This book explores some of the conceptual questions that underpin the legal disputes which arise in relation to equality and discrimination. Among these questions are: the meaning of 'equality' as a legal concept and its relationship to the principle of non-discrimination * symmetrical and asymmetrical approaches to equality/non-discrimination * the role of comparators in discrimination/equality analysis * the selection of protected characteristics and the proper sphere of statutory and constitutional protections * the scope for and regulation of potential conflicts between protected grounds. The book engages with domestic, European Union, and European Convention on Human Rights case law, as well as with wider international approaches. It also addresses a number of contemporary issues for discrimination/equality law, including the problem of racial profiling and the regulation of multiple discrimination. This is an interesting study for all those working in the fields of discrimination and human rights. (Series: Human Rights Law in Perspective)

"This is the first book to offer a systematic analysis of human rights in the 21st century. The chapters, written from diverse methodological perspectives, provide rich and varied insights on vital questions concerning the resiliency, weaknesses, and prospects of human rights today"--Provided by publisher.

This is an innovative contribution to the philosophy of human rights. Considering both legal and philosophical scholarship, the views here bear an importance on the legitimacy of international politics and international law. As a result of more than 10 years of research, this revised edition engages with current debates through the help of new sections. Pluralistic universalism considers that, while formal filtering criteria constitute unavoidable requirements for the production of potentially valid arguments, the exemplarity of judgmental activity, in its turn, provides a pluralistic and retrospective reinterpretation for the fixity of such criteria. While speech formal standards grounds the thinnest possible presuppositions we can make as humans, the discursive exemplarity of judgments defends a notion of validity which is both contextually dependent and "subjectively universal". According to this approach, human rights principles are embedded within our linguistic argumentative practice. It is precisely from the intersubjective and dialogical relation among speakers that we come to reflect upon those same conditions of validity of our arguments. Once translated into national and regional constitutional norms, the discursive validity of exemplar judgments postulates the philosophical necessity for an ideal of legal-constitutional pluralism, challenging all those attempts trying to frustrate both horizontal (state to state) and vertical (supra-national-state-social) on-going debates on human rights. On the first edition of this book: "Claudio Corradetti's book is a thoughtful attempt to find an adequate theoretical foundation for human rights. Its approach is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on issues in analytical philosophy as well as contemporary political theorists, and the result is a densely argued text aimed at scholars ... ." (Andrew Lambert, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Vol. 14 (3), January, 2010)

Does an offender have the "right" to be punished? "The right to be punished" may sound like an oxymoron, but it is not necessarily so. With the emergence of modern criminal law, the offender gained the "right" to be punished by rational criminal law rather than being lynched by an angry mob. The present-day offender may have the "right" to be punished by doctrinal sentencing rather than being subjected to verdicts based on vague, unclear, and uncertain principles. In modern criminal law, the imposition of criminal liability follows accurate and strict rules, whereas there are no similar rules for the imposition of punishment. The process of sentencing is vague and obscure, as are the considerations used for the imposition of punishments. The objective of the present book is to propose a comprehensive, general, and legally sophisticated theory of modern doctrinal sentencing. The challenges of such a legal theory are plenty and complex. In addition to increasing clarity and certainty, modern doctrinal sentencing must deal with modern types of delinquency (e.g. organized crime, recidivism, corporate offenders, high-tech offenses, etc.) and modern principles of criminal law. Modern doctrinal sentencing must serve to ensure optimal sentencing.

This invaluable one-stop reference source supplies students and general readers with historical and current information on the victims' rights revolution in the United States, providing analysis on everything from human rights reports to Supreme Court cases that allows the reader to fully understand these documents. Victims' rights represent the greatest change in the criminal justice system within the last 30 years. Victims' Rights: A Documentary and Reference Guide traces the origins, evolution, and results of the victims' rights movement. It puts victims' rights in a legal, historical, and contemporary context, and comprehensively collects important victims' rights documents in a single volume-perfect for students as well as general readers. Bringing together dozens of varied documents such as presidential task force reports and recommendations, Supreme Court cases, state constitutions, human rights reports, critical articles, and political documents, this book is an indispensable resource for those seeking to understand the origins and modern consequences of American victims' rights policy. The author's accompanying commentary and analysis helps the reader to gain a complete comprehension of the significance of these documents, while numerous bibliographic sources provide additional resources for interested readers. Many primary source documents, such as the President's Task Force on Victims of Crime A focused bibliography follows each chapter An index offers easy access to documents and analysis

