This book discusses the critical legal issues raised by the US responses to the terrorist threat, analyzing the actions taken by the Bush administration during the so-called "War on Terrorism" and their compliance with international law. Thomas McDonnell highlights specific topics of legal interest including torture, extra-judicial detentions and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and examines them against the backdrop of terrorist movements which have plagued Britain and Russia. The book extrapolates from the actions of the USA, going on to look at the difficulties all modern democracies face in trying to combat international terrorism.

This book demonstrates why current counter-terrorism practices and policies should be rejected, and new policies adopted that are compatible with international law. Written for students of law, academics and policy-makers, the volume demonstrates the dangers that breaking international law carries in the "War on Terrorism."

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of litigation at the international and domestic levels concerning consular access for foreign nationals charged with a criminal offence. The issue has complicated relations between countries, with the majority of litigation involving the United States, which has adopted a restrictive view of the consular access obligation.

This book brings together for the first time relevant documentary sources on the law of consular access. The book includes significant excerpts alongside commentary on the documents, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. While presenting information on the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the book presents other sources, including bilateral consular agreements, multilateral treaties, and key court cases from various jurisdictions. Many of these sources are not readily accessible.

The Law of Consular Access will be of interest to scholars of international law, human rights, and international relations. It will also be of interest to private and government lawyers, as well as diplomats and consuls.

Combining feminist legal theory with international human rights concepts, this book examines the presence, participation and treatment of children in a variety of contexts. Specifically, through comparing legal developments in the US with legal developments in countries where the views that children are separate from their families and potentially in need of state protection are more widely accepted. The authors address the role of religion in shaping attitudes about parental rights in the US, with particular emphasis upon the fundamentalist belief in natural lines of familial authority. Such beliefs have provoked powerful resistance in the US to human rights approaches that view the child as an independent rights holder and the state as obligated to proved services and protections that are distinctly child-centred. Calling for a rebalancing of relationships within the US family, to become more consistent with emerging human rights norms, this collection contains both theoretical debates about and practical approaches to granting positive rights to children.

Providing an overview of institutional developments and innovations in human rights politics, this volume discusses some of the most important current and emerging human rights issues. It takes stock of the initiatives, policy responses and innovations of past years to identify some of the challenges that will likely require bold and innovative solutions. The contributors focus on actors and/or issues that are outside the mainstream of international human rights politics; the chapters address issues that have only emerged as an important part of the international human rights agenda and generated much advocacy, diplomacy and negotiations since the end of the Cold War. These issues include: the International Criminal Court, the norm of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the proliferation of small arms and light weapons and its human rights impact, truth commissions, and the rights of persons with disabilities. The contributions offer a direct challenge to entrenched notions of state sovereignty and represent a departure from established ways of policy making.

This book defends the case for the expansion of the democratic model to the global political sphere. Concentrating on the democratic deficit of international affairs, it examines the nexus between the phenomenon of international exclusion and the political response of global democracy.

This distinctive position is developed through a critical survey of the principal theories for and against global democracy. The main rival narratives (realism, nationalism, civilizationism, and liberal internationalism) are rebutted on grounds of failing democratic principles of inclusion. Based on a notion of interaction-dependent justice, these theories arguably provide a crucial ideological support to the exclusionary attitude of the current international system. Going beyond these exclusionary paradigms, the book defends a model of cosmo-federalism that is all-inclusive, multilayered and rooted.

The text adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that combines three areas of scholarship: international political theory, international relations and political sociology. Within them, a number of contemporary controversies are analyzed, including the ethical dispute on global justice, the institutional debate on supranationalism, and the political discussion on social emancipatory struggles. From such an interdisciplinary perspective derives an engaged text that will be of interest to students and researchers concerned with the key political aspects of the discussion on globalization and democratic global order.

As the population becomes more diverse internationally, Religious Discrimination has become increasingly important as an area of law around the world. Heaven Forbid allows readers a better understanding of the issue of religion and inequality and aims to increase the likelihood of achieving equality at both national and international levels for those suffering religious discrimination. Discussing the two most important trade agreements of our day - namely the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union Treaty - in a historical and compelling analysis of discrimination, Heaven Forbid provides a detailed examination of the relationship between religious issues and the law, and will be an important read for all those concerned with equality.

Julie Mertus highly acclaimed text continues to be the only completely up-to-date comprehensive yet succinct guide to the United Nations human rights system.

Today, virtually all UN bodies and specialized agencies are undertaking efforts to incorporate the promotion or protection of human rights into their programs and activities. The United Nations and Human Rights examines these recent initiatives within the broader context of human rights practice, including the promotion of individual rights, management of international conflict and the advancement of agendas of social movements.

