Human Rights Law Review - current issue

Human Rights: Minimum and Maximum Perspectives

Brems, E. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

A focus on human rights violations leads to border control type human rights monitoring that provides only minimal human rights protection, as the borderline tends towards the bottom. Moreover, it is indifferent to degrees of human rights protection beyond the borderline, thus discouraging ambitious human rights agendas. The technique of progressive realisation may be the basis of improved border control monitoring that avoids the downward trend. Moreover, borderline control should be complemented with additional techniques that transform the dynamic of human rights from minimalism to maximalism.

The International Obligation to Abolish Traditional Practices Harmful to Children's Health: What Does It Mean and Require of States?

Tobin, J. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

Article 24(3) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child imposes an obligation on States to abolish traditional practices harmful to the health of children. This article seeks to examine the nature of this obligation, the types of practices to be abolished and the measures required of States to achieve this end. It argues that the prejudice of a particular practice to the health of a child cannot be reduced to a simple bio-medical assessment and the broader psycho-social impacts and significance of a practice must be taken into account. It also identifies evidence of a cultural and gender bias in the identification of practices deemed harmful to the health of a child in the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body responsible for monitoring States’ compliance with their obligations under the Convention. Finally, the practice of female genital cutting is used to demonstrate that rather than adopt a simple legislative regime based on zero tolerance, a multifaceted approach which is generated through dialogue with the communities that tolerate harmful practices must be adopted if the effective elimination of harmful practices is to be achieved.

Partnering with Strasbourg: Constitutionalisation of the European Court of Human Rights, the Accession of Central and East European States to the Council of Europe, and the Idea of Pilot Judgments

Sadurski, W. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

The accession of Central and East European States into the European Convention of Human Rights system was both a threat and a promise to the system. The threat resulted not only from the substantial increase of the number of Contracting States and that of the case-load, but also from the demise of a consensus which was, originally, presupposed by the system of protection of human rights in Western Europe: original members of the Council of Europe were ‘like-minded’ and the Convention system did not represent a challenge to their internal patterns of human rights protection. This article, however, focuses on a promise: a possibility for the European Court of Human Rights to abandon once and for all the fiction that it is merely a sort of super-appellate court which scrutinises individual decisions rather than laws in Contracting States. This shift towards a quasi-constitutional role, going beyond the simple identification of wrong individual decisions so as to point to systemic legal defects, was triggered by systemic problems within the new Contracting States, while also facilitated by collaboration between the European Court of Human Rights and national constitutional courts. The emergence of so-called ‘pilot judgments’ is the best and most recent illustration of this trend. The way in which a national court may form a de facto alliance with the European Court effectively ‘pierces the veil of the State’, and positions the European Court as a quasi-constitutional judicial body at a pan-European level.

A Question of Life and Death--The Request for Interpretation of Avena and Certain other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v United States) before the International Court of Justice

Hoppe, C. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

The Georgian Conflict, Racial Discrimination and the ICJ: The Order on Provisional Measures of 15 October 2008

Thienel, T. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

From Westminster to Strasbourg: A and others v United Kingdom

Shah, S. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

Reluctantly Restoring Rights: Responding to the Prisoner's Right to Vote

Foster, S. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

Stefan Sottiaux, Terrorism and the Limitation of Rights: The ECHR and the US Constitution

Bates, E. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

Alexandra Xanthaki, Indigenous Rights and United Nations Standards: Self-determination, Culture and Land

Charters, C. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT

Books Received

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:37:42 PDT