This open access book theorises and concretises the idea of 'absolute rights' in human rights law with a focus on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It unpacks how we might understand what an 'absolute right' in human rights law is and draws out how such a right's delimitation may remain faithful to its absolute character. From these starting points, it considers how, as a matter of principle, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment enshrined in Article 3 ECHR is, and ought, to be substantively delimited by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Focusing on the wrongs at issue, this analysis touches both on the core of the right and on what some might consider to lie at the right's 'fringes': from the aggravated wrong of torture to the severity assessment delineating inhumanity and degradation; the justified use of force and its implications for absoluteness; the delimitation of positive obligations to protect from ill-treatment; and the duty not to expel persons to places where they face a real risk of torture, inhumanity or degradation. Few legal standards carry the simultaneous significance and contestation surrounding this right. This book seeks to contribute fruitfully to efforts to counter a proliferation of attempts to dispute, circumvent or dilute the absolute character of the right not to be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and to offer the groundwork for transparently and coherently (re)interpreting the right's contours in line with its absolute character. Winner of the 2022 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Birmingham.

This book brings together a set of contributions that examine the complexities associated with domestic work by highlighting not only the legal issues but also exploring the social, psycho-social, economic, and cultural dimensions of domestic work. The book aims to ignite a collective effort towards ensuring decent work for domestic workers and facilitate a public debate on their rights. It includes discussions on the issue of social justice with special emphasis on invisibilization and undervaluation of domestic work, feminization of domestic work, and recognizes the rights of domestic workers as human rights. The issues covered in this book bridge the gap between legal and social dimensions of domestic work and address the discrimination faced by domestic workers in a holistic manner. Given its scope, the book would appeal to both academics (law as well as social science) and non-academics. It will be a useful tool for teachers, students, practitioners, policy-makers and civil society organizations working for the unorganized sector.

Chapters How Human Rights Cross-Pollinate and Take Root: Local Governments & Refugees in Turkey by Elif Durmus and Human Rights Localisation and Individual Agency: From 'Hobby of the Few' to the Few Behind the Hobby by Tihomir Sabchev, Sara Miellet, and Elif Durmus are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com This book seeks to explore, from a multidisciplinary perspective, whether human rights are, in fact, a myth or a lived reality. Over the years much has been said about their effectiveness or, rather, their ineffectiveness. This perceived ineffectiveness relates not only to institutional challenges at the international level, but also to national implementation mechanisms and processes. In addition, questions have arisen as to whether individuals or groups of individuals actually benefit from the normative guarantees contained in human rights law and whether human rights as legal constructs can be effectively translated into better outcomes. This volume can be distinguished from the existing literature by virtue of the fact that it not only brings together scholars at different stages of their careers, but also that it incorporates contributions that adopt different methodological perspectives and cover a variety of topics. The book should prove of great benefit to human rights researchers, human rights practitioners, NGOs and students. Claire Boost is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Maastricht University. Andrea Broderick is an Assistant Professor at the Department of International and European Law, Maastricht University. Fons Coomans is a Professor at the UNESCO Chair in Human Rights and Peace, Department of International and European Law, Maastricht University. Roland Moerland is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Maastricht University.

How does the Israeli criminal justice system treat its most significant minority group-the Arabs? This book explores the functioning of Israel's criminal justice system in the context of the volatile relationship between Jews and Arabs in Israel and the conflict between Jews and the Palestinians of the occupied territories. Examining decisions at each juncture of the system, the authors study the question of whether the system treats Arabs fairly and equally or discriminates against them. Aware of the potentially volatile nature of the subject, the authors have taken care to make the book methodologically sound and their findings level-headed. Their study shows that despite legislative efforts to protect minority rights and treat all citizens as equals, these goals are not always achieved. Arabs are treated differently in the criminal justice system.