The fully revised and updated second edition not only provides a complete guide to the development, structure and procedures within the UN human rights system, but also reflects the vital changes that have occurred within the UN system, devoting considerable attention to expanding the range of issues discussed, including:

• new developments in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
• the current controversy surrounding the new Human Rights Council
• expanded treatment of economic and social rights.

A superb addition to any human rights syllabus, this book maintains its position as essential reading for students and practitioners of human rights, international relations and international law.

Ecological integrity is concerned with protecting the planet in a holistic way, while respecting ethics and human rights. Over recent years it has been introduced directly and indirectly in several legal regimes, culminating in international law with the 2016 expanded remit of the International Criminal Court, which now includes "environmental disasters". This book celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG), which includes more than 250 scholars and independent researchers worldwide, from diverse disciplines, including ecology, biology, philosophy, epidemiology, public health, ecological economics, and international law. It reviews the role of ecological integrity across a number of fields through inter- and trans-disciplinary engagement on matters affecting and governing the sustainability of life for both present and future generations. These include, ethics, environmental disasters, crimes against humanity and environmental health, and how such issues can be subject to sound governance and be incorporated into international law. The book also looks forward to new applications of the concept of ecological integrity, such as crimes that result in the exploitation of natural resources and the illegal dispossession of land.

This book addresses the European Court of Human Rights' fairness standards in criminal appeal, filling a gap in this less researched area of studies. Based on a fair trial immediacy requirement, the Court has found several violations of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights at the appellate level by at least eighteen States of the Council of Europe in a vast array of cases, particularly in contexts of first instance acquittals overturning and of sentences increasing on appeal. On the one hand, the book critically engages this case-law with the law revisions it has recently inspired in European countries, as well as with the critiques and difficulties that it continues to raise. On the other hand, it interweaves insight from criminal procedure theory with new discoveries in the field of cognitive sciences (neuroscience of memory, philosophy of knowledge, AI), shedding an interdisciplinary light on the (in)adequacy and limits of the Strasbourg Court's jurisprudence.

The protection and promotion of human rights is an integral part of contemporary international peacekeeping operations. It is also a controversial aspect of peace operations at both an institutional and operational level.

By bringing together a wide range of practitioners and academic scholars, this special issue addresses key contemporary legal, political and operational challenges to human rights protection.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the leading journal International Peacekeeping.

The new edition of this market-leading textbook includes a revised introduction and updated chapters with new research and insights. Four new case studies of twenty-first-century genocides bring this horrific history up to the present moment: the genocide perpetrated by the government during Argentina's "Dirty War," the genocide of the Yazidis by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), genocidal violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and China's genocide of the Uyghurs. Powerful survivor testimonies bring the essays to life and help readers grapple with the difficult lessons presented throughout the book.

This comparative study investigates the place of Hindu divorce in the Indian legal system and considers whether it offers a way out of a matrimonial crisis situation for women. Using the narratives of the social actors involved, it poses questions about the relationship between traditional jurisdictions located in rural areas and the larger legal culture of towns and cities in India, and also in the UK and USA. The multidisciplinary approach draws on research from the social sciences, feminist and legal studies and will be of interest to students and scholars of law, anthropology and sociology.

Bringing together a range of contributors from multiple countries, this interdisciplinary volume offers a unique field view of the rule of law and human rights reform in the reconciliation and reconstruction process. The contributors all worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the ten years after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed; here they pause to analyze and critique the work they did. The contributors offer insights from within a variety of international organizations, including the Office of the High Representative, the Organization for Security and Cooperation and Europe, and the United Nations. Allowing those who were in the field to identify, discuss and reflect upon the programmes and policies, the collection reveals how the programmes were created, what laws they were pursuant to, and what alternatives were rejected and why. The authors not only assess both the positive and negative aspects and outcomes of their work, but also comment on lessons learned for future post-conflict reconstruction scenarios.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive, insightful, and detailed study of a vital area of public policy debate as it is currently occurring in countries across the world from India to South Africa and the United Kingdom to Australia. Bringing together academics and experts from a variety of jurisdictions, it reflects upon the impact on human rights of the application of more than a decade of the "War on Terror" as enunciated soon after 9/11. The volume identifies and critically examines the principal and enduring resonances of the concept of the "War on Terror". The examination covers not only the obvious impacts but also the more insidious and enduring changes within domestic laws. The rationale for this collection is therefore not just to plot how the "War on Terror" has operated within the folds of the cloak of liberal democracy, but how they render that cloak ragged, especially in the sight of those sections of society who pay the heaviest price in terms of their human rights. This book engages with the public policy strand of the last decade that has arguably most shaped perceptions of human rights and engendered debates about their worth and meaning. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of human rights law, criminal justice, criminology, politics, and international studies.

