This book explores recent developments pointing towards a 'domestic institutionalisation of human rights', composed of converging international trends prescribing the setting up of domestic institutions, and the need for a national human rights systems approach. Building on new compliance theories, innovative arrangements have resolutely appeared around the turn of the millennium and some are now legally enshrined in human rights treaties. In their introduction, the editors capture these developments, their main elements and key points of debate. They outline a research agenda aimed at structuring and generating further attention from both academics and practitioners. As a stepping stone, the book singles out the purposeful attempt by the United Nations and others to frame these trends around the concept of 'National Human Rights System'. The chapters assess various models and cases put forward for such systems. Each chapter highlights the specific forms of institutions being promoted and their intended domestic interactions, and discusses how these institutions are leveraged and strengthened by international bodies. Authors critically review their implications for the future of human rights, paving the way for additional research. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.

Soft law increasingly shapes and impacts the content of international law in multiple ways, from being a first step in a norm-making process to providing detailed rules and technical standards required for the interpretation and the implementation of treaties. This is especially true in the area of human rights. While relatively few human rights treaties have been adopted at the UN level in the last two decades, the number of declarations, resolutions, conclusions, and principles has grown significantly. In some areas, soft law has come to fill a void in the absence of treaty law, exerting a degree of normative force exceeding its non-binding character. In others areas, soft law has become a battleground for interpretative struggles to expand and limit human rights protection in the context of existing regimes. Despite these developments, little attention has been paid to soft law within human rights legal scholarship. Building on a thorough analysis of relevant case studies, this volume systematically explores the roles of soft law in both established and emerging human rights regimes. The book argues that a better understanding of how soft law shapes and affects different branches of international human rights law not only provides a more dynamic picture of the current state of international human rights, but also helps to unsettle and critically question certain political and doctrinal beliefs. Following introductory chapters that lay out the general conceptual framework, the book is divided in two parts. The first part focuses on cases that examine the role of soft law within human rights regimes where there are established hard law standards, its progressive and regressive effects, and the role that different actors play in the incubation process. The second part focuses on the role of soft law in emerging areas of international law where there is no substantial treaty codification of norms. These chapters examine the relationship between soft and hard law, the role of different actors in formulating new soft law, and the potential for eventual codification.