatieffâs skepticism regarding
   cosmopolitanism raises an important issue that we have not really
   discussedâcitizenship as legal status. Everyone needs a citizenship,
   whether because citizenship is, in Arendtâs formulation, the âright to
   have rights,â or the primary security we have that we cannot be
   banished from at least one place on earth, or the mechanism for
   ensuring that everyone belongs somewhere such that every person is the
   ultimate responsibility of some government. I donât understand Peter
   to be dismissing the importance of citizenship as legal status, but
   (correct me if Iâm wrong Peter) he is cosmopolitan in the sense of
   seeing the need for forms of membership, including with legal
   significance, that extend beyond the traditional model of one person,
   one state. I share the skepticism of the sort of cosmopolitanism that
   believes that peopleâs attachments to their national contexts are on
   the wane, and that a more transcendent form of political and cultural
   identity is preferableâsome of which may be animating Peterâs work.
   But even as I agree that people remain deeply rooted in the societies
   or cultures in which they were born or raised, itâs hard to deny
   Peterâs point that we are all more plural than ever before in our
   interests and affiliations, if only because of the mass diffusion of a
   heavily American-inflected popular culture across the globe. And mass
   global migration, which is hardly just a phenomenon of elites, is
   contributing to the cosmopolitan dynamic. Whether the condition of
   cultural pluralism in which we live has been or ought to be
   accompanied by diminished regard for national citizenship is the
   question. I think Peter would say "yes" to the âhas beenâ part of that
   formulation, and your military officers would say âno wayâ to the
   âought.â Whether and how we try to bridge that gap is the hard part.