This book explores the effects of institutional fragmentation in international human rights law, by comparing the rights jurisprudence of three human rights courts and bodies, namely the European Court for Human Rights, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee. Contributions cover the areas of freedom of expression (journalism and the media), right to privacy, freedom of assembly and freedom of association (political parties), and measure the extent of fragmentation of human rights protection. Moreover, the volume argues that, while the conflict of laws approach, favoured by the International Law Commission, might work in avoiding outright conflict in obligation, in practice it is not an approach that presents a viable research agenda when it comes to understanding the causes and consequences of institutional fragmentation. This is especially evident in areas like international human rights, where the possibility of a silent drift between the jurisprudence of the three courts is a real possibility. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.

This book provides an innovative analysis of the complex issue of judicial convergence and fragmentation in international human rights law, moving the conversation forward from the assessment of the two phenomena and investigating their triggering factors. With a wide geographical focus that include the most up-to-date case-law from the three main regional systems (the African, European and Inter-American) and the UN Human Rights Committee, the book confirms the predominant judicial convergence across international human rights law. On this basis, the book engages with an interdisciplinary investigation into the legal and non-legal factors that could explain both convergence and fragmentation, ranging from the use of judicial dialogue and the notions of necessity and proportionality to the composition of the courts and the role of NGOs. The aim is to provide the tools to understand the dynamics between human rights adjudicatory bodies and possibly foresee future instances of judicial fragmentation.

Contrary to how it is often portrayed, the concept of human rights is not homogeneous. Instead it appears fragmented, differing in scope, focus, legal force and level of governance. Using the lens of key case studies, this insightful book contemplates human rights integration and fragmentation from the perspective of its users. The fragmentation of human rights law has resulted in an uncoordinated legal architecture that can create obstacles for effective human rights protection. Against this background, expert contributors examine how to make sense - in both theoretical and practical terms - of these multiple layers of human rights law through which human rights users have to navigate. They consider whether there is a need for more integration and the potential ways in which this might be achieved. The research presented illustrates the pivotal role that users play in shaping, implementing, interpreting and further developing human rights law. Offering an innovative perspective to the debate, this book will appeal to both students and academics interested in human rights and the methodological approaches that can be used in furthering its research. Practitioners and policy makers will also benefit from the forward thinking insights into how an integrated approach to human rights could look. Contributors include: E. Brems, E. Bribosia, P. De Hert, E. Desmet, E.K. Dorneles de Andrade, M. Holvoet, D. Inman, B. Oomen, S. Ouald-Chaib, I. Rorive, S. Smis, O. Van der Noot, S. Van Drooghenbroeck

This book explores a specific discursivity at work in international human rights law. It examines the ways in which the discourse on international human rights law constantly expands its domain while preserving its distinctiveness from general international law. It particularly exposes the oscillations between generalist and exceptionalist claims made in international human rights law for the sake of expanding its scope. Reviewing several contemporary controversies on international human rights law, it sheds lights on the possible drivers behind such expansionist discursivity.

The Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law provides the definitive global survey of the discipline of international human rights law. Each chapter is written by a leading expert and provides a contemporary overview of a significant area within the field. As well as covering topics integral to the theory and practice of international human rights law the volume offers a broader perspective though examinations of the ways in which human rights law interacts with other legal regimes and other international institutions, and by addressing the current and future challenges facing human rights. Providing up-to-date and authoritative articles covering key aspects of international human rights law, this book work is an essential work of reference for scholars, practitioners and students alike. Chapter 35 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780203481417.ch35

The Oxford Handbook of International Human Rights Law provides an authoritative and original overview of one of the key branches of international law. Forty contributors comprehensively analyse the role of human rights in international law from a global perspective, examining its origins and principles, and measuring its impact on the world.

Paradigms of International Human Rights Law explores the legal, ethical, and other policy consequences of three core structural features of international human rights law: the focus on individual rights instead of duties; the division of rights into substantive and nondiscrimination categories; and the use of positive and negative right paradigms. Part I explains the types of individual, corporate, and state duties available, and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating each type of duty into the world public order, with special attention to supplementing individual rights with explicit individual and state duties. Part II evaluates how substantive rights and nondiscrimination rights are used to protect similar values through different channels; summarizes the nondiscrimination right in international practice; proposes refinements; and explains how the paradigms synergize. Part III discusses negative and positive paradigms by dispelling a common misconception about positive rights, and then justifies and defines the concept of negative rights, justifies positive rights, and concludes with a discussion of the ethical consequences of structuring the human rights system on a purely negative paradigm. For each set of alternatives, the author analyzes how human rights law incorporates the paradigms, the technical legal implications of the various alternatives, and the ethical and other policy consequences of using each alternative while dispelling common misconceptions about the paradigms and considering the arguments justifying or opposing one or the other.

International courts and other actors are increasingly taking into account pre-existing social structures and inequalities when addressing and redressing human rights violations, in particular discrimination against specific groups. To date, however, academic legal research has paid little attention to this gentle turn in international human rights law and practice to address structural discrimination. In order to address this gap, this study analyses whether and to what extent international and regional human rights frameworks foresee positive obligations for State parties to address structural discrimination, and, more precisely, gender hierarchies and stereotypes as root causes of gender-based violence. In order to answer this question, the book analyses whether or not international human rights law requires pursuing a root-cause-sensitive and transformative approach to structural discrimination against women in general and to the prevention, protection and reparation of violence against women in particular; to what extent international courts and (quasi)judicial bodies address State responsibility for the systemic occurrence of violence against women and its underlying root causes; whether or not international courts and monitoring bodies have suitable tools for addressing structural discrimination within the society of a contracting party; and the limits to a transformative approach.

Adjudicating International Human Rights honours Professor Sandy Ghandhi on his retirement from law teaching. It does so through a series of targeted essays which probe the framework and adequacy of international human rights adjudication. Eminent international law scholars (such as Sir Nigel Rodley, Professor Javaid Rehman and Professor Malcolm Evans), along with emerging writers in the field, take Professor Ghandhi’s body of work—focussed on human rights protection through legal institutions—as a starting point for a variety of analytical essays. Adjudicating International Human Rights includes chapters devoted to human rights protection in a number of different institutional contexts, ranging from the ICJ and the Human Rights Committee to truth commissions and NAFTA arbitration tribunals.

International human rights law has emerged as an academic subject in its own right, separate from, but still related to international law. This book explains the distinctive nature of this discipline by examining the influence of the idea of human rights on general international law. Rather than make use of a particular moral philosophy or political theory, it explains human rights by examining the way the term is deployed in legal practice, on the understanding that words are given meaning through their use. Relying on complexity theory to make sense of the legal practice of the United Nations, the core human rights treaties, and customary international law, the work demonstrates the emergence of the moral concept of human rights as a fact of the social world. It reveals the dynamic nature of this concept, and the influence of the idea on the legal practice, a fact that explains the fragmentation of international law and special nature of international human rights law.