Abstract
Philip Alston, The Complexity of Human Rights : From Vernacularization to Quantification (Hart Publishing, London 2024)
This book provides the first systematic assessment from a human rights law perspective of the landmark contributions of the renowned legal anthropologist, Sally Engle Merry. What impact does over-simplification have on human rights debates? The understandable tendency to present them as a single, universal, and immutable concept ignores their complexity and by extension only serves to weaken them. Merry and her colleagues transformed human rights thinking by highlighting the process of ‘vernacularization’, which sees rights discourse as being unavoidably dependent upon translation and interpretation. She also warned of the pitfalls of excessive reliance upon statistical and other indicators, through the process of quantification. Here the leading voices in the field assess the significance of these contributions.
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Sarah Cassella, Global risks and international law: the case of climate change and pandemics (Developments in international law; volume 79, Brill | Nijhoff 2024)
Global risks present formidable challenges to international law. Although they have long been identified in many other scientific disciplines, they are currently only considered on a sectoral basis in international law in the absence of a legal definition. The aim of this book is threefold: to identify the main elements that characterise global risks in a legal perspective, to determine the characteristics that make them a new category of risk, and to analyse the changes they bring about in the main mechanisms of international law. Drawing on the relationship between international law and other legal systems, and in particular national law, this book highlights possible responses to the challenges posed by global risks. The study is based on extensive practice related to the examples of climate change and pandemics, but opens up perspectives on conclusions that could be common to other global risks such as financial risks or cyber-risks.
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Michael-James Clifton, Suzanne Rab and David Scorey KC, Building Bridges in European and Human Rights Law Essays in Honour and Memory of Paul Heim CMG (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2024)
This unique book, formed as a series of essays in honour of the memory of Paul Heim CMG, the founder of Lincoln's Inn European Group, focusses on the building of bridges between individuals and institutions in European, international, and human rights law.
The book features contributions from some of the foremost current or former European and international judges; leading practitioners and officials, each with links to Lincoln's Inn, and former recipients of Lincoln's Inn's dedicated scholarship programmes.
The approachable style of the book makes it readily accessible for a wide range of readers including legal scholars, practitioners, students, and those with a general interest in the application of the law and justice in today's interconnected world. Each contribution provides personal reflections and expertise on selected aspects of European and human rights law, and the personal, professional, and technical bridges involved in their development and maintenance, together with insights into their future. The book provides multi-level perspectives on the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EFTA Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court, and the interaction of their jurisprudence with domestic law and between themselves, alongside our ever-evolving societies.
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Bertus De Villiers, Indigenous rights in the modern era: regaining what has been lost (Studies in territorial and cultural diversity governance; volume 18, Brill | Nijhoff 2023)
International law is rich in promise but poor in detail and practical application about the rights of indigenous people. This book focuses on practical measures that have been implemented in states to give effect to free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC); self-determination by indigenous people; special electoral measures to benefit indigenous people; and the role of advisory bodies to advocate for indigenous interests. Several case studies are explored in depth to promote a greater understanding of some self-determination arrangements that have been implemented. These case studies represent a form of glocalisation, whereby global principles are applied to find local solutions, and local solutions in turn inform greater clarity and specificity to global principles. At the end of each chapter key lessons are identified from the respective case studies in the hope that those may inform developments in other countries and in international law.
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Emma Dunlop, Ensuring Access to Courts for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (Oxford Monographs in International Law Series, Oxford University Press 2024)
In Access to Courts for Asylum Seekers and Refugees, Emma Dunlop focuses on the scope and content of article 16 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under this article, States are obligated to provide asylum seekers and refugees with access to courts. This obligation entails a requirement to ensure ‘effective’ access, which may call for accommodations to be made to address individual vulnerabilities where, for example, a person does not speak the language of the court or lacks easy access to a lawyer. It also guarantees additional rights to those who have attained ‘habitual residence’ in the host country.
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Niba Fontoh, The international legal protection of migrants at sea: a comparison of international, regional, and national responses (Brill research perspectives, Brill 2023)
Faced with the migration crisis which has turned the sea into a graveyard for sea migrants, this book addresses the issue by examining the international legal framework which enjoins States and other actors at sea to come to the rescue of migrants in distress at sea. The book seeks to provide a legal argument which obliges the international community to protect even illegal migrants who willingly and intentionally endanger their lives at sea, while ensuring that these rights and obligations are not abused.
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Claude Gélinas, Raphaël Mathieu Legault-Laberge and Sébastien Lebel-Grenier, International perspective on indigenous religious rights (Studies in international minority and group rights; volume 17, Brill | Nijhoff 2024)
What is the status of indigenous religious rights in the world today? Despite important legal advances in the protection of indigenous religious beliefs and practices at the international and national levels, there are still many obstacles to the full implementation of these provisions. Using a unique large-scale comparative approach, this book aims to identify the fundamental issues that characterise the law of indigenous religions in several countries, as well as certain avenues that may prove useful in state-implementation of the provisions of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples regarding the practice, promotion, transmission, protection, and access to spiritual heritage.
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Namita Gupta, Human rights discourse on dams, displacement and resettlement (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2023)
Since the 1990s, development-induced displacement has emerged as a major human rights concern. At the heart of this debate lie the issues of equity, governance, justice and power. There are many examples of dam-induced displacement and resettlement being mismanaged and thus leading to enormous social and environmental costs. The developing impasse necessitated fresh insights into the lives of affected people, and a review of assumptions, questions and options.
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Christian Kälin, Citizenship and Human Rights From Exclusive and Universal to Global Rights: a new framework (Hart Publishing 2024)
Can universal human rights and different national citizenship regimes ever be compatible? This book argues that they can't, setting out a legal-philosophical critique of the tension between both.
It explores whether the emergence of postnational models of citizenship that aim at decoupling human rights and citizenship succeed in overcoming tensions between the universal (multiculturalism; universal human rights; postnational values) and the particular (citizenship; borders; national values and diverse local narratives). As a result of this exploration, the author argues that it is illegitimate to speak of universal human rights, universal human dignity, or universal social justice. It is only by recognising this reality that a much needed transformation of human rights and citizenship can be undertaken in a meaningful way.
This provocative and compelling work will appeal to both human rights and citizenship lawyers, as well as others involved in human rights law at NGOs, governments, international organisations - and indeed anyone with an interest in the subject of how human rights evolved and new concepts for the future.
About the author: Christian H. Kälin is the chairman of Henley & Partners and one of the world's foremost experts in immigration and citizenship policy. Holding masters and PhD degrees in law as well as a PhD in philosophy, he advises governments and international organisations.
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Ramute Remezaite, Compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights: states on a spectrum of democratisation (International studies in human rights; volume 143; Brill | Nijhoff 2024)
What does compliance with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) look like in states on the spectrum of democratisation? This work provides an in-depth investigation of three such states-Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia- in the wider context of the growing ‘implementation crisis’ in Europe, and does so through a combined lens of theoretical insights and rich empirical data. The book offers a detailed analysis of the domestic contexts varying from democratising to increasingly authoritarian tendencies, which shape the states’ compliance behaviour, and discusses why and how such states comply with human rights judgments. It puts particular focus on ‘contested’ compliance as a new form of compliance behaviour involving states’ acting in ‘bad faith’ and argues for a revival of the concept of partial compliance. The wider impact that ECtHR judgments have in states on the spectrum of democratisation is also explored.