This book narrates the integration of consumer culture into transnational human rights advocacy and explores its political impact. By examining tactics that include benefit concerts, graphic imagery of suffering, and branded outreach campaigns, the book details the evolution of human rights into a mainstream moral cause. Drawing inspiration from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the author argues that these strategies are effective in attracting masses of supporters but weaken the viability of human rights by commodifying its practices. Consumer capitalism co-opts the public's moral awakening and transforms its desire for global engagement into components of a lifestyle expressed through market transactions and commercial relationships, rather than political commitments. Reclaiming human rights as a subversive idea can reconnect the practice of human rights with its principles and generate a movement bound to the radical spirit of human rights.

Disability and Disaster adds disaster research to the expanding area of disability studies. The book includes writings by international scholars and first-hand narratives from individuals with disabilities affected by disasters around the globe. Hazards described in these narratives include earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, and war.

This volume presents an overview of the evolution of the current Chinese Constitution (1982) and the characteristics of constitutional studies since 1978. Readers are introduced to the basic principles of constitutional system in China and gain insights into the real state of Chinese law, allowing them to form their own opinions. It will also aid commercial communications with Chinese legal professionals as well as enterprises. The book covers a number of topics, including the history of constitutional communication between Chinese constitutionalists and the International Association of Constitutional Law since 1981, the most important academic contributions to international conferences concerning constitutional law by Chinese constitutionalists, the main characteristics of the current Chinese Constitution in the field of constitutional studies in China, the key issues of constitutional practice and implementation in China, the challenges of running the fundamental political system of the People's Representative Congress and the characteristics of rule of law specific to China.

Goler Teal Butcher (1925-93), a towering figure in international human rights law, was a scholar and advocate who advanced an intersectional approach to human empowerment influenced by Black women's intellectual traditions. Practical Audacity follows the stories of fourteen women whose work honors and furthers Butcher's legacy. Their multilayered and sophisticated contributions have critically reshaped human rights scholarship and activism-including their major role in developing critical race feminism, community-based applications, and expanding the boundaries of human rights discourse. Stanlie M. James weaves narratives by and about these women throughout the history of the field, illustrating how they conceptualize, develop, and implement human rights. By centering the courage and innovative interventions of capable and visionary Black women, she places them rightfully alongside such figures as Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston. This volume fundamentally shifts the frame through which human rights struggles are understood, illuminating how those who witness and experience oppression have made some of the biggest contributions to building a better world.

This is the first comprehensive, worldwide bibliography of racism. It contains references on some 135 countries and extends from ancient times to the present. The first part of the work consists of references dealing with single countries. More than 10,000 citations are organized according to country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The second part contains references to areas or regions or to related bibliographies. Some 2,000 non-duplicated citations are provided here. While the vast majority of entries are to English-language materials, a number of German, French, Spanish, and other language items are included as well. The work concludes with an author index and a subject index. Due to the many ways racism manifests itself, this bibliography will be of great value to scholars and students from a variety of disciplines from economics and education to sociology and history.

The national security and civil liberties tensions of the World War II mass incarceration link 9/11 and the 2015 Paris-San Bernardino attacks to the Trump era in America. This marked an era darkened by accelerating discrimination against, and intimidation of those asserting rights of freedom of religion, association and speech, and by increasingly volatile protests. This book discusses the broad civil liberties challenges posed by these past-into-the-future linkages highlighting pressing questions about the significance of judicial independence for a constitutional democracy committed both to security and to the rule of law. One of which is: Will courts fall passively in line with the elective branches, as they did in Korematsu v. United States, or serve as the guardian of the Bill of Rights, scrutinizing claims of "pressing public necessity" as justification for curtailing fundamental liberties? This book portrays the present-day significance of the Supreme Court's partially discredited, yet never overruled, 1944 decision upholding the constitutional validity of the mass Japanese American exclusion leading to indefinite incarceration. Second, it implicates prospects for judicial independence in adjudging Harassment, Exclusion, Incarceration disputes in contemporary America and beyond. Third, it engages the American populace in shaping law and policy at the ground level by placing the courts' legitimacy on center stage. This book addresses who we are as Americans and whether we are genuinely committed to democracy governed by the Constitution.