The human right to survive and develop, a fundamental premise of the "U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child," can be attained only if adequate living conditions are secured for the child. This book reviews the significance of the physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social aspects of holistic child development called for by Article 27 of the "Convention." The editors share a vision of childhood wherein the child is accorded dignity, and opportunities exist to promote advancement of human potential. Contributors from several nations and a variety of disciplines, including psychology, law, social work, medicine, economics, and international studies, address the challenge of identifying adequate living conditions across cultures and discuss issues affecting communities and governments as they attempt to fulfill their responsibilities to children and their families. Key themes throughout the book are the significance of the child's perspective, the primacy of the family environment, the need to balance the interests of diverse cultures while reducing historical inequities, and the ecological interdependence of children, families, communities, and nations. The editors and contributors call for organized social and political action to realize the child's right to develop, including ways to measure and monitor children's well-being beyond survival.

Violence against women is a major problem in all countries, affecting women in every socio-economic group and at every life stage. Nowhere in the world do women share equal social and economic rights with men or the same access as men to productive resources. Economic globalization and development are creating new challenges for women's rights as well as some new opportunities for advancing women's economic independence and gender equality. Yet, when women have access to productive resources and they enjoy social and economic rights they are less vulnerable to violence across all societies. The Political Economy of Violence against Women develops a feminist political economy approach to identify the linkages between different forms of violence against women and macro structural processes in strategic local and global sites - from the household to the transnational level. In doing so, it seeks to account for the globally increasing scale and brutality of violence against women. These sites include economic restructuring and men's reaction to the loss of secure employment, the abusive exploitation associated with the transnational migration of women workers, the growth of a sex trade around the creation of free trade zones, the spike in violence against women in financial liberalization and crises, the scourge of sexual violence in armed conflict and post-crisis peacebuilding or reconstruction efforts and the deleterious gendered impacts of natural disasters. Examples are drawn from South Africa, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, the Pacific Islands, Argentina, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Iceland.

Set in Israel in the first decade of the twenty-first century and based on long-term fieldwork, this rich ethnographic study offers an innovative analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It explores practices of ""memory activism"" by three groups of Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Palestinian citizens-Zochrot, Autobiography of a City, and Baladna-showing how they appropriated the global model of truth and reconciliation while utilizing local cultural practices such as tours and testimonies. These activist efforts gave visibility to a silenced Palestinian history in order to come to terms with the conflict's origins and envision a new resolution for the future. This unique focus on memory as a weapon of the weak reveals a surprising shift in awareness of Palestinian suffering among the Jewish majority of Israeli society in a decade of escalating violence and polarization--albeit not without a backlash. Contested memories saturate this society. The 1948 war is remembered as both Independence Day by Israelis and al-Nakba (""the catastrophe"") by Palestinians. The walking tour and survivor testimonies originally deployed by the state for national Zionist education that marginalized Palestinian citizens are now being appropriated by activists for tours of pre-state Palestinian villages and testimonies by refugees.

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"This collection of essays could not be timelier...scholars pondering the implications of recent immigration for ethnic and racial politics would do well to look at this collection of essays."--"American Political Science Review"

America is currently in the midst of a major racial and ethnic demographic shift. By the twenty-first century, the population of Hispanics and Asians will increase significantly, while the black population is expected to remain relatively stable. Non-Hispanic Whites will decrease to just over half of the nation's population. How will the changing ethnic and racial composition of American society affect the long struggle for black political power and inclusion? To what extent will these racial and ethnic shifts affect the already tenuous nature of racial politics in American society?

Using the literature on black politics as an analytical springboard, Black and Multiracial Politics in America brings together a broad demography of scholars from various racial and ethnic groups to assess how urban political institutions, political coalitions, group identity, media portrayal of minorities, racial consciousness, support for affirmative action policy, political behavior, partisanship, and other crucial issues are impacted by America's multiracial landscape.

Contributors include Dianne Pinderhughes, M. Margaret Conway, Pei-te Lein, Susan Howell, Mack Jones, Brigitte L. Nacos, Natasha Hritzuk, Marion Orr, Michael Jones-Correa, A.B. Assensoh, Joseph McCormick, Sekou Franklin, Jose Cruz, Erroll Henderson, Mamie Locke, Reuel Rogers, James Endersby, Charles Menifield and Lawrence J. Hanks.

