The 1866 Civil Rights Act is one of the most monumental pieces of legislation in American history, figuring into almost every subsequent piece of legislation dealing with civil rights for the next century. While numerous scholars have looked at it in the larger social and political context of Reconstruction and its relationship with the Fourteenth Amendment, this will be the first book that focuses on its central role in the long history of civil rights. As George Rutherglen argues, the Act has structured debates and controversies about civil rights up to the present. The history of the Act itself speaks to the fundamental issues that continue to surround civil rights law: the contested meaning of racial equality; the distinction between public and private action; the division of power between the states and the federal government; and the role of the Supreme Court and Congress in implementing constitutional principles. Slavery, Freedom, and Civil Rights shows that the Act was not just an archetypal piece of Radical Republican legislation or merely a precursor to the Fourteenth Amendment. While its enactment led directly to passage of the amendment, their simultaneous existence going forward initiated a longstanding debate over the relationship between the two, and by proxy the Courts and Congress. How extensive was the Act's reach in relation to the Amendment? Could it regulate private discrimination? Supersede state law? What power did it endow to Congress, as opposed to the Courts? The debate spawned an important body of judicial doctrine dealing with almost all of the major issues in civil rights, and this book positions both the Act and its legacy in a broad historical canvas.

Stephen Gardbaum argues that recent bills of rights in Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia are an experiment in a new third way of organizing basic institutional arrangements in a democracy. This 'new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism' promises both an alternative to the conventional dichotomy of legislative versus judicial supremacy and innovative techniques for protecting rights. As such, it is an intriguing and important development in constitutional design of relevance to drafters of bills of rights everywhere. In developing the theory and exploring the practice of this new model, the book analyses its novelty and normative appeal as a third general model of constitutionalism before presenting individual and comparative assessments of the operational stability, distinctness and success of its different versions in the various jurisdictions. It closes by proposing a set of general and specific reforms aimed at enhancing these practical outcomes.

Throughout American history, legal battles concerning the First Amendment's protection of religious liberty have been among the most contentious issue of the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court: The Essential Cases and Documents represents the most authoritative and up-to-date overview of the landmark cases that have defined religious freedom in America. Noted religious liberty expert Vincent Philip Munoz (Notre Dame) provides carefully edited excerpts from over fifty of the most important Supreme Court religious liberty cases. In addition, Munoz's substantive introduction offers an overview on the constitutional history of religious liberty in America. Introductory headnotes to each case provides the constitutional and historical context. Religious Liberty and the American Supreme Court is an indispensable resource for anyone interested matters of religious freedom from the Republic's earliest days to current debates.

Imagine being physically denied access to your office, business or livelihood. Imagine being refused entry to a shop or being told who you can or cannot sit with at a restaurant. Imagine being barred from a hospital room when you or your family member needs critical care. Unthinkable? Today, these scenarios and worse are happening in 'democracies' all over the world, and could be our collective future - orchestrated by AI, Big Tech and state-sponsored apps - all in the name of 'protecting' public health with vaccine passports. The stakes could not be higher. If you do not have a vaccine passport, you will be prevented from accessing basic services, from earning a living or travelling within your own country. Even if you do have one, you will be exposed to unprecedented levels of government and corporate surveillance, data mining and behavioural control. In Scanned, investigative journalist Nick Corbishley examines and exposes the lies and overreach that underpin the wholesale erosion of personal freedoms that is happening at an alarming rate. In clear language supported by rigorous research, Corbishley uncovers how the rollout of vaccine passports not only represents an unprecedented violation of privacy and bodily autonomy, but how it perpetuates the idea that a 'small' collective sacrifice will allow us to return to normality. If things continue on the current path, Corbishley makes clear, getting back to 'normal' is never happening. Put simply, instead of a return to normality, we will see the creation of a starkly different form of existence in which most of us will have virtually no agency over our own lives. Inside Scanned, you'll also find: The massive implications of a tech-enabled digital ID, social credit systems and biometric tracking How basic freedoms and privacy are being handed over to the state and private companies without our knowledge or consent How government programmes and increased surveillance will facilitate discrimination, segregation and stigmas for huge segments of the population Few people want to be seen as outliers, especially if it means feeling responsible or being blamed for the suffering and deaths of others. 'But there is a fundamental flaw in applying the "greater good" argument to vaccine passports,' Corbishley writes, 'because the passports themselves offer precious little in the way of potential good - and a huge amount in the way of potential harm.' This is not a liberal or conservative debate. This is not a vaccinated or unvaccinated debate. This is about freedom, global democracy and how much we are willing to give up. This is about deciding when it is time to say, 'enough!'

