An updated and expanded edition of the widely used overview of international human rights law for students, practitioners, and professors. Provides a comprehensive overview of the international, regional and domestic human rights systems. Reviews recent developments in the field, including in the UN, European, OAS and African human rights systems and the adoption of new conventions such as those on forced disappearances and persons with disabilities. Includes chapters on the treatment of human rights treaties and norms within the U.S. legal system as well as on the role of non-governmental human rights organizations. Discover the history behind international human rights, including the institutional context from which they evolved. An unparalleled resource for beginning students as well as more experienced practitioners.

The doctrine of peremptory norms (jus cogens) is a set of core obligations in international law. In this volume in the Elements of International Law series, Dinah Shelton explores its origins and history, its revival in the twentieth century, and its place in international and domestic jurisprudence. Providing a fresh, objective, and non-argumentative approach to the discipline of international law, the Elements series is an accessible go-to source for practicing international lawyers, judges and arbitrators, government and military officers, scholars, teachers, and students. Beginning with the writings of Grotius, Vattel, and Suarez, Shelton shows how the theory of jus cogens drew upon Roman law for its foundations. In the subsequent chapter, she considers the emergence of positivism and its rejection of any non-consensual basis for binding States to international norms. She then turns to the re-emergence of jus cogens in theories of the twentieth century and its place in the modern law of treaties. The volume includes extensive analysis of the interpretation of jus cogens obligations by international courts and tribunals, as well as by various domestic courts, including those of Italy, Greece, Canada, the US, and the UK. The volume concludes with a consideration of the place of jus cogens in modern scholarship.

Economic globalization and Compliance with International Environmental Agreements is an innovative and in depth consideration of the challenges economic globalization poses for the effective application of multilateral environmental accords. The introductory part of the book examines particular challenges of economic globalization. Part II tackles the interrelationship of global and regional environmental agreements and free trade regimes. It first looks at trade and other economic measures mandated by various environmental agreements, then at environmental measures in economic agreements. The third part of the book turns to compliance, analyzing the potential positive and negative impact of multilateral institutions, states, and transnational corporate activity. The last chapter considers the impact on compliance of modern dispute avoidance and dispute settlement mechanisms.

The fully revised and updated Third Edition of Remedies in International Human Rights Law provides a comprehensive analysis of the law governing international and domestic remedies for human rights violations. It reviews and examines the texts and the jurisprudence on this key area of human rights law. It is an essential practical and theoretical resource for policymakers, scholars, and students negotiating and litigating issues of redress for victims. The Third Edition incorporates the major developments in remedial human rights jurisprudence. Internationally, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court have issued reparations guidelines; the International Court of Justice has for the first time awarded compensation for human rights violations; the International Law Commission has considered the humanitarian responsibility of international organizations; and new international petition procedures and policies on redress have entered into force. Regionally, in Asia and Africa, human rights bodies have adopted new human rights accords and legal judgments; in Europe, the human rights case load unceasingly increases. Nationally, the jurisprudence of historical reparations has come to the fore, as has the juridical consideration of economic and social rights. All of these developments are analysed in context and create a comprehensive and accessible portrait of the state of remedial human rights law today.

Different countries incorporate and interpret international law in different ways. This book provides a systematic analysis of the domestic constitutional regime of over two dozen countries, setting out the status accorded to international law in those countries and its normative weight, as well as problems relating to its implementation.
This country-by-country comparison allows the book to examine how the international legal order and domestic legal systems interact and influence each other. Through a series of chapters on the role of international law in 27 countries throughout the world, it shows a growing tendency towards greater democratic participation in treaty-making coupled with a significant utilization of informal agreements that by-pass such participation, as well as a role for non-binding normative instruments as persuasive authority in domestic judicial decision-making. The chapters suggest a stronger attachment to international law in legal systems that have survived a period of repression, resulting in many cases in a higher normative status for international human rights instruments in those states. The impact of the European Union on the constitutional order of its member states is also examined.

Commitment and Compliance is the first book to evaluate the impact on state behaviour of international norms adopted in forms that are not legally binding. The use of such 'soft law' has increased dramatically with the proliferation of international organizations. Whether and how such norms can be used effectively to supplement or substitute for legally binding obligations forms the heart of this discussion. In the study, a project of the American Society of International Law, the authors examine four areas of international law: human rights, the environment, arms control, and trade and finance. For each area, they assess the use of non-binding norms and ask whether such norms engender state compliance. More generally, the discussion also addresses the nature of international law and the role of non-binding norms in the international legal system.

The studies in this book concern the nature of international law, how it is and is not constituted, and whether commitments that are not legally binding can change the behaviour of states as well as or better than legal norms do.

What role do human rights play in the development of regional organizations? What human rights obligations do states assume upon joining regional bodies? This work is the first text of its kind devoted to the European, Inter-American and African systems for the protection of human rights. It illustrates how international human rights law is interpreted and implemented across international organizations and offers examples of political, economic, social problems and legal issues to emphasize the significant impact of international human rights law institutions on the constitutions, law, policies, and societies of different regions. Regional Protection of Human Rights provides readers with access to the basic documents of each legal system and their inter-relationships, enabling readers to apply those documents to ever-changing global situations, and alerting them to the dynamic nature of regional human rights law and institutions. The jurisprudence of the European and Inter-American Courts and decisions of the Inter-American and African Commissions are emphasized, including decisions on the interpretation and application of various human rights, procedural requirements and remedies. Prospects for regional systems in the Middle East and Asia are also discussed. The relevant basic texts are reproduced in a documentary supplement. In addition to serving as a text for courses on human rights law, the book will be useful for courses in international law, international relations, and political science. It is also be a helpful resource for lawyers and policy-makers concerned with the protection of human rights.

The Oxford Handbook of International Human Rights Law provides a comprehensive and original overview of one of the fundamental topics within international law. It contains substantial new essays by more than forty leading experts in the field, giving students, scholars, and practitioners a complete overview of the issues that inform research, as well as a 'map' of the debates that animate the field. Each chapter features a critical and up-to-date analysis of the current state of debate and discussion, assessing recent work and advancing the understanding of all aspects of this developing area of international law. The Handbook consists of 39 chapters, divided into seven parts. Parts I and II explore the foundational theories and the historical antecedents of human rights law from a diverse set of disciplines, including the philosophical, religious, biological, and psychological origins of moral development and altruism, and sociological findings about cooperation and conflict. Part III focuses on the law-making process and categories of rights. Parts IV and V examine the normative and institutional evolution of human rights, and discuss this impact on various doctrines of general international law. The final two parts are more speculative, examining whether there is an advantage to considering major social problems from a human rights perspective and, if so, how that might be done: Part VI analyses current problems that are being addressed by governments, both domestically and through international organizations, and issues that have been placed on the human rights agenda of the United Nations, such as state responsibility for human rights violations and economic sanctions to enforce human rights; Part VII then evaluates the impact of international human rights law over the past six decades from a variety of perspectives. The Handbook is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and practitioners of international human rights law. It provides the reader with new perspectives on international human rights law that are both multidisciplinary and geographically and culturally diverse.