We live in an increasingly pluralized world. This sociological reality has become the irreversible destiny of humankind. Even once religiously homogeneous societies are becoming increasingly diverse. Religious freedom is modernity's most profound if sometimes forgotten answer to the resulting social pressures, but the tide of pluralization threatens to overwhelm that freedom's stabilizing force. Religion, Pluralism, and Reconciling Difference is aimed at exploring differing ways of grappling with the resulting tensions, and then asking, will the tensions ultimately yield poisonous polarization that erodes all hope of meaningful community? Or can the tradition and the institutions protecting freedom of religion or belief be developed and applied in ways that (still) foster productive interactions, stability, and peace? This volume brings together vital and thoughtful contributions treating aspects of these mounting worldwide tensions concerning the relationship between religious diversity and social harmony. The first section explores controversies surrounding religious pluralism from different starting points, including religious, political, and legal standpoints. The second section examines different geographical perspectives on pluralism. Experts from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East address these issues and suggest not only how social institutions can reduce tensions, but also how religious pluralism itself can bolster needed civil society.

Recent confrontations between constitutional courts and parliamentary majorities, for example in Poland and Hungary, have attracted international interest in the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature in Central and Eastern European countries. Several political actors have argued that courts have assumed too much power after the democratic transformation process in 1989/1990. These claims are explicitly or implicitly connected to the charge that courts have constrained the room for manoeuvre of the legislatures too heavily and that they have entered the field of politics. Nevertheless, the question to what extent has this aggregation of power constrained the dominant political actors has never been examined accurately and systematically in the literature. The present volume fills this gap by applying an innovative research methodology to quantify the impact and effect of court's decisions on legislation and legislators, and measure the strength of judicial decisions in six CEE countries.

This edited book aims to capture the functioning of human rights and civil activism at the level of the relationships between the individual and the social, and in relation to abuses, contestations, and transformations. Chapters cover the ways human rights are denied, articulated, and not realised. Mega-events, either sporting or otherwise (e.g. Gay Pride), tend to be the focus of this inquiry, although there are important contributions on grassroots non-governmental organisations. Overall, a range of research methodologies are deployed; the chapters vary between using primary research, using commissioned research, and presenting theoretically grounded arguments. The tendency is towards approaches that capture the empirical, everyday experiences, e.g. ethnography, autoethnography, interviews, focus groups, and observation. This book was originally published as a special issue of Leisure Studies.

In 1856, the US Supreme Court denied Dred Scott, now free of slavery, his Constitutional rights, solely because he was black. According to the Court, when the Constitution was drafted, some 60 years earlier, its authors would not have intended that 'a subordinate and inferior class of beings' qualified as citizens of the United States. Thus, the meaning of language drafted over half a century before was frozen in time. This case, perhaps more than any other, demonstrates that the matter of statutory interpretation is critical, technical, and, sometimes, highly emotive. The case is not a mere nugget from history to indulge our disgust with values of another age, and with it a satisfaction of our progress to today's higher moral ground. It is the unfortunate case that the senior courts of England continue to produce highly contentious interpretations of our equality and discrimination laws. This book examines these cases from the perspective of statutory interpretation, the judge's primary function. The scrutiny finds the judgments technically flawed, overcomplicated, excessively long, and often unduly restrictive. As such, this book explains how the cases should have been resolved - using conventional methods of interpretation; this would have produced simpler, technically sound judgments. Rather like the case of Dred Scott, these were easy cases producing bad law.

The right to self-determination has played a crucial role in the process of assisting oppressed people to put an end to colonial domination. Outside of the decolonization context, however, its relevance and application has constantly been challenged and debated. This book examines the role played by self-determination in international law with regard to post-conflict state building. It discusses the question of whether self-determination protects local populations from the intervention of international state-builders in domestic affairs. With a focus on the right as it applies to the people of an independent state, it explores how self-determination concerns that arise in the post-conflict period play out in relation to the reconstruction process. The book analyses the situation in Somalia as a means of drawing out the impact and significance of the legal principle of self-determination in the process of rebuilding post-conflict institutions. In so doing, it seeks to highlight how the relevance of self-determination is often overlooked in this context.

This book examines the interrelationship between law, culture, patriarchy and religion in the context of contemporary Bangladesh. It explores the role of Islam in society and politics generally, and its influence on gender equality in particular. The work focuses on the situation of married women. Taking a socio-legal approach, it analyses the changing nature of the dowry practice and its relation to women's increasing paid labour force activity. Despite anti-dowry legislation, it is argued here that the dowry system continues in the form of the appropriation of wives' income. The work calls for legal recognition of this action and the amendment of the Dowry Prohibition Act 1980 as a result of the changing social realities that are taking place in the lives of Bangladeshi women. An Islamic approach is applied to equality between men and women in addressing and analysing these issues. The book includes international comparisons on gender equality and discusses the role of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Descrimination Against Women (CEDAW), as well as the dowry system in South Asia. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of law and religion, gender studies and international development.