What is the legacy of Brown vs. Board of Education? While it is well known for establishing racial equality as a central commitment of American schools, the case also inspired social movements for equality in education across all lines of difference, including language, gender, disability, immigration status, socio-economic status, religion, and sexual orientation. Yet more than a half century after Brown, American schools are more racially separated than before, and educators, parents and policy makers still debate whether the ruling requires all-inclusive classrooms in terms of race, gender, disability, and other differences. In Brown's Wake examines the reverberations of Brown in American schools, including efforts to promote equal opportunities for all kinds of students. School choice, once a strategy for avoiding Brown, has emerged as a tool to promote integration and opportunities, even as charter schools and private school voucher programs enable new forms of self-separation by language, gender, disability, and ethnicity. Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School, argues that the criteria placed on such initiatives carry serious consequences for both the character of American education and civil society itself. Although the original promise of Brown remains more symbolic than effective, Minow demonstrates the power of its vision in the struggles for equal education regardless of students' social identity, not only in the United States but also in many countries around the world. Further, she urges renewed commitment to the project of social integration even while acknowledging the complex obstacles that must be overcome. An elegant and concise overview of Brown and its aftermath, In Brown's Wake explores the broad-ranging and often surprising impact of one of the century's most important Supreme Court decisions.

The right to dignity is now recognized in most of the world's constitutions, and hardly a new constitution is adopted without it. Over the last sixty years, courts in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and North America have developed a robust jurisprudence of dignity on subjects as diverse as health care, imprisonment, privacy, education, culture, the environment, sexuality, and death. As the range and growing number of cases about dignity attest, it is invoked and recognized by courts far more frequently than other constitutional guarantees. Dignity Rights is the first book to explore the constitutional law of dignity around the world. Erin Daly shows how dignity has come not only to define specific interests like the right to humane treatment or to earn a living wage, but also to protect the basic rights of a person to control his or her own life and to live in society with others. Daly argues that, through the right to dignity, courts are redefining what it means to be human in the modern world. As described by the courts, the scope of dignity rights marks the outer boundaries of state power, limiting state authority to meet the demands of human dignity. As a result, these cases force us to reexamine the relationship between the individual and the state and, in turn, contribute to a new and richer understanding of the role of the citizen in modern democracies.

The potential of the e-health revolution, increased data sharing, database linking, biobanks and new techniques such as geolocation and genomics to advance human health is immense. For the full potential to be realized, though, privacy and confidentiality will have to be dealt with carefully. Problematically, many conventional approaches to such pivotal matters as consent, identifiability, and safeguarding and security are inadequate. In many places, research is impeded by an overgrown thicket of laws, regulations, guidance and governance. The challenges are being heightened by the increasing use of biospecimens, and by the globalization of research in a world that has not globalized privacy protection. Drawing on examples from many developed countries and legal jurisdictions, the book critiques the issues, summarizes various ethics, policy, and legal positions (and revisions underway), describes innovative solutions, provides extensive references and suggests ways forward.

