Abstract
Ashford C and Maine A, Research Handbook on Gender, Sexuality and the Law (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 2020)
This innovative and thought-provoking Research Handbook explores not only current debates in the area of gender, sexuality and the law but also points the way for future socio-legal research and scholarship. It presents wide-ranging insights and debates from across the globe, including Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Australia, with contributions from leading scholars and activists alongside exciting emergent voices
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Bhandari R, Human Rights and the Revision of International Refugee Law (Routledge 2020)
This book addresses the relationship between International Refugee Law and International Human Rights Law. Using international refugee law’s analytical turn to human rights as its object of inquiry, it represents a critical intervention into the revisionism that has led to conceptual fragmentation and restrictive practices. Mainstream literature in refugee law reflects a mood of celebration, a narrative of progress which praises the discipline’s rescue from obsolescence. This is commonly ascribed to its repositioning alongside human rights law, its veritable rediscovery as an arm of this far greater edifice. By using human rights logic to construct the current legal paradigm and inform us of who qualifies as a refugee, this purportedly lent areas of conceptual uncertainty a set of objective, modern criteria and increased enfranchisement to new, non-traditional claimants.
The present work challenges this dominant position by finding the untold limits of its current paradigm. It stands alone in this orientation and hereby represents one of the most comprehensive, heterodox and structurally detailed reviews of this connection. The exploration of the gap between modern approaches and the unsatisfactory realities of seeking asylum forms the substance of this book. It asserts, by contrast, the existence of revolution rather than evolution. Human rights law has erased the founding tenets of the Refugee Convention, enabling powerful states to contain refugees in their region of origin.
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Borrows J and Schwartz R, Indigenous Peoples and International Trade: Building Equitable and Inclusive International Trade and Investment Agreements (Cambridge University Press 2020)
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is seen primarily as an international human rights instrument. However, the Declaration also encompasses cultural, social and economic rights. Taken in the context of international trade and investment, the UN Declaration is a valuable tool to support economic self-determination of Indigenous peoples. This volume explores the emergence of Indigenous peoples’ participation in international trade and investment, as well as how it is shaping legal instruments in environment and trade, intellectual property and traditional knowledge. One theme that is explored is agency. From amicus interventions at the World Trade Organization to developing a future precedent for a ‘Trade and Indigenous Peoples Chapter’, Indigenous peoples are asserting their right to patriciate in decision-making. The authors, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts on trade and investment legal, provide needed ideas and recommendations for governments, academia and policy thinkers to achieve economic reconciliation.
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Reif C L, Ombuds Institutions, Good Governance and the International Human Rights System: Second Revised Edition (Brill 2020)
This book uses comparative law and comparative international law approaches to explore the role of human rights ombuds, classic-based ombuds and other types of ombuds institutions in human rights protection and promotion, their methods of application of international and domestic human rights law and their roles in strengthening good governance. It highlights the increasing importance of national human rights ombuds institutions globally and their roles as national human rights institutions (NHRIs).
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Crépin M, Persecution, International Refugee Law and Refugees: A Feminist Approach (Routledge 2021)
This book explores the ambit of the notion of persecution in international law and its relevance in the current geopolitical context, more specifically for refugee women. The work analyses different models for interpreting the notion of persecution in international refugee law through a comparative lens. In particular, a feminist approach to refugee law is adopted to determine to what extent the notion of persecution can apply to gender related forms of violence and what are the challenges in doing so. It proposes an interpretive model that would encourage decision makers to interpret the notion of persecution in a manner that is sufficiently protective and relevant to the profiles of refugees in the 21st century
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Fitzgibbon M and O’Riordan J, Direct Provision. Asylum, the Academy and Activism (Peter Lang 2020)
This book examines approaches and responses to working with the asylum–seeking, refugee and migrant communities in Ireland. Through their experiences, analyses and activist accounts, contributors name direct provision as a system that facilitates the marginalization and de–humanizing of people. In making visible some of the undocumented challenges to direct provision, the co–operation and engagement between local and migrant communities, and the very real and moving experiences of living in such conditions, this publication forms a part of the ongoing challenge to direct provision. It calls for a re–consideration of the infallibility of the reductionist–dominant narrative that reduces responsibility to care and protect human life to narrow economic considerations, and calls on the State to recognize its duty of care in its fullest conceptualization. With this work, we have attempted to bring some of its many facets to the academic and public eye. While analysing through the lens of care, the reductionist and repressive State policies and practices are revealed; but most emphasis is on the reactions and resilience of the asylum–seeking community, through their numerous acts of resistance, supported by a significant cohort of friends and activists within and outwith the direct provision system.