Following the vexed codification attempts of the International Law Commission and the relevant jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, this book addresses the permissibility of the practice of diplomatic asylum under general international law. In the light of a wealth of recent practice, most prominently the case of Julian Assange, the main objective of this book is to ascertain whether or not the practice of granting asylum within the premises of the diplomatic mission finds foundation under general international law. In doing so, it explores the legal framework of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, the regional treaty framework of Latin America, customary international law, and a possible legal basis for the practice on the basis of humanitarian considerations. In cases where the practice takes place without a legal basis, this book aims to contribute to bridging the legal lacuna created by the rigid nature of international diplomatic law with the absolute nature of the inviolability of the mission premises facilitating the continuation of the practice of diplomatic asylum even where it is without legal foundation. It does so by proposing solutions to the problem of diplomatic asylum. This book also aims to establish the extent to which international law relating to diplomatic asylum may presently find itself within a period of transformation indicative of both a change in the nature of the practice as well as exploring whether recent notions of humanity are superseding the traditional fundaments of the international legal system in this regard.

Through redrafting the judgments of the ECHR, Diversity and European Human Rights demonstrates how the court could improve the mainstreaming of diversity in its judgments. Eighteen judgments are considered and rewritten to reflect the concerns of women, children, LGB persons, ethnic and religious minorities and persons with disabilities in turn. Each redrafted judgment is accompanied by a paper outlining the theoretical concepts and frameworks that guided the approaches of the authors and explaining how each amendment to the original text is an improvement. Simultaneously, the authors demonstrate how difficult it can be to translate ideas into judgments, whilst also providing examples of what those ideas would look like in judicial language. By rewriting actual judicial decisions in a wide range of topics this book offers a broad overview of diversity issues in the jurisprudence of the ECHR and aims to bridge the gap between academic analysis and judicial practice.

Veiled women in the West appear menacing. Their visible invisibility is a cause of obsession. What is beneath the veil more than a woman? This book investigates the preoccupation with the veiled body through the imaging and imagining of Muslim women. It examines the relationship between the body and knowledge through the politics of freedom as grounded in a 'natural' body, in the index of flesh. The impulse to unveil is more than a desire to free the Muslim woman. What lies at the heart of the fantasy of saving the Muslim woman is the West's desire to save itself. The preoccupation with the veiled woman is a defense that preserves neither the object of orientalism nor the difference embodied in women's bodies, but inversely, insists on the corporeal boundaries of the West's mode of knowing and truth-making. The book contends that the imagination of unveiling restores the West's sense of its own power and enables it to intrude where it is 'other' - thus making it the centre and the agent by promising universal freedom, all the while stifling the question of what freedom is.

The essays in this collection investigate two political traditions and their critical interactions. The first series of essays deals with the development of natural rights individualism, some examining its origins in the thought of the seminal political theorist, John Locke, and the influential constitutional theorist, Montesquieu, others the impact of their theories on intellectual leaders during the American Revolution and the Founding era, and still others the culmination of this tradition in the writings of nineteenth-century individualists such as Lysander Spooner. The second series of essays focuses on the Progressive repudiation of natural rights individualism and its far-reaching effect on American politics and public policy.

In the past two decades, feminist politics on prostitution has become more polarised and ideological. On the one hand, those on the radical spectrum of feminist politics have fought long and hard to criminalise sex purchase with the intention of ultimately abolishing prostitution. Other feminists have lobbied the state to recognise and institutionalise sex workers' human rights. The collection is both a critical intervention in and a re-orientation of the schism in contemporary feminist prostitution politics. Contributors will use this schism as a platform from which to challenge current debates, and 'think' an alternative sex worker-centred politics for social justice. By placing sex workers' lived experiences of prostitution at the centre of the conversation, the book rejects the hegemony of neo-abolitionism as the solution to the 'problem' of sex work. The book brings international, trans-disciplinary scholars together to address a rights-based agenda for sex work law and policy and consequently for sex workers' lives. This collection offers an invaluable resource on the subject of how sex workers experience injustices and how we can mitigate this globally through a transformative vision of social justice.