In a world where basic human rights are under attack and discrimination is widespread, Advancing Equality reminds us of the critical role of constitutions in creating and protecting equal rights. Combining a comparative analysis of equal rights in the constitutions of all 193 United Nations member countries with inspiring stories of activism and powerful court cases from around the globe, the book traces the trends in constitution drafting over the past half century and examines how stronger protections against discrimination have transformed lives. Looking at equal rights across gender, race and ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, social class, and migration status, the authors uncover which groups are increasingly guaranteed equal rights in constitutions, whether or not these rights on paper have been translated into practice, and which nations lag behind. Serving as a comprehensive call to action for anyone who cares about their country's future, Advancing Equality challenges us to remember how far we all still must go for equal rights for all. A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity examines the question of whether something similar to an "Islamic constitutionalism" has emerged out of the political and constitutional upheaval witnessed in many parts of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and Southern Asia in order to identify its defining features and to assess the challenges it poses to established concepts of constitutionalism. This book offers an integrated analysis of the constitutional experience of Islamic countries, drawing on the methods and insights of comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, international law and legal history. European and United States experiences are used as points of reference against which the peculiar challenges, and the specific answers given to those challenges in the countries surveyed, can be assessed. Whether these concepts can be applied successfully to the often grim political and social realities of their countries will provide invaluable insights into whether such a fusion can be sustained, and may even pave the way for a new era of constitutionalism in Islamic countries.

How big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? What does the UN do, and why does it appear at times to be so impotent in the face of torture? In this vitally important work, Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really happening in places of detention around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to be in a better position to bring about change. The author draws on over ten years’ experience as the Chair of the United Nations Sub-Committee for Prevention of Torture to give a frank account of the remarkable capacities of this system, what it has achieved in practice, what it has not been able to achieve – and most importantly, why.

The overarching objective of this volume is to discuss and critique the legal regulation of human trafficking in national and transnational context. Specifically, discussion is needed not only with regard to the historical and philosophical points of departure for any criminalisation of trafficking, but also, regarding the societal and social framework, the empirical dimension such as existing statistics in the area, and the need for more data. The book combines descriptive and normative analyses of the crime of trafficking in human beings from a cross-legal perspective. Notwithstanding the enhanced interest for human trafficking in politics, the public and the media, a critical perspective such as the one pursued herewith has so far been largely absent. Against this background, this approach allows for theoretical findings to be addressed by pointing out and elaborating different, interdisciplinary conflicts and inconsistencies in the regulation of human trafficking. The book discusses the phenomenon of human trafficking critically from various angles, giving it 'shape' and showing how it comes to life in the legal regulation.

This volume of essays is concerned with the discrimination against older people that results from a failure to recognise their diversity. By considering the unique combinations of discrimination that arise from the interrelationship of age and gender, pensions, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic class and disability, the contributors demonstrate that the discrimination suffered is multiple in nature. It is the combination of these characteristics that leads to the need for more complex ways of tackling age discrimination.

This volume addresses interrogation and torture at a unique moment. Emerging scientific research reveals non-coercive methods to be the most effective interrogation techniques. And efforts are now being made to integrate this science and practice into international law and global policing initiatives. Contributors present cutting-edge research on non-coercive interrogation techniques and show how this knowledge is brought to bear on the realm of international law. Such advancements have the potential to transform the conversation on interrogation and torture in many disciplines, and the contributions in this edited volume are meant to spark those discussions. Moreover, this book can serve as a guide for policymakers who seek lawful, ethical, human-rights compliant-and the most effective-methods to obtain reliable information from those perceived to pose a threat to public safety. To achieve these aims the editors have brought together highly experienced practitioners and leading scholars in law, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, social science, national security, and government.

This book brings to light emerging evidence of a shift toward a fuller engagement with international human rights norms and their application to domestic policy dilemmas in the United States. The volume offers a rich history, spanning close to three centuries, of the marginalization of human rights discourse in the United States. Contributors analyze particular cases of U.S. human rights advocacy aimed at addressing persistent inequalities within the United States itself, including advocacy on the rights of persons with disabilities; indigenous peoples; lone mother-headed families; incarcerated persons; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people; and those displaced by natural disasters, most notably Hurricane Katrina. The book also explores key arenas in which legal scholars, policy practitioners, and grassroots activists are challenging multiple divides between public and private spheres (for example, in connection with children's rights and domestic violence) and between public and private sectors (specifically, in relation to healthcare and business and human rights)."

