This collection of essays addresses a topical subject of current importance, namely the impact of the EU on national welfare state systems. The volume aims to question the perception that matters of social welfare remain for Member States of the EU to decide, and that the EU's influence in this field is minor or incidental. The various essays trace the different ways in which the EU is having an impact on the laws and practices of the Member States in the area of welfare, looking at issues of social citizenship and the influence of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as at the impact of EU economic freedoms - competition law and free movement law in particular - on both 'services of general economic interest' and on national health-care systems. The significance of the so-called Open Method of Coordination in developing a new compromise on 'social Europe' is discussed, as well as the tensions between market liberalization and social protection in the specific context of this transnational political system are examined. While the various authors clearly have different views on the likelihood of a robust form of European social solidarity developing, the book as a whole suggests the emergence of a distinctive, although partial and fragmented, European Union welfare dimension.

More and more people are turning to human rights courts to seek protection against prejudice, disadvantage or exclusion on account of their cultural and economic particularities. Human rights courts are thus increasingly faced with the difficult task of deciding these cases, which raise a number of complex and contested legal questions. To what extent can courts accommodate cultural diversity, protect all kinds of groups or interfere in socio-economic policy? This book argues that one of the problems encountered in dealing with such cases is the courts' tendency to assess them from a 'compartmentalised' or fragmentary perspective. This line of reasoning isolates or places into 'boxes' the various interrelated components of the right holder's claim and the norms concerning the case to their detriment. This book critiques this reductionist approach that is out of touch with real life and which, moreover, tends to leave the roots of the alleged violations intact. To counterbalance this tendency, an innovative, integrated and person-centered approach to adjudicating claims of cultural difference and economic disadvantage is put forward. Drawing on the concepts of intersectionality, indivisibility and normative interdependence, the book presents specific notions and methods for approaching the appreciation of rights holders, harms and norms in a holistic manner. A wide selection of case law from both the European and the Inter-American courts of human rights supports the normative framework developed in this book. The sample mostly includes cases brought by Muslims, Roma, Travelers, indigenous peoples, afro-descendants and people living in poverty.Cultural Difference and Economic Disadvantage in Regional Human Rights Courts: An Integrated View combines legal theory with practical insights in analysing both cultural an economic issues, which are rarely addressed together in human rights legal scholarship. It also offers a context-sensitive and relational view of human rights law that puts rights holders at the heart of the legal analysis, taking heed of the social structures within which legal frameworks operate. The book makes for compelling reading for students, academics and practitioners working in the fields of human rights law, jurisprudence, constitutional law, legal theory and feminist and cultural studies.

Private companies exert considerable control over the flow of information on the internet. Whether users are finding information with a search engine, communicating on a social networking site or accessing the internet through an ISP, access to participation can be blocked, channelled, edited or personalised. Such gatekeepers are powerful forces in facilitating or hindering freedom of expression online. This is problematic for a human rights system which has historically treated human rights as a government responsibility, and this is compounded by the largely light-touch regulatory approach to the internet in the West. Regulating Speech in Cyberspace explores how these gatekeepers operate at the intersection of three fields of study: regulation (more broadly, law), corporate social responsibility and human rights. It proposes an alternative corporate governance model for speech regulation, one that acts as a template for the increasingly common use of non-state-based models of governance for human rights.

In Contours of Dignity, Suzanne Killmister sets out an original and innovative approach to understanding dignity. She considers the relationship between dignity and respect, the ways in which shame and humiliation can constitute dignity violations, and the links between dignity and human rights. Departing from the dominant conception of dignity as an inherent feature of all human beings, Killmister instead ties dignity to personal and social standards. She argues for a tripartite theory-comprised of personal dignity, social dignity, and status dignity-in which dignity is to be understood in terms of the norms to which we hold ourselves and others. This revised understanding opens the door to a rich exploration of the moral significance of dignity, and the ways in which dignity can be violated, frustrated, or destroyed. These fresh insights can then help us understand the distinctively dignitarian harms that are inflicted on people when they are tortured, humiliated, or disrespected. Killmister concludes by offering a novel account of human rights, one that is built upon the idea that the 'human' in human rights should be interpreted as a socially constructed category.

