Abstract

De Lauri A, Humanitarianism: Keywords (Brill 2020)
Humanitarianism: Keywords is a comprehensive dictionary designed as a compass for navigating the conceptual universe of humanitarianism. It is an intuitive toolkit to map contemporary humanitarianism and to explore its current and future articulations. The dictionary serves a broad readership of practitioners, students, and researchers by providing informed access to the extensive humanitarian vocabulary.
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El-Khoury N, Irrational Human Rights?: Reflections on the Effectiveness of International Law (Koninklijke Brill NV 2021)
In Irrational Human Rights? An Examination of International Human Rights Treaties Naiade el-Khoury pursues the question how effective international human rights treaties really are and offers a discussion on the effects of treaty mechanisms. Such an examination as to the effects of international human rights treaties, or rather their limits, puts prevalent views of international law to the test. In doing so, this book convincingly argues that rational theories are inadequate to grasp the full effect of international human rights treaties.
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Grimonprez K, The European Union and Education for Democratic Citizenship Legal Foundations for EU Learning at School (Nomos 2020)
The study makes an analysis of the legal framework which Member States must take into account when designing their policies on citizenship education. The Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education of the Council of Europe and the international right to education are read in conjunction with EU law. Suitable content for the EU dimension in mainstream education is explored. A method for objective, critical and pluralistic EU learning is proposed, based on the Treaties and on case teaching (stories for critical thinking). Member States are invited to take more action to ensure quality education. The EU has the legal competence to support the EU dimension in education. In the present state of EU law, quality education is no longer conceivable without an EU dimension incorporated in various key competences.
At present the author works at the implementation of the ideas developed in the book as an Affiliated Senior Researcher at Leuven University (Case4EU-project in Belgium and other EU Member States).
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HylteÌn-Cavallius K, EU Citizenship at the Edges of Freedom of Movement (Hart Publishing, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2020)
This book critically analyses the case law on EU citizenship in relation to its personal free movement rights, its status on the primary law level, and EU fundamental rights protection. The book exposes the legal space where EU citizenship variably loses or gains legal relevance, and questions how this space can be overcome.
Through a thorough analysis of the core personal free movement rights of residence, family reunification, equal treatment and equal political participation, the book demonstrates how the development of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union has generated a two-tiered legal concept of EU citizenship. Depending on the nature of the legal claim at hand, EU citizenship may appear as a poor legal personhood for exercising free movement rights; sometimes pushing the individual who is in a factual cross-border situation out of the scope of Union law. Contrastingly, in other strands of the jurisprudence, we see EU citizenship and its primary law levelled-rights stretch the jurisdictional scope of Union law, triggering the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights for review of the individual case.
The book enhances the understanding of the legal concept of EU citizenship in Union law and contributes to the debate on the future development of EU citizenship, its relationship to the Charter, and the strength of its legal position for the person who exercises freedom of movement.
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Kempees P, ‘Hard Power’ and the European Convention on Human Rights (Brill | Nijhoff 2020)
The European Convention on Human Rights is now crucial to decisions to be taken by the military and their political leaders in ‘hard power’ situations – that is, classical international and non-international armed conflict, belligerent occupation, peacekeeping and peace-enforcing and anti-terrorism and anti-piracy operations, but also hybrid warfare, cyber-attack and targeted assassination. Guidance is needed, therefore, on how Convention law relates to these decisions.
That guidance is precisely what this book aims to offer. It focuses primarily on States’ accountability under the Convention, but also shows that human rights law, used creatively, can actually help States achieve their objectives.
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Kostakopoulou D, EU Citizenship Law and Policy: Beyond Brexit (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 2020)
This theoretically ambitious work combines analytical, institutional and critical approaches in order to provide an in-depth, panoramic and contextual account of European Union citizenship law and policy.