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Fraser J, Social Institutions and International Human Rights Law Implementation: Every Organ of Society (Cambridge University Press 2020)
This book examines the traditional State-centric and legalistic approach to implementation, critiquing its limited efficacy in practice and failure to connect with local cultures. The book therefore explores the permissibility of other measures of implementation, and advocates more culturally sensitive approaches involving social institutions. Through an interdisciplinary case study of Islam in Indonesia, the book demonstrates the power of social institutions like religion to promote rights compliant positions and behaviours.
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Haglund J, Regional Courts, Domestic Politics, and the Struggle for Human Rights (Cambridge University Press 2020)
The international human rights regime has grown substantially over the past several decades. Yet, international human rights law faces significant enforcement challenges coupled with threats to its legitimacy in many parts of the world. As part of the international human rights regime, the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights allow individuals to file formal complaints with an international legal body, making them uniquely designed to ensure rights-related changes. This book focuses on regional human rights court deterrence, or the extent to which adverse judgments discourage the commission of future human rights abuses by instilling fear of the consequences of continued abuse. The central argument of the book is that regional court deterrence is more likely when the chief executive has the capacity and willingness to respond to adverse judgments from regional courts. Jillienne Haglund argues that the executive has greater capacity to respond to adverse judgments when human rights policy changes are relatively feasible and the state is fiscally flexible. Moreover, the executive has incentives to respond to adverse judgments with human rights policy change when the executive faces pressure from the mass public, economic elites, or political elites. This book draws comparisons across regional courts in Europe and the Americas using quantitative data analysis, supplemented with qualitative evidence from many adverse judgments rendered by the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights, to explain the conditions under which adverse regional court judgments deter future human rights abuses
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Kalandarishvili-Mueller N, Occupation and Control in International Humanitarian Law (Routledge 2020)
This book presents a systematic analysis of the notion of control in the law of military occupation. The work demonstrates that in present-day occupations, control as such occurs in different forms and variations. The polymorphic features of occupation can be seen in the way states establish control over territory either directly or indirectly, and in the manner in which they retain, relinquish or regain it. The question as to what level and type of control is needed to determine the existence and ending of military occupation is explored in great detail in light of various International Humanitarian Law instruments. The book provides an anatomy of the required tests of control in determining the existence of military occupation based on the law. It also discusses control in relation to occupation by proxy and when and how the end of control over territory occurs so that military occupation is considered terminated. The study is informed by relevant international jurisprudence. It draws on numerous pertinent case studies from all over the world, various reports by different UN entities and other international organisations, as well as legal doctrine
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Kittichaisaree K, International Human Rights Law and Diplomacy (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 2020)
This incisive book provides an unparalleled insight into the ways in which international human rights law functions in a real-world context across cultural, religious and geopolitical divides. Written by a professor, former ambassador and international judge, the book demonstrates how power, diplomacy, tactics and processes operate within the human rights system from the perspective of a non-Western insider with more than three decades’ experience in the field
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Mantu S, Minderhoud P and Guild E, EU Citizenship and Free Movement Rights: Taking Supranational Citizenship Seriously (Brill 2020)
This collective volume examines how EU citizenship reconstructs in unexpected ways what citizenship as a status means and stands for. EU citizenship can neither be accurately described as a citizenship status similar to national citizenship, nor as an immigration one. The book examines the tension at the heart of attempts to grasp the nature of EU citizenship as supranational status in relation to family reunification, social rights and expulsion. It shows that while events such as Brexit stress the importance of EU citizenship, the construction of supranational citizenship along the axis of non-discrimination and equality remains a work in progress that requires the efforts of all actors involved - institutions, implementing authorities, courts and citizens.
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Massingham E and McConnachie A, Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law (Routledge 2021)
This book explores the nature and scope of the provision requiring States to ‘ensure respect’ for international humanitarian law (IHL) contained within Common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It examines the interpretation and application of this provision in a range of contexts, both thematic and country-specific. Accepting the clearly articulated notion of ‘respect’ for IHL, it builds on the existing literature studying the meaning of ‘ensure respect’ and outlines an understanding of the concept in situations such as enacting implementing legislation, diplomatic interactions, regulating private actors, targeting, detaining persons under IHL in non-international armed conflict, protecting civilians (including internally displaced populations) and prosecuting war crimes. It also considers topical issues such as counter-terrorism and foreign fighters. The book will be a valuable resource for practitioners, academics and researchers. It provides much needed practical reflection for States as to what ensuring respect entails, so that governments are able to address these obligations
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Raible L, Human Rights Unbound: A Theory of Extraterritoriality (Oxford University Press 2020)
This book uses approaches from legal and political philosophy to develop a theory of when states owe human rights obligations to individuals outside of their own territory, looking at economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights.
