The Second Edition of this award-winning volume in the field of language rights and language policy is a timely and useful revision of its core arguments and examples, addressing new theoretical and empirical developments since its initial publication.

1993-1995.

The purpose of this volume is dual. The first is to provide information about the question of the role that doctrines and practices of international law have played in the emergence and persistence of the phenomenon of socio-cultural fragmentation, and therefore of inter-group conflict, within African states. The second is to provide original thought about the ways in which, prompted by the emergent turn in our time to minority and group rights, international law and multilateral African states have begun the long journey toward modifying those doctrines and practices that have led to such unfortunate results, and have thereby begun to make very valuable contributions to the effort to prevent and/or reduce the incidence of inter-group strife in specific African contexts. The book is not, however, limited in scope by its utilisation of Africa as a case study. The book's core is based on analysis of traditional and contemporary international legal doctrines and practices, their effects in specific contexts, as well as on the role of multilateral institutions in the prevention of internecine conflict within established states. It is hoped that, with the use of African states as case studies, the book will be a contribution to the advancement of scholarly knowledge regarding the general question of the relationship among the doctrines of international law, the activities of multilateral institutions, and the management of the problems of fragmentation and internecine strife within established states the world over. This volume is relevant to international lawyers, specialists in international politics, diplomats, theorists, minority and group rights scholars, historians, and human rights activists in general. It is particularly relevant to the African studies specialist, the statesman and the diplomat.

Within the Middle East there are a wide range of minority groups outside the mainstream religious and ethnic culture. This book provides a detailed examination of their rights as minorities within this region, and their changing status throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The rights of minorities in the Middle East are subject to a range of legal frameworks, having developed in part from Islamic law, and in recent years subject to international human rights law and institutional frameworks. The book examines the context in which minority rights operate within this conflicted region, investigating how minorities engage with (or are excluded from) various sites of power and how state practice in dealing with minorities (often ostensibly based on Islamic authority) intersects with and informs modern constitutionalism and international law. The book identifies who exactly can be classed as a minority group, analysing in detail the different religious and ethnic minorities across the region. The book also pays special attention to the plight of minorities who are spread between various states, often as the result of conflict. It assesses the applicable domestic legislative instruments within the three countries investigated as case studies: Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and highlights key domestic remedies that could serve as models for ensuring greater social cohesion and greater inclusion of minorities in the political life of these countries.

The adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 September 2007 was acclaimed as a major success for the United Nations system given the extent to which it consolidates and develops the international corpus of indigenous rights. This is the first in-depth academic analysis of this far-reaching instrument. Indigenous representatives have argued that the rights contained in the Declaration, and the processes by which it was formulated, obligate affected States to accept the validity of its provisions and its interpretation of contested concepts (such as 'culture', 'land', 'ownership' and 'self-determination'). This edited collection contains essays written by the main protagonists in the development of the Declaration; indigenous representatives; and field-leading academics. It offers a comprehensive institutional, thematic and regional analysis of the Declaration. In particular, it explores the Declaration's normative resonance for international law and considers the ways in which this international instrument could catalyse institutional action and influence the development of national laws and policies on indigenous issues.

The question of minority rights is one of the great dilemmas of contemporary politics. Increases in the flow of immigrants, migrants and refugees have raised public concerns that greater cultural and ethnic diversity creates instability within nation-states. But does stability really require homogeneity? Or can it be maintained in the presence of different minority groups? In this path-breaking book, Jackson Preece analyses whether traditional minority rights theory is sufficiently dynamic to inform effective responses to modern challenges. The central premise behind minority rights is that groups recognized and supported by the political community are far less likely to challenge its authority or threaten its territorial integrity. However, as Jackson Preece shows, the potential for collisions of values and interests still exists, and the possibility of a permanent solution to the problem of diversity remains illusive. Minority Rights will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars of political science, international relations, law, and sociology.

"Containing the public messages, speeches, and statements of the President", 1956-1992.

This book critically examines the relationship between protecting human rights and building peace in post-violence societies. It explores the conditions that must be present, and strategies that should be adopted, for the former to contribute to the latter. The author argues that human rights can aid peacebuilding efforts by helping victims of past violence to articulate their grievance, and by encouraging the state to respond to and provide them with a meaningful remedy. This usually happens either through a process of adjudication, whereby human rights can offer guidance to the judiciary as to the best way to address such grievances, or through the passing and implementation of human rights laws and policies that seek to promote peace. However, this positive relationship between human rights and peace is both qualified and context specific. Through an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of four case studies, the book identifies the conditions that can support the effective use of human rights as peacebuilding tools. Developing these, the book recommends a series of strategies that peacebuilders should adopt and rely on.

What would the Framers of the Constitution make of multinational corporations? Nuclear weapons? Gay marriage? They led a preindustrial country, much of it dependent on slave labor, huddled on the Atlantic seaboard. The Founders saw society as essentially hierarchical, led naturally by landed gentry like themselves. Yet we still obey their commands, two centuries and one civil war later. According to Louis Michael Seidman, it's time to stop. In On Constitutional Disobedience, Seidman argues that, in order to bring our basic law up to date, it needs benign neglect. This is a highly controversial assertion. The doctrine of "original intent" may be found on the far right, but the entire political spectrum--left and right--shares a deep reverence for the Constitution. And yet, Seidman reminds us, disobedience is the original intent of the Constitution. The Philadelphia convention had gathered to amend the Articles of Confederation, not toss them out and start afresh. The "living Constitution" school tries to bridge the gap between the framers and ourselves by reinterpreting the text in light of modern society's demands. But this attempt is doomed, Seidman argues. One might stretch "due process of law" to protect an act of same-sex sodomy, yet a loyal-but-contemporary reading cannot erase the fact that the Constitution allows a candidate who lost the popular election to be seated as president. And that is only one of the gross violations of popular will enshrined in the document. Seidman systematically addresses and refutes the arguments in favor of Constitutional fealty, proposing instead that it be treated as inspiration, not a set of commands. The Constitution is, at its best, a piece of poetry to liberty and self-government. If we treat it as such, the author argues, we will make better progress in achieving both.