Human rights as epistemic practice: anglophone hegemony, decolonising imperatives, and the criminal legal system

This paper reconceptualises human rights as an epistemic practice embedded within the criminal legal system, and argues that the apparent universality of rights conceals historically specific lineages, linguistic hegemony, and colonial structures. We situate contemporary rights discourse within dual intellectual traditions, trace their political constitution through key historical moments, and examine how postcolonial actors have contested and instrumentalised rights language. Drawing on critical theory and decolonial critiques, we demonstrate how procedural formality in adversarial systems produces substantive gaps for marginalised populations. Comparative analyses from various jurisdictions reveal both the contingent realisation of rights and the risks of epistemic capture. The argument culminates in practical recommendations: reformed legal education, pluralist institutional design, decentralised norm-making, and empirically grounded dialogue between stakeholders. By insisting on a plural, context-sensitive epistemology, this paper advances a framework for recontextualising human rights so that criminal legal systems can better realise dignity, equality, and justice in postcolonial societies.