Written in accessible language, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of a topical subject that is being widely debated across Europe. The work presents an overview of emerging case law from the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as well as from national courts and equality bodies in European countries, on the wearing of religious symbols in public spaces. The author persuasively argues that bans on the wearing of religious symbols constitutes a breach of an individual's human rights and contravene existing anti-discrimination legislation. Fully updated to take account of recent case law, this second edition has been expanded to consider bans in public spaces more generally, including employment, an area where some of the recent developments have taken place.

In the immediate decades after World War II, the French National Railways (SNCF) was celebrated for its acts of wartime heroism. However, recent debates and litigation have revealed the ways the SNCF worked as an accomplice to the Third Reich and was actively complicit in the deportation of 75,000 Jews and other civilians to death camps. Sarah Federman delves into the interconnected roles-perpetrator, victim, and hero-the company took on during the harrowing years of the Holocaust. Grounded in history and case law, Last Train to Auschwitz traces the SNCF's journey toward accountability in France and the United States, culminating in a multimillion-dollar settlement paid by the French government on behalf of the railways.The poignant and informative testimonies of survivors illuminate the long-term effects of the railroad's impact on individuals, leading the company to make overdue amends. In a time when corporations are increasingly granted the same rights as people, Federman's detailed account demonstrates the obligations businesses have to atone for aiding and abetting governments in committing atrocities. This volume highlights the necessity of corporate integrity and will be essential reading for those called to engage in the difficult work of responding to past harms.

Combining conflict studies and feminist perspectives on everyday violence, this book analyses games and push-backs, which are vectors to migrants' border crossing attempts and violence that aims to deter their journeys at the Bosnian-Croatian border. It questions how these diverse forms of violence are experienced, not treating violence as singular episodes but rather paying attention to how migrants make meaning of it across months and years. The author examines direct violence and its symbiosis with structural harms and questions how these turn into an everyday, concrete, and intimate processes at the border. She also questions who this violence targets, where it takes place, and asks whether and how the dominant assumptions about race and gender impact men's migration journeys. The book will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students interested in issues of migration, violence, masculinities, racialization, the European Union's border governance, and scholar activism.

A moral compass for the use of limited force that draws on the just war thought of Thomas Aquinas One of the most contentious developments in contemporary international relations has been the increased use of limited force. On the one hand, insofar as it signals greater constraint, the shift away from the mechanized slaughter of large-scale warfare toward more calibrated applications of force may be hailed as a step in the right direction. On the other, because uses of limited force appear more compartmentalized and therefore containable, it may encourage states’ more frequent recourse to arms. How, then, are we to make moral sense of this shift toward the small-scale use of force? When are these operations morally justifiable? Limited Force and the Fight for the Just War Tradition offers a moral compass for just war theorists and extends the limited scholarship on jus ad vim (the just use of limited force). Based on a historical approach to just war and case studies, this book provides practical arguments on the question of how the practice of targeted killing and punitive airstrikes should be regulated in order to be morally defensible. Drawing from a historical reading of the just war thought of Thomas Aquinas, Braun demonstrates how classical just war thinking not only helps us grapple with the moral questions of limited force but can also make an important third-way contribution to a field of study that has been engaged in a metaphorical fight about the just war tradition.