This book examines the diverse use of Indigenous customary rights in modern landscapes from a multidisciplinary perspective. Divided into two parts, the first deals explicitly with Sami customary rights in relation to nature conservation in the Nordic countries and Russia from a legal and historical perspective. The authors investigate how longstanding Sami customary territorial rights have been reassessed in the context of new kinds of legislation regarding Indigenous people. They also look at the ideas behind the historical models of nature conservation. The second part deals with the ideas and implementation of new kinds of postcolonial models of nature conservation. The case of the Sami is compared with other Indigenous people internationally with cases from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India. The work investigates how the governance of protected areas has been influenced by the principles of equality and positive discrimination, and how it has affected the possibilities of establishing adaptive co-management arrangements for specific areas. How the legal situation of Indigenous peoples has been recognised in an international context is also investigated. The volume provides a multidisciplinary analysis of how the customary livelihood of Indigenous people has adapted to modern industrialised landscapes and also how postcolonial approaches have contributed to global changes of Indigenous rights and nature conservation models.

There is a clear overlap between securing socio-economic human rights for all persons and arranging adequate access to essential public services across society. Both are necessary to realise thriving, inclusive societies, with adequate living standards for all, based on human dignity. This edited volume brings together the two topics for the first time. In particular, it identifies the common challenges for essential public services provision and socio-economic human rights realisation, and it explores how socio-economic rights law can be harnessed to reinforce better access to services. An important aim of this book is to understand how international socio-economic human rights law and guideposts can be used and strengthened to improve access to services, and assess socio-economic legal and policy decisions. The volume includes contributions from different continents, on a range of different services, and engages with the realities of different regulatory settings. After an introduction that sets out the most important challenges for universal access to services - including sufficient resources mobilisation, private actor involvement and regulation, or the need for improved checks and balances - the book goes on to discuss current issues in services provision and socio-economic rights, as well as explores the place and role of private business actors in the provision of services. In particular, it assesses how the responsibility and accountability of such actors for human rights can be improved . The final part of the book narrows in on the under-explored human rights concepts of 'participation' and 'accountability', as essential prerequisites for better 'checks and balances'. Overall, this volume presents a unique and powerful illustration of how socio-economic human rights law supports improved access to essential public services for all.

This book analyses emerging constitutional principles addressing the regulation of the internet at both the national and the supranational level. These principles have arisen from cases involving the protection of fundamental rights. This is the reason why the book explores the topic thorough the lens of constitutional adjudication, developing an analysis of Courts' argumentation. The volume examines the gradual consolidation of a "constitutional core" of internet law at the supranational level. It addresses the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union case law, before going on to explore Constitutional or Supreme Courts' decisions in individual jurisdictions in Europe and the US. The contributions to the volume discuss the possibility of the "constitutionalization" of internet law, calling into question the thesis of the so-called anarchic nature of the internet.

Recent migratory flows to Europe have brought about considerable changes in many countries. Italy in particular offers a unique point of view, since it is possible to observe not only the way migration has changed specific features of the country, but also how it is intertwined with gender relations. Considering both the type of migration that has affected Italy and the consequent measures adopted by the Government, a variety of distinctive elements may be seen. By providing a broad and more complete picture of the Italian perspective on gender and migration, this book makes a valuable contribution to the wider debate. The contributions consider the problematic linkage between gender and migration, as well as analyse particular aspects including Italian colonial past, domestic work, self-determination, access to social services, second-generation migrant women, family law, multiculturalism and religious symbols. Taking an empirical and theoretical approach, the volume underlines both the multifaceted problems affecting migrant women in Italy and the way in which questions raised in other countries are introduced and redefined by Italian scholarship. The book presents a valuable resource for researchers, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of migration and gender studies.

This book investigates the ethical values that inform the global carbon integrity system, and reflects on alternative norms that could or should do so. The global carbon integrity system comprises the emerging international architecture being built to respond to the climate change. This architecture can be understood as an 'integrity system'- an inter-related set of institutions, governance arrangements, regulations and practices that work to ensure the system performs its role faithfully and effectively. This volume investigates the ways ethical values impact on where and how the integrity system works, where it fails, and how it can be improved. With a wide array of perspectives across many disciplines, including ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, governance experts and political theorists, the chapters seek to explore the positive values driving the global climate change processes, to offer an understanding of the motivations justifying the creation of the regime and the way that social norms impact upon the operation of the integrity system. The collection focuses on the nexus between ideal ethics and real-world implementation through institutions and laws. The book will be of interest to policy makers, climate change experts, carbon taxation regulators, academics, legal practitioners and researchers.