The prohibition of abuse of rights in Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR or Convention) embodies one of the Convention's main principles: its commitment to democracy and democratic values. The provision aims to prevent groups and individuals from successfully invoking fundamental rights and freedoms to justify anti-democratic activities. At the same time it is also one of the Convention's most controversial provisions. There exists a certain tension between human rights protection and the concept of abuse of rights. While human rights essentially aim to promote freedom by affirming the basic rights and freedoms citizens enjoy vis--vis state authorities, the abuse clause primarily aims to protect the democratic organisation of the state against groups and individuals invoking these rights with the aim of undermining it. Furthermore, an analysis of the growing body of case law on this topic shows that the interpretation and application of Article 17 ECHR are far from unequivocal. While according to Article 17 ECHR anti-democratic activities may be excluded from the protection of the Convention, clear criteria for determining which activities fit this description are lacking. In addition, the case law covers different methods of application of the abuse clause that seem to be used rather arbitrarily. This has resulted in a rather obscure and inconsistent case-by-case approach. This study seeks to shed light on the prohibition of abuse of rights in Article 17 ECHR in order to contribute to a more coherent interpretation of this provision. To that aim it studies the abuse clause from different perspectives. First, it looks at the historical background of the provision to examine what motivated the drafters to include this prohibition. Then it moves on to the case law of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights and to legal doctrine, revealing the difficulties and inconsistencies in the current interpretation of the abuse clause. Next, it analyses the interpretation of prohibitions of abuse in other human rights documents to see whether parallels can be drawn with the interpretation of Article 17 ECHR. Subsequently, it addresses the concepts of 'abuse of rights' and 'militant democracy' and examines the extent to which they offer a framework for understanding the abuse clause. Based on the insights obtained from these different perspectives, this study puts forward a proposal as to how Article 17 ECHR can best be applied in the future.

This book crosses the conventional border between the analysis of on-screen and off-screen intersections of law and cinema. It not only addresses the representation of law on screen (for example, through discussions of how lawyers, police, and prisons are depicted, or how courtroom sequences function as narratives), but also focuses on how the state shapes and regulates cinema. The volume addresses the distinct contexts of China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam, along with an integrative introduction that puts the essays and themes into context for scholars and students alike.

Negotiating Citizenship explores the growing inequalities associated with nation-based citizenship from the perspective of migrant women workers who have made their way from impoverished Third World countries to work in Canada in the caregiving industries of domestic service and nursing. The study demonstrates the impact of the global political economy, public and private gatekeeping mechanisms, and racialized and gendered stereotypes on the contested relationship between citizen-employers and non-citizen female migrant workers in Canada.

The immigration problem, which has been debated in the United States for over a century, is not likely to go away--least of all with the numbers of refugees and displaced and impoverished workers continuing to mount worldwide. The current bitterness and legislative stalemate over immigration policy are indications that new approaches to the issue need to be found. Removing himself from the specifics of the current congressional debate, Mark Gibney asks whether we are addressing the right questions and employing the correct criteria under our present admission practices. From a political-philosophical standpoint, the author looks at the fundamental social and moral questions that should be at the basis of any immigration policy: how do we distinguish between members and strangers, and do some strangers have more compelling claims than others for admission to this country?

This unique volume unpacks the concept and practice of naming and shaming by examining how governments, NGOs and international organisations attempt to change the behaviour of targeted actors through public exposure of violations of normative standards and legal commitments.

Where do I belong? This is a question all mobile persons are bound to ask themselves at one time or another. When crossing borders, individuals establish links with States, which can be the basis for legal claims against these States.This book discusses the issue of these links and, more specifically, the question of how EU law defines the link needed to obtain the right to reside in a Member State and the right to social and employment protection in that State. When it comes to claiming rights from States, traditionally nationality is the answer to the question where a person belongs. However, in the context of European integration and the development of an EU legal framework of internal market rules, citizenship rights and immigration rules, different answers to these questions have been developedFrom this perspective the various chapters of this book examine instruments such as the Citizens Directive 2004/38, the Family Reunification Directive 2003/86, the Long-term Residence Directive 2003/109, the Social Security Coordination Regulation 883/2004, the Rome I Regulation 593/2008 and the Posting of Workers Directive 96/71. The case-law of the Court of Justice on these issues is of course a central element therein.The analyses of scholars from different legal disciplines in the fourteen chapters of this book show that EU law gives a multitude of answers to the question which link is necessary and sufficient to create an individual's right vis--vis a State. The definition of this link, the criteria used and the legal consequences differ according to the legal framework the individual finds himself/herself in and the legal instrument he/she invokes. Moreover, the criteria used in legislation and case-law continue to be the subject of problems of interpretation and application, which in turn leads to legal uncertainty or even confusion.