Offering a refreshing perspective on the origins, evolution and trajectory of EU citizenship law, Dora Kostakopoulou explores recent developments, controversies and challenges, including Brexit, and fills a lacuna in the existing literature. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this insightful book combines legal studies with normative political theory, political science, sociology and critical migration studies in order to arm readers with the tools required to appreciate and understand the constructive potential and transformative effects of this fascinating and unique institution. Provocative and forward-thinking, it provides glimpses of an alternative future for EU citizenship.
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Kurban D, L imits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict (Cambridge University Press 2020)
With its contextualized analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) engagement in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict since the early 1990s, Limits of Supranational Justice makes a much-needed contribution to scholarships on supranational courts and legal mobilization. Based on a socio-legal account of the efforts of Kurdish lawyers in mobilizing the ECtHR on behalf of abducted, executed, tortured and displaced civilians under emergency rule, and a doctrinal legal analysis of the ECtHR’s jurisprudence in these cases, this book powerfully demonstrates the Strasbourg Court’s failure to end gross violations in the Kurdish region. It brings together legal, political, sociological and historical narratives, and highlights the factors enabling the perpetuation of state violence and political repression against the Kurds. The effectiveness of supranational courts can best be assessed in hard cases such as Turkey, and this book demonstrates the need for a reappraisal of current academic and jurisprudential approaches to authoritarian regimes.
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Lavrysen L and Mavronicola N, Coercive Human Rights: Positive Duties to Mobilise the Criminal Law under the ECHR (Hart Publishing 2020)
Traditionally, human rights have protected those facing the sharp edge of the criminal justice system. But over time human rights law has become increasingly infused with duties to mobilise criminal law towards protection and redress for violation of rights. These developments give rise to a whole host of questions concerning the precise parameters of coercive human rights, the rationale(s) that underpin them, and their effects and implications for victims, perpetrators, domestic legal systems, and for the theory and practice of human rights and criminal justice. This collection addresses these questions with a focus on the rich jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
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McCall-Smith K, Birdsall A and Casanas Adam E, Human Rights in Times of Transition: Liberal Democracies and Challenges of National Security (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 2020)
This timely book explores the extent to which national security has affected the intersection between human rights and the exercise of state power. It examines how liberal democracies, long viewed as the proponents and protectors of human rights, have transformed their use of human rights on the global stage, externalizing their own internal agendas.
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Motz SA, The Refugee Status of Persons with Disabilities (Koninklijke Brill NV 2021)
Persons with disabilities often face persecution. How does the 1951 Refugee Convention apply to them? In this first comprehensive study on the refugee definition for persons with disabilities, Stephanie Motz proposes a disability-specific approach to refugee status. The book provides a critical analysis of case law on refugee status determination focusing on four selected jurisdictions. Each chapter examines a different element of the refugee definition in light of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as international refugee law standards.
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O’Connell R, Law, Democracy and the European Court of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press 2020)
Law, Democracy and the European Court of Human Rights examines the political rights jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. It discusses how the Court supports a liberal representative and substantive model of democracy, and outlines the potential for the Court to interpret the Convention so as to support more deliberative, participatory and inclusive democratic practices. The book commences with an overview of different theories of democracy and then discusses the origins of the Council of Europe and the Convention and presents the basic principles on the interpretation and application of the Convention. Subsequent chapters explore issues around free expression, free assembly and association, the scope of the electoral rights, the right to vote, the right to run for election and issues about electoral systems. Issues discussed include rights relating to referendums, voting rights for prisoners and non-nationals, trade union rights and freedom of information.
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Wesemann A, Citizenship in the European Union: Constitutionalism, Rights and Norms (Edward Elgar Publishing Limited 2020)
The book proposes a new approach to constitutional analysis of the EU and its legal framework, arguing that the existence of constitutional rights norms within EU law enables this particular legal order to respond effectively to societal and political challenges within the rigidity of constitutionalism. Providing new perspectives on constitutionalism in the EU, this book considers the way the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) discusses and applies the EU citizenship Treaty norms by analysing the courts approach to decision making, which resembles the balancing and weighing of conflicting principles.