In the first part of this book, noted legal scholar Dimtris Liakopoulos deals with reconstructing the legal regulatory framework governing human rights violations in the activities of organizations. After identifying rules that are generally applicable to organizations’ offenses and govern the profile of reparations, this study assesses primary rules that guarantee the right to an effective remedy. Liakopoulos then moves on to how this works in practice, examining the reparations obtainable by an individual in disputes between states and organizations. This includes, for example, damages caused by the United Nations in the context of force operations and requests for the cancellation or modification of sanctions unjustly imposed by the UN’s Sanctions Committee. The author then assesses enforcement practices, highlighting the limits of diplomatic protection from the perspective of protecting individual interests and enhancing some recent tendencies of “humanizing” institutions in question.

Antony Alcock recounts four stages in the history of regional cultural minority protection: protection of religious minorities and the rise of cultural nationalism before 1914; attempts to assimilate minorities between the wars together with the League of Nations' system of protection; neglect of the complex issues in minority protection after 1945, leading in many cases to violence; and finally the renaissance of cultural minorities in the west, while in the east the new states after the fall of communism have had difficulties in coming to terms with their minorities.

This volume offers a systematic overview of the different tools through which the human rights accountability of transnational corporations may be improved. It first examines the responsibility of States in controlling transnational corporations, emphasizing both the limits imposed by the protection of the rights of investors under investment treaties and the potential of the US Alien Tort Claims Act and other similar extra-territorial legislations. It then turns to self-regulation by transnational corporations, through the use of codes of conduct or international framework agreements. It then discusses recent attempts at the global level to improve the human rights accountability of corporations by the direct imposition on corporations of obligations under international law. Finally, it considers the use of public procurement policies or of conditionalities in the lending policies of multilateral lending institutions in order to incentivize TNCs to behave ethically. Altogether, the book offers a rigorous legal analysis of these different developments and critically appraises their potential.

The controversial nature of seeking globalised justice through national courts has become starkly apparent in the wake of the Pinochet case in which the Spanish legal system sought to bring to account under international criminal law the former President of Chile,for violations in Chile of human rights of non-Spaniards. Some have reacted to the involvement of Spanish and British judges in sanctioning a former head of state as nothing more than legal imperialism while others have termed it positive globalisation. While the international legal and associated statutory bases for such criminal prosecutions are firm, the same cannot be said of the enterprise of imposing civil liability for the same human-rights-violating conduct that gives rise to criminal responsibility. In this work leading scholars from around the world address the host of complex issues raised by transnational human rights litigation. There has been, to date, little treatment, let alone a comprehensive assessment, of the merits and demerits of US-style transnational human rights litigation by non-American legal scholars and practitioners. The book seeks not so much to fill this gap as to start the process of doing so, with a view to stimulating debate amongst scholars and policy-makers. The book's doctrinal coverage and analytical inquiries will also be extremely relevant to the world of transnational legal practice beyond the specific question of human rights litigation.

Taking as a starting point that hunger results from social exclusion and distributional inequities and that lasting, sustainable and just solutions are to be found in changing the structures that underlie our food systems, this book examines how law shapes global food systems and their ongoing transformations. Using detailed case studies, historical mapping and legal analysis, the contributors show how various actors (farmers, civil society groups, government officials, international bodies) use or could use different legal tools (legislative, jurisprudential, norm-setting) on various scales (local, national, regional, global) to achieve structural changes in food systems. Section 1, Institutionalizing New Approaches, explores the possibility of institutionalizing social change through two alternative visions for change - the right to food and food sovereignty. Individual chapters discuss Via Campesina's struggle to implement food sovereignty principles into international trade law, and present case studies on adopting food sovereignty legislation in Nicaragua and right to food legislation in Uganda. The chapters in Section 2, Regulating for Change, explore the extent to which the regulation of actors can or cannot change incentives and produce transformative results in food systems. They look at the role of the state in regulating its own actions as well as the actions of third parties and analyze various means of regulating land grabs. The final section, Governing for Better Food Systems, discusses the fragmentation of international law and the impacts of this fragmentation on the realization of human rights. These chapters trace the underpinnings of the current global food system, explore the challenges of competing regimes of intellectual property, farmers rights and human rights, and suggest new modes of governance for global and local food systems. The stakes for building better food systems are high. Our current path leaves many behind, destroying the environment and entrenching inequality and systemic poverty. While it is commonly understood that legal structures are at the heart of food systems, the legal academy has yet to make a significant contribution to recent discussions on improving food systems - this book aims to fill that gap."

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This book provides new insights on the lives of children in street situations by providing analyses from a qualitative perspective on the sociology of childhood. It proposes some insightful perspectives on the current discussion about the rights of children in street situations. It includes a unique selection of texts, which were initially published in French, written by the authors of this volume, on the lives of children in street situations in Latin America and China, that are now available to an English readership. It challenges obstacles, linked to macrosocial issues such as inequalities, images of the child, the separation of public/private spheres, urban dynamics and structural adjustments, as well as to microsocial dimensions such as identity, motivation, and activities that are constitutive of street situations. The book discusses the situations experienced by children, highlighting children's reflexivity and strategies as social factors, and shedding new light on the debate "agency within structure".