Can the Australian state be restructured to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and ensure that their distinct voices are heard in the processes of government? This book provides an answer to that question for Australia and provides guidance for all states that claim jurisdiction and authority over the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples. By engaging directly with Indigenous peoples' nuanced and complex aspirations, this book presents a viable model for structural reform. It does so by adopting a distinctive and innovative approach: drawing on Indigenous scholarship globally it presents a coherent and compelling account of Indigenous peoples' political aspirations through the concept of sovereignty. It then articulates those themes into a set of criteria legible to Australia's system of governance. This original perspective produces a culturally informed metric to assess institutional mechanisms and processes designed to empower Indigenous peoples. Reflecting the Uluru Statement from the Heart's call for a First Nations Voice, the book applies the criteria to one specific institutional mechanism - Indigenous representative bodies. It analyses in detail the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and the Swedish Sami Parliament, a representative body for the Indigenous people of Sweden. In examining the Sami Parliament the book draws on a rich source of primary and secondary untranslated Swedish-language sources, resulting in the most comprehensive English language exploration of this unique institution. Highlighting the opportunities and challenges of Indigenous representative bodies, the book concludes by presenting a novel and informed model for structural reform in Australia that meets Indigenous aspirations.

Coercive Care asks probing and challenging questions regarding the use of coercion in health care and the social services. The book combines philosophical analysis with comparative studies of social policy and law in a large number of industrialized countries.

This book provides different analytical perspectives into how human rights-based approaches to development (HRBADs) contribute to change. Based on the understanding that HRBADs are increasingly integrated into development and governance discourse and processes in many societies and organisations, it explores how the reinforcement of human rights principles and norms has impacted the practices and processes of development policy implementation. To reflect on the nature of the change that such efforts may imply, the chapters examine critically traditional and innovative ways of mainstreaming and institutionalising human right in judicial, bureaucratic and organisational processes in development work. Attention is also paid to the results assessment and causal debates in the human rights field. The articles discuss important questions concerning the legitimacy of and preconditions for change. What is the change that development efforts should seek to contribute to and who should have the power to define such change? What is required of institutional structures and processes within development organisations and agencies in order for human rights integration and institutionalisation to have transformative potential? This book was previously published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.

This volume explores the role race and racism played in the Texas redistricting process and the creation and passage of the state's Voter Identification Law in 2011. The author puts forth research techniques designed to uncover racism and racist intentions even in the face of denials by the public policy decision makers involved. In addition to reviewing the redistricting history of the state, this book also provides an analysis of court decisions concerning the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and a thorough discussion of the Shelby County decision. The author brings together scholarly research and the analysis of significant Supreme Court decisions focusing on race to discuss Texas' election policy process. The core of the book centers on two federal court trials where both the state's congressional, house redistricting efforts, and the Voter ID Bill were found to violate the Voting Rights Act. This is the first book that speaks specifically to the effects of electoral politics and Latinos. The author develops new ground in racial political studies calling for movement beyond the 'dual-race' theoretical models that have been used by both the academy and the courts in looking at the effects of race on the public policy process. The author concludes that the historically tense race relations between Anglos and Latinos in Texas unavoidably affected both the redistricting process and the creation and design of the Voter ID Bill.

What explains the success of criminal prosecutions against former Latin American officials accused of human rights violations? Why did some judiciaries evolve from unresponsive bureaucracies into protectors of victim rights? Using a theory of judicial action inspired by sociological institutionalism, this book argues that this was the result of deep transformations in the legal preferences of judges and prosecutors. Judicial actors discarded long-standing positivist legal criteria, historically protective of conservative interests, and embraced doctrines grounded in international human rights law, which made possible innovative readings of constitutions and criminal codes. Litigants were responsible for this shift in legal visions by activating informal mechanisms of ideational change and providing the skills necessary to deal with complex and unusual cases. Through an in-depth exploration of the interactions between judges, prosecutors and human rights lawyers in three countries, the book asks how changing ideas about the law and standards of adjudication condition the exercise of judicial power.

Linking critical legal thinking to constitutional scholarship and a practical tradition of US lawyering that is orientated around anti-poverty activism, this book offers an original, revisionist account of contemporary jurisprudence, legal theory and legal activism. The book argues that we need to think in terms of a much broader inheritance for critical legal thinking that derives from the social ethics of the progressive era, new left understandings of "creative democracy" and radical theology. To this end, it puts jurisprudence and legal theory in touch with recent scholarship on the American left and, indeed, with attempts to recover the legacies of progressive era thinking, the civil rights struggle and the Great Society. Focusing on the theory and practice of poverty law in the period stretching from the mid-1960s to the present day, the book argues that at the heart of both critical and liberal thinking is an understanding of the lawyer as an ethical actor: inspired by faith or politics to appreciate the potential and limits of law in the struggle against economic inequality.