Apartheid and its resistance come to life in this memoir making it a vital historical document of its time and for our own. In 1969, while a student in South Africa, John Schlapobersky was arrested for opposing apartheid and tortured, detained and eventually deported. Interrogated through sleep deprivation, he later wrote secretly in solitary confinement about the struggle for survival. Those writings inform this exquisitely written book in which the author reflects on the singing of the condemned prisoners, the poetry, songs and texts that saw him through his ordeal, and its impact. This sense of hope through which he transformed his life guides his continuing work as a psychotherapist and his focus on the rehabilitation of others. "[T]hetale of an ordinary young man swept one day from his life into hell, testimony to the wickedness a political system let loose in its agents and, above all, an intimate account of how a man became a healer."-Jonny Steinberg, Oxford University From the introduction: I was supposed to be a man by the time I turned 21, by anyone's reckoning. By the apartheid regime's reckoning, I was also old enough to be tortured. Looking back, I can recognize the boy I was. The eldest of my grandchildren is now approaching this age, and I would never want to see her or the others - or indeed anyone else - having to face any such ordeal. At the time my home was in Johannesburg, only some thirty miles from Pretoria, where I was thrown into a world that few would believe existed, populated by creatures from the darkest places, creatures of the night, some in uniform. I was there for fifty-five days, and never went home again.

This book uses a practice-driven and empirically founded approach to address the question of whether and how international attention can protect and enable domestic human rights activists in authoritarian settings. It examines the untold origin story of the ‘human rights defender’ term and its uptake among international advocacy organizations, which coalesced with the rise of a theory of human rights change centered around the support for local actors. Rich with analyses of original qualitative and quantitative data, the author spells out this theory of change and tests its assumptions in two case studies: the individual casework of the UN special procedures, and the case of Tunisia under Ben Ali. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of human rights, of the United Nations, and more broadly of international relations and politics in general, and to practitioners working with human rights defenders at risk.

This book provides the reader with a detailed and systematic analysis of the current state of UK extradition law. It is much more comprehensive than the first edition, dividing the subject into three main areas: (a) general principles; (b) outward extradition from the UK (with separate chapters for extradition to Ireland, Europe, the Commonwealth, and other countries); and (c) inward extradition from those countries (including summaries of their domestic law of extradition) as well as the rules governing inward extradition into the UK itself. For the first time for any book on this subject, the implications of the Human Rights Act are examined in detail. Coverage also includes full analysis of recent developments such as the Pinochet cases. It is arguably the most comprehensive book to have been written on the subject since Sir Edward Clark's book of over 100 years ago.

The idea of security has recently seen a surge of interest from political philosophers. After the atrocities of 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005, many leading politicians justified encroachments on international legal standards and civil liberties in the name of security and with a view to protecting the rights of the people. Suggestions were made on both sides of the Atlantic to the effect that the extremism of terrorism required the security of the many to be weighed against the liberties of other citizens. In this collection of essays, Jeremy Waldron, Conor Gearty, Tariq Modood, David Novak, Abdelwahab El-Affendi and others debate how to move beyond the false dichotomy whereby fundamental human rights and international standards are conceived as something to be balanced against security. They also examine the claim that this aim might better be advanced by the inclusion in public debate of explicitly religious voices.

This book examines how and why liberalism and human rights have proven insufficient to protect immigrants. Contemporary immigration systems are characterized by increasing complexity and expanding enforcement, and frequently criticized for violating human rights and for causing death, exclusion and exploitation. The 'migrant crisis' can also be understood as a crisis of hospitality for liberal democracies. Through analysis of the immigration histories and political dynamics of Britain and the US, the book explains how these two archetypal liberal states have both sought to create a hostile environment for unwanted immigrants. The book provides a fresh and original perspective on the development of immigration systems, showing how they have become subject to the politics of fear and greed, and revealing how different traditions of hospitality have evolved, survived, and renewed.

Focusing on children's citizenship, participation and rights, this edited collection draws on the work of a number of leading scholars in the sociology of childhood. The contributors explore a range of themes including: tensions between pragmatism and grand theory; revisiting agency/structure debates in the light of children; the challenging of binary thought prevalent in studies around 'generations' and other aspects of sociology; the manifestation of power in time and space; the application of theories into the 'real' world through NGOs, practitioners, policy makers, politicians and empirical research. The collection will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including childhood studies, sociology, politics and social policy, as well as policy makers and practitioners interested in the citizenship, rights and participation of children.