| Kommentar |
The course is dedicated to human rights as an important field of law, with some surrounding considerations of the history and theory of human rights. Human rights are understood to protect basic human needs: this includes the right to life, the prohibition of torture, the prohibition of slavery, but also freedom of religion, rights to privacy, freedom of expression, of assembly and of association – to name but a few fundamental human rights. For each of these rights, questions of interpretation arise. Moreover, human rights are often faced with the tension between their universalist claim (all humans should be protected in those rights) and the limited scope of state obligations (not all states are obligated to protect the rights of all individuals). This leads to questions about the reach of human rights, alternative or overlapping responsibility for human rights violations, and the relationship of human rights and other international law (for instance states’ duty to implement a UN Security Council resolution). The course will equip students with an overall understanding of human rights law: its sources, its history, some principal cases, and basic lines of debates in the field. |
| Literatur |
For an overview see The Oxford Handbook of International Human Rights Law (Ed: Dinah Shelton), OUP 2013.
For looking up specific case law on the European Convention on Human Rights: William A. Schabas, The European Convention on Human Rights: A Commentary, OUP 2015.
Further optional reading recommendations:
Seyla Benhabib (2008), The Legitimacy of Human Rights, Daedalus vol. 137, no. 3, On Cosmopolitanism, 94.
Marie-Bénédicte Dembour (2010), ‘What Are Human Rights? Four Schools of Thought, Human Rights Quarterly vol. 32 no. 1, 1.
Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia. Human Rights in History, HUP 2012. |