In exploring a series of problems associated with privacy and the First Amendment, Bloustein defines individual and group privacy, distinguishing them from each other and related concepts. He also identifies the public interest in individual privacy as individual integrity or liberty, and that of group privacy as the integrity of social structure. The legal protection afforded each of these forms of privacy is illustrated at length, as is the clash between them and the constitutional guarantees of the First Amendment and the citizen's general right to know. In his final essay, Bloustein insists that the concept of group privacy is essential to a properly functioning social structure, and warns that it would be disastrous if this principle were neglected as part of an overreaction to the misuse of group confidences that characterized the Nixon era.

This study examines a key aspect of regulatory policy in the field of data protection, namely the frameworks governing the sharing of data for law enforcement purposes, both within the EU and between the EU and the US and other third party countries. The work features a thorough analysis of the main data-sharing instruments that have been used by law enforcement agencies and the intelligence services in the EU and in the US between 2001 to 2015. The study also explores the challenges to data protection which the current frameworks create, and explores the possible responses to those challenges at both EU and global levels. In offering a full overview of the current EU data-sharing instruments and their data protection rules, this book will be of significant benefit to scholars and policymakers working in areas related to privacy, data protection, national security and EU external relations.

This book provides a comprehensive account of how child development and the right to development of children have been understood in international children's rights law. It argues that any conceptions of childhood focussed either on children's future as adults, or on children's lives in the present, overlook the hybridity of children's lived experiences. The book therefore suggests a new conception of childhood - namely, 'hybrid childhood' - which accommodates respect for children's agency and human dignity in the present, in the process of growth, and in the outcomes of this process when the child becomes an adult. Consequently, and building on the capability approach's idea of human development, the book presents a radical new interpretation of the child's right to development under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It offers a comprehensive interpretation of the right to development, which is one of the four guiding principles of the Convention.

Freedom of Information (FOI) in China is often perceived as a recent and intriguing phenomenon. This book presents a more complex and detailed understanding of the evolution of FOI in China, using information flow analysis to explore the gradual development of government receptivity to FOI in an information environment through time. The book argues that it is necessary to reassess the widely divergent origins of FOI reform in China, and asserts that social, political and legal factors should have central roles in understanding the development of FOI in China. The book uses information flow analysis to find that FOI reform in China formed part of a much longer process of increased transparency in the Chinese information environment, which gradually shifted from the acceptance of proactive disclosure to that of reactive disclosure. FOI thus has become a beneficiary of this gradual transformation of the Chinese information environment.

In the spirit of the time, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 called for nondiscrimination for American citizens, seeking equality without regard for race, color, or creed. After the mid-1960s, to make amends for wrongs of the past, some people called for benign discrimination to give blacks a special boost. In business and government this could be accomplished through racial preferences or quotas; in public education, by considering race when assigning students to schools. By 1980 this course reached a crossroads. Raymond Wolters maintains that Ronald Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds made the "right turn" when they questioned and limited the use of racial considerations in drawing electoral boundaries. He also documents the Reagan administration's considerable success in reinforcing within the country, and reviving within the judiciary, the conviction that every person black or white should be considered an individual with unique talents and inalienable rights. This book begins with a biographical chapter on William Bradford Reynolds, the Assistant Attorney General who was the principal architect of Reagan's civil rights policies. It then analyzes three main civil rights issues: voting rights, affirmative action, and school desegregation. Wolters describes specific cases: at-large elections and minority vote dilutions; congressional districting in New Orleans; legislative districting in North Carolina; the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1964; social science critiques of affirmative action; the question of quotas; and school desegregation and forced busing. Because Ronald Reagan and William Bradford Reynolds were men of the right, and because most journalists and historians are on the left, Wolters feels the "people of words" have dealt harshly with the Reagan administration. In writing this book, he hopes to correct the record on a subject that has been badly represented. Wolters points out that, beginning in the 1980s and continuing in the 1990s, the Supreme Court endorsed the legal arguments that Reagan's lawyers developed in the fields of voting rights, affirmative action, and school desegregation. In "Right Turn," Wolters responds to those who claimed that Reagan and Reynolds were racists who wanted to turn back the clock on civil rights, and he describes civil rights cases and controversies in a way that is comprehensible to general readers as well as to lawyers and historians.

