The Legalization of Human Rights: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Human Rights and Human Rights Law

by Meckled-Garcfa; Saladin

• ISBN13: 9780415361224
• ISBN10: 0415361222
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-11
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This study starts from a provocative new premise: the relationship between human rights and their legal expression is far from straightforward and urgently needs a sharp re-examination.The concept of 'human rights' as a universal goal is at the centre of the international stage. It is now a key part in discourse, treaties and in domestic jurisdictions. However, as this study shows, the debate around this development is actually about human rights law.This text scrutinizes the extent to which legalization shapes the human rights ideal, and surveys its ethical, political and practical repercussions. How does the law influence what we think about rights? What more is there to such rights than their legal protection? These expert contributors approach these questions from a range of perspectives: political theory/moral theory, anthropology, sociology, international law, international politics and political science, to deliver a diversity of methodologies.This book is essential reading for those wishing to develop a clear understanding of the relationship between human rights ideals and laws and for those working toward the fostering of a genuine human rights culture.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	vii
List of contributors	viii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: human rights legalized -- defining, interpreting, and implementing an ideal	1	(8)
Basak Cali
Saladin Meckled-Garcia
PART I The limits of law	9	(56)
Lost in translation: the human rights ideal and international human rights law	11	(21)
Saladin Meckled-Garcia
Basak Cali
The law cannot be enough: human rights and the limits of iegalism	32	(17)
Anthony Woodiwiss
Putting law in its place: an interdisciplinary evaluation of national amnesty laws	49	(16)
Michael Freeman
PART II Law and its virtues	65	(34)
The virtues of legalization	67	(14)
Jack Donnelly
Is the legalization of human rights really the problem? Genocide in the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission	81	(18)
Richard Ashby Wilson
PART III Human rights law in action	99	(64)
Revisioning the role of law in women's human rights struggles	101	(16)
Ratna Kapur
The bureaucratic gaze of international human rights law	117	(17)
David Chandler
Verdictive discourses, shame and judicialization in pursuit of freedom of association rights	134	(29)
Edward Weisband
PART IV Interpretation and legal authority	163	(38)
From the theory of discovery to the theory of recognition of indigenous rights: conventional international law in search of homeopathy	165	(17)
Natalia Alvarez Molinero
Politics of reading human rights: inclusion and exclusion within the production of human rights	182	(19)
Upendra Baxi
Index	201