From the murderous reaction to the publication in a French satirical magazine of 'blasphemous' cartoons, to wrangles over the wearing of religious dress and symbols in schools and workplaces, the interaction between law and religion is rarely far from the headlines. Indeed, the editors of this Routledge collection argue that, since the events of 11 September 2001, the short- and long-term implications of multiculturalism, religious resurgence, and extremism have dominated public life both globally and domestically. Consequently, they say, the legal framework concerning the regulation of religion has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. There have been numerous developments at the global, regional, state, and sub-state level, and these changes have been accompanied by an unprecedented number of high-profile cases affecting religious individuals and groups. Now, this new collection from Routledge's Critical Concepts in Law series, edited by two prolific authors based at the world-leading Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to help researchers and students navigate and make better sense of an abundance of scholarship. With a full index, and thoughtful introductions, newly written by the learned editors, Law and Religion traces the field's development and highlights the challenges for future explorations. The collection will be valued by legal and religious scholars as a vital and enduring resource.

Few issues have provoked as much controversy over the last decade as illegal immigration. While some argue for the need to seal America's borders and withdraw all forms of social and governmental support for illegal migrants and their children, others argue for humanitarian treatment--including legalization--for people who fill widely acknowledged needs in American industry and agriculture and have left home-country situations of economic hardship or political persecution. The study of illegal immigration necessarily confronts a broad range of migrants--from the familiar border crossers to those who enter illegally and overstay their visas, to the many unrecognized refugees who enter the country to seek protection under U.S. asylum law. The subject also demands attention to American society's responses to these newcomers--responses that often focus on limited elements of a complex issue.

A comprehensive, up-to-date review of this volatile subject, this book provides an accessible, balanced introduction to the subject. Covering the full range of illegal immigrants from Mexican border crossers to Central American refugees, illegal Europeans, and smuggled Chinese, the book considers the kind of work the migrants do and the public response to them. The work is divided into four parts: Concepts, Policies, and Numbers; The Migrants and Their Work; The Responses; and Illegal Immigration in Perspective.

During times of grave injustice, some individuals, groups, and organizations courageously resist maltreatment of all people, regardless of their backgrounds. Courageous resisters have assisted others in such locales as Nazi-controlled Europe throughout the 1930s and 40s, Argentina during the "Dirty War" of the 1970s, Rwanda in the 1990s genocide and Iraqi prisons in recent years. Using these and other case studies, this book introduces readers to the broad spectrum of courageous resistance and provides a framework for analyzing the factors that motivate and sustain opposition to human rights violations.

The Ambivalence of Good examines the genesis and evolution of international human rights politics since the 1940s. Focusing on key developments such as the shaping of the UN human rights system, decolonization, the rise of Amnesty International, the campaigns against the Pinochet dictatorship, the moral politics of Western governments, or dissidence in Eastern Europe, the book traces how human rights profoundly, if subtly, transformed global affairs. Moving beyond monocausal explanations and narratives prioritizing one particular decade, such as the 1940s or the 1970s, The Ambivalence of Good argues that we need a complex and nuanced interpretation if we want to understand the truly global reach of human rights, and account for the hopes, conflicts, and interventions to which this idea gave rise. Thus, it portrays the story of human rights as polycentric, demonstrating how actors in various locales imbued them with widely different meanings, arguing that the political field evolved in a fitful and discontinuous process. This process was shaped by consequential shifts that emerged from the search for a new world order during the Second World War, decolonization, the desire to introduce a new political morality into world affairs during the 1970s, and the visions of a peaceful international order after the end of the Cold War. Finally, the book stresses that the projects pursued in the name of human rights nonetheless proved highly ambivalent. Self-interest was as strong a driving force as was the desire to help people in need, and while international campaigns often improved the fate of the persecuted, they were equally likely to have counterproductive effects. The Ambivalence of Good provides the first research-based synopsis of the topic and one of the first synthetic studies of a transnational political field (such as population, health, or the environment) during the twentieth century. Based on archival research in six countries, it breaks new empirical ground concerning the history of human rights in the United Nations, of human rights NGOs, of far-flung mobilizations, and of the uses of human rights in state foreign policy.