Judicial Reasoning under the UK Human Rights Act is a collection of essays written by leading experts in the field, which examines judicial decision-making under the UK??'s de facto Bill of Rights. The book focuses both on changes in areas of substantive law and the techniques of judicial reasoning adopted to implement the Act. The contributors therefore consider first general Convention and Human Rights Act concepts ??? statutory interpretation, horizontal effect, judicial review, deference, the reception of Strasbourg case-law ??? since they arise across all areas of substantive law. They then proceed to examine, not only the use of such concepts in particular fields of law (privacy, family law, clashing rights, discrimination and criminal procedure), but also the modes of reasoning by which judges seek to bridge the divide between familiar common law and statutory doctrines and those in the Convention.

A critical examination of the relationship of law and sexual orientation in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Law is one of the primary means through which lesbian and gay male sexuality is constructed, monitored and controlled. This text exposes the connection through an exploration of key questions of current interest and controversy. The author examines the motivations behind legal restrictions and their impact both upon sexual sub-cultures and dominant society. The book tackles the areas of controversy that have erupted in the 1980s and the 1990s: public funding restrictions on "homoerotic art"; sodomy laws; the regulation of safe sex educational materials; gay pornography and feminist theory; lesbians and gay men in the American military; sadomasochism and the law; and legal restrictions on the "promotion" of homosexuality. The author concludes with an examination of the challenges posed by the newly emerging queer identities and the likely direction of future struggles.

A critical examination of the relationship of law and sexual orientation in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Law is one of the primary means through which lesbian and gay male sexuality is constructed, monitored and controlled. This text exposes the connection through an exploration of key questions of current interest and controversy. The author examines the motivations behind legal restrictions and their impact both upon sexual sub-cultures and dominant society. The book tackles the areas of controversy that have erupted in the 1980s and the 1990s: public funding restrictions on "homoerotic art"; sodomy laws; the regulation of safe sex educational materials; gay pornography and feminist theory; lesbians and gay men in the American military; sadomasochism and the law; and legal restrictions on the "promotion" of homosexuality. The author concludes with an examination of the challenges posed by the newly emerging queer identities and the likely direction of future struggles.

Interest in human rights has grown enormously over the past fifty years. But while the media focus mainly on dramatic issues such as unlawful killings, torture, disappearances, or free speech violations, institutions charged with the implementation of human rights (as set out in international treaties) spend a great deal of their time dealing with alleged violations that take place during criminal proceedings.And in the future such issues will become even more important as a result of the increasing internationalization of the administration of criminal justice. In this book, the case-law of the most important and influential international bodies dealing with such issues is presented and critically examined by an author who has spent almost a quarter of a century contributing to its evolution. The European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights, in particular, have accumulated a considerable quantity of case-law,which is of particular interest because of its applicability in both Anglo-Saxon and Continental systems of criminal procedure. The law of the European Convention is emphasized because of its advanced procedures and the quality and quantity of its case-law, however the author also gives considerable coverage to the application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights. The book will be of interest to all scholars, practitioners, and students of international criminal law and human rights.

In 2004, a judgment from the highest court in the UK gave birth to a new era of privacy law. That case, brought by the supermodel Naomi Campbell against Mirror Group Newspapers, is today rightly regarded as a turning point for the protection of individuals' privacy. The case is seen as the turning point in the development of English privacy law, and has also had major implications for the law elsewhere, including in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Canada. The manner in which the common law's privacy protections have developed since, and the direction in which they might develop still further, are the subject of this book. This collection, written by leading scholars in the privacy field from the UK and beyond, considers the legacy of Campbell's case. The contributors address the Campbell legacy from a range of legal perspectives and discuss broader themes of power, metaphor, consistency, and technological change. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Media Law.