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Robbers G, Migration Law in Germany (Kluwer Law International 2020)
Derived from the renowned multi-volume ‘International Encyclopaedia of Laws’, this monograph on the rules on immigration and right of residence of non-nationals in Germany examines the legal and administrative conditions for persons not having the citizenship of a State to enter the country and to stay and reside there. It provides a survey of the subject that is both usefully brief and sufficiently detailed to answer most questions likely to arise in any pertinent legal setting. It follows the common structure of all monographs appearing in the ‘International Encyclopaedia for Migration Law’, thus allowing easy comparison between the country studies. As migration and economic activities are often interlinked, the analysis pays particular attention to labour market access and regulation of self-employed activities for non-nationals. The book describes the status of such specific categories of persons as students, researchers, temporary workers, and asylum seekers, as well as the position of family members, detailing applicable legislation and providing practical information on administrative procedures, sanctions, and legal remedies and guarantees. The impact of international human rights law and various bilateral and multilateral agreements is considered, along with the broader application of national and local law to non-citizens in such areas as family relations, labour, social security, and education
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Santagostino A, The Idea and Values of Europe From Antigone to the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Cambridge Scholars Publisher 2020)
This book discusses the 2450 year-long journey of the evolution of human rights, beginning from their earliest manifestation through Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (442 BCE). It then moves on to look at the relationship between human rights and the likes of Cicero and Jesus, Erasmus and the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, before considering the very roots of the idea of Europe, which goes back to the liberal and federalist thought of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book concludes with the Charter of the EU Fundamental Rights becoming legally binding for Member States in Lisbon in 2009. While inquiring into the origins of European shared values, it assesses their compatibility with a non-European culture and religion such as Islam.
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Sciaccaluga G, International Law and the Protections of Climate Refugees (Palgrvae Macmillan 2020)
This book studies the topic of forced climate migrants (commonly referred to as (climate refugees) through the lens of international law and identifies the reasons why these migrants should be granted international protection. Through an analysis focused on climate change and human rights international law, it points out the legal principles and rules upon which an international obligation to protect persons forced to migrate due to climate change is emerging. Sciaccaluga advocates for a state obligation to protect climate migrants when their origin countries have become extremely environmentally fragile due to climate change—to the point of becoming unable to guarantee the exercise of inalienable human rights in their territories. Turning to the future, this book then investigates the current elements on which a “forced climate migrants law” could be built, ultimately arguing for the duty to provide some form of assistance to forced climate migrants in a third state within the international legal system.
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Steflja I and Trisko Darden J, Women as War Criminals: Gender, Agency, and Justice (Stanford University Press 2020)
Women war criminals are far more common than we think. From the Holocaust to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans to the Rwandan genocide, women have perpetrated heinous crimes. Few have been punished. Women who have committed war crimes go unnoticed because their very existence goes against our assumptions about war and about women. Biases that contend that women are peaceful and innocent prevent us from (seeing) women as war criminals. They also work to prevent post-conflict justice systems from assigning women blame. We argue that women are just as capable as men in committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are also uniquely adept at using gender instrumentally to fight for better conditions and reduced sentences when war ends. We examine four legal cases to demonstrate this: the President (Biljana Plavšić), the Minister (Pauline Nyiramasuhuko), the Soldier (Lynndie England), and the Student (Hoda Muthana). The intersection of gender, the ideological commitment, age, race, nationality, religion, rank, and institutional membership of these women influenced their treatment by legal systems and their ability to mount a gendered defense of their actions. The political context and motivations of the courts that handled their cases also shaped the legal outcomes. Justice, ultimately, is not blind to gender
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Taylor P M, A Commentary on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: The UN Human Rights Committee’s Monitoring of ICCPR Rights (Cambridge University Press 2020)
Human rights scholars tend to focus on particular rights which spark their interest. My research some 20 years ago on freedom of thought, conscience and religion was launched by some unplanned engagement in advocacy and trial observation in the Cold War era. A recurring challenge since has been to grapple with international human rights law across a broad spectrum, a task made all the more confronting by the sheer scale and almost fractal complexity of the network of declarations, conventions and other instruments which the subject encompasses. This work spans all rights to be guaranteed under International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one of the centrepiece conventions within the UN human rights system. It describes how the constituent elements of the Covenant integrate within a composite scheme of rights protection, across the full suite of civil and political rights. It is written at a time when the UN is under extreme financial and other pressure. Proposals are occasionally made for reform of the UN human rights system, including the Covenant. This book, finally, aims to present the Covenant with its imperfections, as well as its obvious and less well conspicuous advantages, so that its merits at least are not unduly sacrificed in reform proposals