After having ignored victims, only recently both domestic and international law have begun to pay attention to them. As a consequence, different international norms related to victims have progressively been introduced. These are norms generally characterized by a certain concept from the perspective of victims, as well as by the enumeration of a list of rights to which they are entitle to; rights upon which the international statute of victims is built. In reverse, these catalogues of rights are the states' obligations. Most of these rights are already existent in the international law of human rights. Consequently, they are not new but consolidated rights. Others are strictly linked to victims, concerning the following categories: victims of crime, victims of abuse of power, victims of gross violations of international human rights law, victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law, victims of enforced disappearance, victims of violations of international criminal law and victims of terrorism.
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Kurt Mills investigates how the concept of sovereignty is changing as a result of normative, empirical, and institutional developments. From a normative political theory perspective he argues that respect for human rights, popular sovereignty, and self-determination are inherent in the social purpose of the state and thus must be considered when evaluating claims to sovereignty and non-intervention. Human Rights in the Emerging Global Order examines how recent international practice in the areas of human rights, self-determination, refugees and human migration and humanitarian intervention are challenging traditional conceptions of sovereignty in important, yet ambiguous, ways. Finally, it provides policy prescriptions to deal with these continuing humanitarian problems.

Indigenous rights to heritage have only recently become the subject of academic scholarship. This collection aims to fill that gap by offering the fruits of a unique conference on this topic organised by the University of Lapland with the help of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The conference made clear that important information on Indigenous cultural heritage has remained unexplored or has not been adequately linked with specific actors (such as WIPO) or specific issues (such as free, prior and informed consent). Indigenous leaders explained the impact that disrespect of their cultural heritage has had on their identity, well-being and development. Experts in social sciences explained the intricacies of indigenous cultural heritage. Human rights scholars talked about the inability of current international law to fully address the injustices towards indigenous communities. Representatives of International organisations discussed new positive developments. This wealth of experiences, materials, ideas and knowledge is contained in this important volume.

The safeguarding of human rights remains highly problematic, despite the proliferation of human rights instruments and the many actions taken by a variety of actors, such as governmental and non-governmental organisations, (individual) states and the international community over the past decades. Human rights violations do still occur on a large scale and injustice remains rampant. Central to this problem appears to be that social, economic, cultural and political structures in societies provide denialist defence mechanisms. Such deeply embedded denialism causes and/or facilitates human rights violations, because the true nature of the problems involved remains fully or partly unacknowledged and as a result appropriate action remains absent. In order to safeguard the effectuation of human rights it is thus pertinent to acknowledge and address this problem of denialism and develop strategies to move beyond it. To address the above-mentioned problem, an international conference was organised on the theme of Denialism and Human Rights by the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights in 2015, which brought together scholars, practitioners and students from various disciplines and fields to unearth and address denialism in the context of their own particular area of research.The present volume contains a unique collection of papers that were presented during the conference. The content of the papers ranges from more general reflections on the theme of denialism and human rights to more specific areas of research that are relevant in terms of denialism such as genocide, children's rights, the role of (inter)national organisations, penology, and social, economic and cultural rights.

Million of people around the Asia Pacific region are suffering from the twin effects of globalization and exclusionary nationality laws. Some are migrant workers without rights in host countries; some are indigenous peoples who are not accorded their full rights in their own countries. Yet others are refugees escaping from regimes that have no respect for human rights. This collection of essays discusses the ways in which citizenship laws in the region might be made consistent with human dignity. It considers the connectedness of national belonging and citizenship in East and Southeast Asian and Pacific states including Australia the impact of mass migration, cultural homogenization and other effects of globalization on notions of citizenship and possibilities of commitment to a transnational democratic citizenship that respects cultural difference.;This work is intended for use by departments of politics, international relations, economics (courses in international trade, globalization, labour economics), Asian studies, sociology (courses in legal and citizenship studies), and law.

Although the influence and opinions of political elites, civil society, and the general public vary widely, the death penalty is universally in decline throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the death penalty is a site of accommodation and resistance to international human rights norms between African governments and the Global North. As in debates over membership in the International Criminal Court and legal protections for sexual minorities, some leaders resist death penalty abolition as "imposed" by the Global North, though the modern death penalty in Africa is a product of European colonialism. However, Sub-Saharan Africa is not a passive subject of global death penalty abolition driven by Europe. Courts around the continent have made important contributions to global death penalty jurisprudence and members of civil society have engaged in novel and successful strategies against the death penalty. In addition, precolonial notions of punishment and criminal responsibility in Africa have influenced debates over the death penalty, including whether to provide compensation to victims of crime.This book explores the African contribution to the global death penalty debate and lessons for the international death penalty abolition movement.