This collection explores and illustrates issues arising from 'political' approaches to human rights in contrast to the more traditional 'moral' approaches. Moral approaches conceptualize and justify human rights in terms of priority rights which are both universal and moral. In contrast, political approaches focus on those human rights practices involved in the development and operation of human rights institutions, laws and political process, all in relative independence from their alleged moral foundations. The book contributes to the understanding and analysis of 'political approaches', including consideration of their diversity, and discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. The choice of contributors presents a balance between those theorists who favour some version of the political approach and those who are dubious about the perceived advantages. The chapters are grouped together in parts which constitute the distinctive issues addressed in the book. At a time when there is considerable uncertainty concerning their conceptual clarity, operation, feasibility, and their normative justifications, this volume will be of interest to those involved with the theory and practice of human rights, within law schools, and in politics and philosophy departments. It will also provide a useful resource for human rights practitioners and policy makers.

Although the number of elderly people in Britain is increasing steadily, the law in relation to their particular needs is a relatively neglected field. The Law and Elderly People was the first text to provide easily accessible information for those involved in advice-giving and service provision in this rapidly developing field. This second edition has been fully revised and completely updated to reflect the major legal and social changes which have recently occurred. Concerned for the independence and autonomy of both young elderly and the old elderly, the book covers employment and income, accomodation and housing, community and residential care, health provision and delivery and family relationships, thus providing an important guide to the most important legal issues.
The Law and Elderly People will be of practical help to all those concerned with the welfare of the elderly and to undergraduates and lecturers in social work, law and gerontology.

Although the number of elderly people in Britain is increasing steadily, the law in relation to their particular needs is a relatively neglected field. The Law and Elderly People was the first text to provide easily accessible information for those involved in advice-giving and service provision in this rapidly developing field. This second edition has been fully revised and completely updated to reflect the major legal and social changes which have recently occurred. Concerned for the independence and autonomy of both young elderly and the old elderly, the book covers employment and income, accomodation and housing, community and residential care, health provision and delivery and family relationships, thus providing an important guide to the most important legal issues.
The Law and Elderly People will be of practical help to all those concerned with the welfare of the elderly and to undergraduates and lecturers in social work, law and gerontology.

This interdisciplinary book explores the Northern Ireland conflict through a human rights framework. The book examines the conflict from the creation of the Northern Ireland state in 1921 to 2014. This timeframe allows an analysis of how human rights impacted upon the conflict in its broadest understanding (i.e. the pre-violent conflict, the violent conflict and the post-violent conflict phases). Furthermore, it allows for a better understanding of how the various stages of the conflict impacted upon how human rights are understood in Northern Ireland today. The study's main findings are that: (i) human rights had a significant impact on the development of the conflict; (ii) human rights violations were both underlying causes and direct causes of the descent into violence; (iii) the conflict coloured the view of human rights held by the main political actors; and (iv) human rights continue to be partially understood through the prism of the conflict. More generally, this interdisciplinary work explores the relationship between law, politics and conflict. This book will be of much interest to students of human rights, conflict resolution, British politics, law and security studies.

Coherent laws enforced by a central authority are part of the reason why human rights protection works at the national level in Europe. But when it comes to the EU these dimensions are lacking. The present system for protecting fundamental rights emerged on an ad hoc basis, with measures being improvised to respond to particular problems. In the next couple of years, however, this situation is likely to change very significantly. The proposed European Constitution incorporates the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and a specialized EU Fundamental Rights Agency is likely to be established. As a result, the situation of the EU will more closely resemble that of its Member States. Fundamental rights will occupy a central role, and coherent and systematic arrangements will be in place to protect rights, using both judicial and non-judicial means. The Fundamental Rights Agency, in particular, has immense potential to ensure effective monitoring of fundamental rights in the EU, and to ensure a unified strategy for their promotion in EU law and policy. This volume is the first to critically examine the proposals put forward by the European Commission in October 2004 on the creation of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. Leading scholars in the field of European and international human rights law analyse the potential significance of this innovative Agency, and seek to locate it in relation to various other human rights mechanisms, both in the EU's constitutional structure and within Member States. They review the tasks which the Agency could be called upon to perform, and make proposals as to how it can function most effectively. The relationship of EU law to the international law of human rights emerging from both the United Nations and the Council of Europe is examined. The authors also address the challenge of ensuring improved coherence between EU law and the other human rights obligations undertaken by the Member States. Taken together, these contributions address urgent questions facing the EU at a time when the central unifying function of fundamental rights has been recognized but the way forward remains largely uncharted.