146 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 supposed to ameliorate the self-interest of sovereignty in international law. 186 Indeed, I argue that the ideal of peremptory norms is an important piece of the puzzle of the minimum co re’s status, especially as to its nonderogability. As we will see below, this urge to rank norms agains t the trend of consensus 187 evokes the same deontological paradox. Some commentators seek to dissolve the tension between consensus and ethical normativity by “univers alizing” 188 the norms themselves. Abdullahi An-Na’im, for example, suggests that “human rights are much more credible . . . if they are perceived to be legitimat e within the various cultural traditions of the world.” 189 The argument t hat the Uni versal Declaration of Human Rights constitutes customary internat ional law follows in this vein. 190 Its supporters usually evoke, no t its superior moral pers uasiveness (as one might expect) but, rather, the latent consensus present at its adoption by the General Assembly in 1948191 or its later invocation by m any of the world’s courts and decisionmakers. 192 The grounding of the mini mum core in a mini mum consensus ensures its validity across the varied regimes. Similarly, the norm of consensus helps to secure the legitimacy and validity of constitutiona l norms. In constitutional theory, consensus operates to register the necessar y degree of self-governm ent of the citizens of a constitutional polity. Alexander Bickel famously claimed that “coher ent, stable—and morally supportable—government is possible only on the basis of consent.” 193 More recent measures in constitutional th eory point to the versions of wider cultural agreement that shift over time but ar e always indirectly informing t he interpretation of ri ghts in constitutional 194 adjudication. Some commentators argue that consensus is in fact more meaningful in American constitutional law than in other more internationalist, constitutional systems. 195 Yet whether American constitutionalism is 186. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, supra note 181, art. 53 (s tipulating that any treaty conflicting with a peremptory norm—“accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted”—is void). 187. For a seminal expression, see Prosper Weil, Towards Relative Normativity in International Law?, 77 AM. J. INT’L L. 413 (1983). 188. Susan Waltz, Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States in the Construction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , 23 H UM. RTS. Q. 43, 45 (2001) (endorsing the political project of “concerted efforts to build a public and worldwide consensus around the idea of human rights, including political strategies, diplomatic initiatives, agreement of explicit principles, and conclusion of an international accord”). 189. HUMAN RIGHTS IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES: A QUEST FOR CONSENSUS 3 (Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im ed., 1991). 190. International Bill of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 (III), pmbl., U.N. Doc. A/810 (Dec. 10, 1948). 191. See, e.g., GLENDON, supra note 113, at 222 (pointing to the “core of funda mental principles . . . widely shared in c ountries that had not yet adopted rights instruments and in cultures that had not embraced the language of rights”). 192. CHRISTIAN TOMUSCHAT, HUMAN RIGHTS: BETWEEN IDEALISM AND REALISM 63 (2003) (likening the origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to “a sort of birth defect” because of the absen ce of m any states at its or iginal adoption, an d relying instead on the later affirmation of the Universal Declaration). 193. ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH: THE SUPREME COURT AT THE BAR OF POLITICS 20 (2d ed. 1986). 194. Post, supra note 133. 195. Jed Rubenfeld, Unilateralism and Constitutio nalism, 79 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1971, 1999 (2004) (contrasting the “democratic constitutionalism” informing American constitutional law with the