The worlds of law and religion increasingly collide in Parliament and the courtroom. Religious courts, the wearing of religious symbols and faith schools have given rise to increased legislation and litigation. This is the first student textbook to set out the fundamental principles and issues of law and religion in England and Wales. Offering a succinct exposition and critical analysis of the field, it explores how English law regulates the practice of religion. The textbook surveys law and religion from various perspectives, such as human rights and discrimination law, as well as considering the legal status of both religion and religious groups. Controversial and provocative questions are explored, promoting full engagement with the key debates. The book's explanatory approach and detailed references ensure understanding and encourage independent study. Students can track key developments on the book's updating website. This innovative text is essential reading for all students in the field.

Reacting to the mixed record of the UK Human Rights Act 1998 and similar enactments concerned with the protection of human rights, this book explores ways of promoting human rights more effectively through political and democratic mechanisms. The book expresses ideological skepticism concerning the relative neglect of social and economic rights and institutional skepticism concerning the limitations of court-centered means for enhancing human rights goals in general. The contributors criticize the 'juridification' of human rights through transferring the prime responsibility for identifying human rights violations to courts and advocate the greater 'politicization' of human rights responsibilities through such measures as enhanced parliamentary scrutiny of existing and proposed legislation. This group of twenty-four leading human rights scholars from around the world present a variety of perspectives on the disappointing human rights outcomes of recent institutional developments and consider the prospects of reviving the moral force and political implications of human rights values.
Thus, contributors recount the failures of the Human Rights Act with regard to counter-terrorism; chart how the 'dialogue' model reduces parliaments' capacities to hold governments to account for human rights violations; consider which institutions best protect fundamental rights; and reflect on how the idea of human rights could be 'rescued' in Britain today. In addition, the book considers the historical human rights failures of courts during the Cold War and in Northern Ireland, the diverse outcomes of human rights judicial review, and aspects of the human rights regimes in a variety of jurisdictions, including Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Canada, Europe, and the United States.

This book provides a thorough legal analysis of the United States Migrant Interdiction Program, examining the United States' compliance with its obligations under municipal and international law as it interdicts individuals at sea, conducts status determinations, and returns those interdicted to their home countries. This book also examines the rights of the small number of refugees and individuals at risk of torture detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, awaiting resettlement in third countries. Policy-makers, students and scholars will benefit from this book's clarification of the legal obligations of nations engaged in extraterritorial status determination and detention, as well as its blueprint for compliance with international human rights and refugee law. As the first book of its kind devoted to the United States' interdiction program, this work represents an important contribution to scholarship in refugee law and policy, US constitutional law, international maritime law, and international human rights law.

Available Open Access under CC-BY licence. Irish law currently permits abortion only where the life of the pregnant woman is at risk. Since 1983, the 8th Amendment to the Constitution has recognised the "unborn" as having a right to life equal to that of the "mother". Consequently, most people in Ireland who wish to bring their pregnancies to an end either import the abortion pill illegally, travel abroad to access abortion, or continue with the pregnancy against their will. Now, however, there are signs of change. A constitutional referendum will be held in 2018, after which it will be possible to reimagine, redesign, and reform the law on abortion. Written by experts in the field, this book draws on experience from other countries, as well as experiences of maternal medical care in Ireland, to call for a feminist, woman-centered, and rights-based radical new approach to abortion law in Ireland. Directly challenging grounds-based abortion law, this accessible guide brings together feminist analysis, comparative research, human rights law, and political awareness to propose a new constitutional and legislative settlement on reproductive autonomy in Ireland. It offers practical proposals for policymakers and advocates, including model legislation, making it an essential campaigning tool leading up to the referendum.

