International Human Rights Law

Catalog description

This course will assess the political theories, laws and institutions that address recognition and protection of human dignity. The idea that humans have rights under international law is both radical and essential: radical because international law traditionally governed state-to-state relations, not ones between the state and individuals; essential because states often cannot or will not protect fundamental notions of human dignity in the absence of an international legal superstructure. We will explore the idea of human rights as a body of international law, its origins, progress, implementation and enforcement. We will study its relation to other bodies of international law, such as the laws of armed conflict, international criminal law, refugee law and the law of state responsibility, as well as its relation to domestic legal frames of civil rights and civil liberties. We will discuss distinctions between the so-called 'first generation' of civil and political rights and the second generation of social, economic and cultural rights as well as distinctions between individual and group rights. We will consider whether non-state entities such as armed groups and businesses such as extractive industries and private military and security contractors have human rights obligations. We will explore discrimination, including on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, race and disability and we will measure progress toward it's elimination. We will consider 'cultural relativism' vs. the concept of universality of rights; tensions between various rights (e.g., freedom of expression and association vs. non-discrimination, life vs. choice and death penalty); and the effects of globalism, contemporary conflicts, and the rise of the national security state on human rights.