Migration crisis, food crisis, economic crisis the most alarming tendencies in our contemporary world are related to the transnational social question. But what role does transnational law play in this context: Does it exacerbate the asymmetries by shielding the rich and exploiting the poor? Or is the emerging regime of international social human rights a promising candidate for countering the crisis of world society?This book scrutinises both the potentials and the boundaries of de-coupling the notion of "social rights" from the nation-state and of transferring it to the transnational sphere. By drawing on a critical theory of transnational law, it provides in-depth analyses of the different sites where the struggle for social rights is at stake, such as the emerging transnational food regime, the ILO, international environmental law and the accountability of private actors. It reveals enforcement structures, discusses judicial doctrine and relates these aspects to the social and political struggles which surround the transnationalisation of social rights.

The Nicaraguan revolution of 1978 and the subsequent violence engulfing the Central American states, causes mass migration of Latin American persons seeking territorial asylum. "Latin American States and Political RefugeeS" focuses on the questions surrounding this new problem of refugees. Yundt uses regime analysis, a method whereby principles, norms, and social institutions are studied to identify the general obligations due refugees. The central concern of this study is whether the regional rules, norms, procedures and social institutions established by the Latin American states in governing political refugees, are compatible with or dissimilar to those of the established United Nations refugees regime. This scholarly written and well researched book will appeal to students and scholars of international organizations, international refugee and human rights law, as well as all the social and political sciences.

Yundt begins his study with an explanation of the meaning of 'regime'; What is a regime analysis? This book examines the history and current status of colonization and immigration legislation in Central and South America. Further chapters discuss the role of international organizations, including the League of Nations and the organization of American states, in providing international legal protection to refugees. The study also explores the global refugee regime; its history and how it relates to the inter-American system.

Does the Labour Government's commitment to Freedom of Information mean the end of excessive secrecy in the UK? Why has Britain finally decided to join the many other countries that enjoy a "right to know"? This book places the UK debate over open government in its political context. Robertson argues that just as secrecy reflected the interests of the powerful, so too does freedom of information. This is a radical and challenging alternative to the conventional view that open government is concerned with empowering "the people".

An examination of the political and economic power of a large African American community in a segregated southern city; this study attacks the myth that blacks were passive victims of the southern Jim Crow system and reveals instead that in Jacksonville, Florida, blacks used political and economic pressure to improve their situation and force politicians to make moderate adjustments in the Jim Crow system. Bartley tells the compelling story of how African Americans first gained, then lost, then regained political representation in Jacksonville. Between the end of the Civil War and the consolidation of city and county government in 1967, the political struggle was buffeted by the ongoing effort to build an economically viable African American economy in the virulently racist South. It was the institutional complexity of the African American community that ultimately made the protest efforts viable. Black leaders relied on the institutions created during Reconstruction to buttress their social agitation. Black churches, schools, fraternal organizations, and businesses underpinned the civil rights activities of community leaders by supplying the people and the evidence of abuse that inflamed the passions of ordinary people. The sixty-year struggle to break down the door blocking political power serves as an intriguing backdrop to community development efforts. Jacksonville's African American community never accepted their second-class status. From the beginning of their subjugation, they fought to remedy the situation by continuing to vote and run for offices while they developed their economic and social institutions.

Beginning with the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" Supreme Court case, this book traces the lives of six American civil rights leaders as they willingly risk their lives for the civil rights cause: A. Philip Randolph, Frederick D. Patterson, Thurgood Marshall, Whitney M. Young, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer.

This book focuses on bilingualism in the context of migration and minorization processes. Its aim is to integrate recent research in this fast growing field of scientific and social interest into a single and coherent academic reference. The book has four parts. Part One goes into processes of early bilingual development. Part Two focuses on bilingual development of children at school age. In Part Three the constraints in processes of code-switching and borrowing are dealt with. Part Four discusses the issues related to processes of language maintenance and language loss. Taken from these four perspectives, the volume offers a comprehensive state of the art, with contributions from different combinations of language parts.

This volume focuses on challenges to the effective and proper use of human rights and tries to identify, through a series of case studies, strategies and contexts in which human rights advocacy can work in favor of human rights, as well as situations in which such advocacy may backfire, or unintentionally cause harm.