This book undertakes a comparative study of the public interest and political speech defences in defamation law, particularly from the perspective of the misuse of democratic free expression justifications. Specifically, it argues that the law and legal approaches taken by leading courts and legislatures in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States - five common law comparators - are undertheorised, lack adequate criteria for determining the correct form of the defence, and would benefit from a more precise understanding of 'democracy', 'accountability', and 'representation'. The book will be of great interest to scholars of free speech, defamation and public law.

Policing and Human Rights analyses the implementation of human rights standards, tracing them from the nodal points of their production in Geneva, through the board rooms of national police management and training facilities, to the streets of downtown Johannesburg. This book deals with how the unprecedented influence of human rights, combined with the inability by police officers to live up' to international standards, has created a range of policing and human rights vernaculars -- hybrid discourses that have appropriated, transmogrified and undercut human rights. Understood as an attempt by police officers, as much as by the police as a whole, to recover a position from which to act and to judge, these vernaculars reveal the compromised ways in which human rights are -- and are not -- implemented. Tracing how, in South Africa, human rights have given rise to new forms of popular justice, informal private' policing and provisional security arrangements, Policing and Human Rights delivers an important analysis of how the dissemination and implementation of human rights intersects with the post-colonial and post-transformation circumstances that characterise many countries in the South.

This important new book provides a framework for complementarity between promoting and protecting human rights and combating corruption. The book makes three major points regarding the relationship between corruption and human rights law. First, corruption per se is a human rights violation, insofar as it interferes with the right of the people to dispose of their natural wealth and resources and thereby increases poverty and frustrates socio-economic development. Second, corruption leads to a multitude of human rights violations. Third, the book demonstrates that human rights mechanisms have the capacity to provide more effective remedies to victims of corruption than can other criminal and civil legal mechanisms. The book takes up one of the pervasive problems of governance--large-scale corruption--to examine its impact on human rights and the degree to which a human rights approach to confronting corruption can buttress the traditional criminal law response. It examines three major aspects of human rights in practice--the importance of governing structures in the implementation and enjoyment of human rights, the relationship between corruption, poverty and underdevelopment, and the threat that systemic poverty poses to the entire human rights edifice. The book is a very significant contribution to the literature on good governance, human rights and the rule of law in Africa. Endorsements "Kolawole Olaniyan has taken up one of the pervasive problems of governance - large-scale corruption - to examine its impact on human rights and the degree to which a human rights approach to confronting corruption can buttress the traditional criminal law response. His focus is Africa, but the valuable lessons he teaches in this comprehensive study can resonate throughout the world. The result is a comprehensive and holistic legal framework for addressing some of the root causes of human rights violations and poverty, not only in Africa, but wherever corruption exists." Dinah Shelton Manatt/Ahn Professor of International Law (emeritus) The George Washington University Law School "This book demonstrates the author's mastery of complex jurisprudential and theoretical discourses. His review of the existing literature is extensive, the doctrinal analysis rigorous and the treatment of the subject innovative. Dr. Olaniyan's willingness to introduce fresh eyes to the ways in which doctrine contributes to an understanding of seemingly mundane problems lays the foundation for fertile trajectories from which future scholars can launch exciting inquiries on the relationship between corruption and human rights. Overall, this book makes an important and valuable contribution to the growth and understanding of the corruption/human rights discourse as it is presently constructed." Ndiva Kofele-Kale, University Distinguished Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law, Dallas, USA.

In recent decades, the level of moral acceptability of choice at the end of life has reached record highs. Legislative responsiveness to public opinion, however, has resulted in far fewer and much slower adoption patterns. For example, if a growing number of Americans support aid in dying legislation, why are so few states adopting them? While extensive research that explores matters of death and dying from the medical, legal, and religious perspectives exists, scholars have yet to consider the role of politics in explaining end of life policy adoption patterns. The Chronic Silence of Political Parties in End of Life Policymaking in the United States retraces the right to die movement's legislative history from its beginnings to the adoption and diffusion of its most recent innovations-the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) Paradigm and death with dignity-to identify the various forces that hinder its progress.