This book critically examines the response of the United Nations (UN) to the problem of sexual exploitation in UN Peace Support Operations. It assesses the Secretary-General's Bulletin on Special Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse (2003) (SGB) and its definition of sexual exploitation, which includes sexual relationships and prostitution. With reference to people affected by the policy (using the example of Bosnian women and UN peacekeepers), and taking account of both radical and 'sex positive' feminist perspectives, the book finds that the inclusion of consensual sexual relationships and prostitution in the definition of sexual exploitation is not tenable. The book argues that the SGB is overprotective, relies on negative gender and imperial stereotypes, and is out of step with international human rights norms and gender equality. It concludes that the SGB must be revised in consultation with those affected by it, namely local women and peacekeepers, and must fully respect their human rights and freedoms, particularly the right to privacy and sexuality rights.

Facing the threats posed by dedicated suicide bombers who have access to modern technology for mass destruction and who intend to cause maximum human suffering and casualties, democratic governments have hard choices to make. On the one hand, they must uphold the basic values of democratic societies based on due process and human rights. On the other, they need to pre-empt the kind of destruction inflicted upon New York, Madrid, London, and Bali. The premise of this book is that for intelligence organizations to be able to face up to the challenges of global terrorism, they must think outside the box and utilize all of their resources effectively and creatively. To overcome the enemy, we must also secure the peace. Winning the hearts and minds of the terrorists' pool of potential recruits will be essential to cutting off the supply of suicide bombers. The support and cooperation of the people in countries where the terrorists strike must be sustained by ensuring they have confidence in the government and intelligence services. If a government and its intelligence services become so focused on pre-empting terrorist attacks that they infringe on the rights of their citizens and encroach on democratic norms, they unwittingly fall into a trap set by Al Qaeda and its kind. These organizations aim to destroy the democratic way of life so cherished in the West, and to incite the Muslim populations in democratic countries and their non-Muslim fellow citizens into a vicious circle of mutual hatred and violence. This book therefore addresses not only the question of how intelligence organizations can improve their efficacy in pre-empting terrorist outrages, but also the wider issue of removing the forces that sustain global terrorism as a scourge of the 21st century. The general public in the target countries and recruiting grounds must also be persuaded that—despite their rhetoric—the terrorists are not engaged in a holy war. Ultimately, the brand of global terrorism promoted by Osama bin Laden and his associates is meant to satisfy their own vanity and aspirations toward semi-divine status; the organization they have formed for this purpose is merely a global syndicate that commits serious crimes of a particularly heinous nature. Intelligence services of various countries need to find convincing evidence to prove this point. But it is up to governments, civil society, and the media in different parts of the world to work together if the evidence unearthed by national intelligence services is to be accepted by the general public. Unless the emotional or quasi-religious appeal of the global terrorists can be removed, the simple arrest of bin Laden and his close associates—or even the destruction of Al Qaeda as an organization—will not be sufficient to prevent others from rising to replace them.

Scott Douglas Gerber here argues that the Constitution of the United States should be interpreted in light of the natural rights political philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and that the Supreme Court is the institution of American government that should be primarily responsible for identifying and applying that philosophy in American life. Importantly, the theory advanced in this book - what Gerber calls "liberal originalism" - is neither consistently "liberal" nor consistently "conservative" in the modern conception of those terms. Rather, the theory is liberal in the classic sense of viewing the basic purpose of government to be safeguarding the natural rights of individuals. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men". In essence, Gerber maintains that the Declaration articulates the philosophical ends of our nation and that the Constitution embodies the means to effectuate those ends. From the opening chapter's bold revision of the character of the American Revolution to the closing chapter's provocative reinterpretation of many of the most famous cases in Supreme Court history, this book demonstrates the importance of approaching constitutional interpretation from more than one discipline. Indeed, Gerber's analysis reveals that the Constitution cannot be properly understood without recourse to history, political philosophy, and law.

This is a book about why people so often put up with being the victims of their societies and why at other times they become very angry and try with passion and forcefulness to do something about their situation. I his most ambition book to date, Barrington Moore, Jr explores a large part of the world's experience with injustice and its understanding of it. In search of general elements behind the acceptance of injustice he discusses the Untouchables of India, Nazi concentration camps, and the Milgram experiments on obedience to authority.