This provocative book offers a probing account of the erosion of privacy in American society, that shows that we are often unwitting, if willing, accomplices, providing personal data in exchange for security or convenience. The author reveals that in today's "information society," the personal data that we make available to virtually any organization for virtually any purpose is apt to surface elsewhere, applied to utterly different purposes. The mass collection and processing of personal information produces such tremendous efficiencies that both the public and private sector feel justified in pushing as far as they can into our private lives. And there is no easy cure. Indeed, there are many cases where privacy invasion is both hurtful to the individual and indispensable to an organization's quest for efficiency. And as long as we willingly accept the pursuit of profit, or the reduction of crime, or cutting government costs as sufficient reason for intensified scrutiny over our lives, then privacy will remain endangered.

The Blackstone's Guide Series delivers concise and accessible books covering the latest legislative changes and amendments. Published soon after enactment, they offer expert commentary by leading names on the scope, extent and effects of the legislation, plus a full copy of the Act itself. They offer a cost-effective solution to key information needs and are the perfect companion for any practitioner needing to get up to speed with the latest changes.
The Blackstone's Guide to the Borders, Citizenship, and Immigration Act 2009 provides an essential tool for understanding the important changes in border control, citizenship, and immigration law found in the Act. The Guide provides a clear explanation of developments in the acquisition of British citizenship by automatic acquisition, naturalization and registration; the introduction of new immigration measures concerning students, children, trafficking, and other matters; and the new customs functions at UK borders and connected supervisory powers. The Guide provides a commentary that puts the new provisions into the context of existing laws, while explaining the significance of the innovations introduced. The constitutional significance of the new measures is considered, together with an emphasis on the implications of the measures for the protection of rights under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The Guide is a clear exposition of the development of the law.
This new Blackstone's Guide combines the full text of the Act with an expert narrative. It brings practitioners up-to-date with this complex piece of legislation. Presented in a straightforward layout, it enables ease of use as a reference source.

Women's Human Rights The International and Comparative Law Casebook Susan Deller Ross "A definitive text on a topic both timely and timeless, "Women's Human Rights" is an indispensable resource for all who care about gender and justice in any part of the world."--Madeleine K. Albright, former Secretary of State "Susan Deller Ross has provided us with an important addition to existing human rights law teaching materials with her casebook on women's human rights. The book brings the complex array of legal, political, social, and cultural issues involved in protecting women's human rights front and center for students and teachers of international law. The case book demonstrates that, because of their reach and their complexity, women's human rights deserve to be studied in and of themselves not just as one segment of an international human rights course. Providing a holistic picture of the status of women in international law, the casebook offers equal doses of the legal gains we are making and how far there still is to go."--"Human Rights Quarterly" According to Susan Deller Ross, many human rights advocates still do not see women's rights as human rights. Yet women in many countries suffer from laws, practices, customs, and cultural and religious norms that consign them to a deeply inferior status. Advocates might conceive of human rights as involving torture, extrajudicial killings, or cruel and degrading treatment--all clearly in violation of international human rights--and think those issues irrelevant to women. Yet is female genital mutilation, practiced on millions of young girls and even infants, not a gross violation of human rights? When a family decides to murder a daughter in the name of "honor," is that not an extrajudicial killing? When a husband rapes or savagely beats his wife, knowing the legal authorities will take no action on her behalf, is that not cruel and degrading treatment? Susan Deller Ross is Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and Founder and Director of the International Women's Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown. RossRights.com is an an online documentary supplement to "Women's Human Rights: The International and Comparative Law Casebook." Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights 2008 704 pages 7 x 10 ISBN 978-0-8122-2091-9 Paper $55.00s 36.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0002-7 Ebook $55s 36.00 World Rights Law, Women's/Gender Studies Short copy: "Women's Human Rights" studies the deprivation and violence women suffer due to discriminatory laws, religions, and customs and demonstrates how international human rights treaties can be used to develop new laws and court decisions that protect women against discrimination, subordination, and violence.