Global Justice and the Bulwarks of Localism: Human Rights in Context PDF Download

Author: Christopher Eisgruber
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047416007
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The rise of international human rights during the last half of the twentieth century has transformed traditional notions of sovereignty. No longer is international law concerned almost exclusively with external relations among states and their representatives. Now, it imposes substantial restrictions on the domestic affairs of states and protects ordinary persons against mistreatment by their own government. The change came about in response to the Holocaust and the century’s other great tragedies. Few doubt its value. Nevertheless, power exercised in the name of human rights can be misused or abused. As human rights institutions matured, and as international organizations intervened more vigorously on a global scale, human rights advocates and their critics worried about whether quests to vindicate supposedly universal human rights might sometimes impose western, first-world norms on cultures that did not want them. In this volume, internationally noted scholars collaborate to address issues about human rights and local culture from philosophical, legal, anthropological and sociological perspectives. Their essays focus on topics including self-determination, religion, truth & reconciliation commissions, and sexual mores.

Author: Anna Delius
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110768917
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This book is the first to connect global labor history and the history of human rights: By focusing on democratic labor oppositions in Spain and Poland between 1960 and 1990, it shows how workers in authoritarian regimes addressed repression and whether they developed a language of rights in the light of a globally dynamic human rights discourse. The study argues that the democratic labor oppositions in Spain and Poland were both variants of emancipatory and democracy-oriented social movements with global interconnections that emerged in the 1960s. It reveals that the demands for free and independent trade unions, which in both countries became a flashpoint in the fight for broader democratic demands, was not always discussed in rights terms, but rather presented as an inevitable necessity. At the same time, these labor movements and their intellectual allies morally delegitimized state repression against workers and thereby employed the concepts of democracy, participation, solidarity, progress and eventually, rights. Integrating the history of two European semi-peripheric societies into a broader narrative, this book is relevant for readers interested in global labor history, human rights history and the history of democratization in Europe in the late twentieth century.

Author: Jeroen Temperman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004181482
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
This book presents a human rights-based assessment of the various modes of state religion identification and of the various forms of state practice that characterize these different state religion models. This book makes a case for the recognition of a state duty to remain impartial with respect to religion or belief in all regards so as to comply with people s fundamental right to be governed, at all times, in a religiously neutral manner. As this book demonstrates through the various case studies there is increasing interest and concern at the manner in which questions concerning the enjoyment of the right to the freedom of religion or belief bear upon key questions concerning the governance of democratic society. Issues raised involve matters concerning employment, education, expression, association and, more generally, the interface between religion and political life. The existing literature often traces these concerns back to the need to consider the place of religion in contemporary society but leaves matters there. Another body of academic literature explores the theoretical dimensions of that relationship but fails to connect it to the practice of states in order to test out the propositions which are the product of these reflections. The great virtue of this work is that is seeks to unite these various enterprises and engages head on with the challenges which this produces The aim is to demonstrate and illustrate the key contention: that there is an emergent right to religiously neutral governance, and that this is incompatible with the continuation of systems which offer preference to particular forms of belief system religious or otherwise. A chief virtue of this book is that it works through the consequences of this claim in a fearless fashion, posing challenges for those states which continue to use their legal frameworks to offer support (directly or indirectly) for historical, dominant or favoured forms of religion or belief. It challenges received assumptions and, by driving the logic of contemporary human rights thinking to the foundations of state-religion relationships performs a valuable service for those engaging with this most difficult and timely of questions. Malcolm D. Evans, Professor of Public International Law, University of Bristol

Author: Alexander Laban Hinton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198820941
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
For survivors of the brutal Khmer Rouge Regime, western instruments of justice are small plasters on deep wounds. In Hinton's account of the subsequent international tribunal, only traditional ceremony, ritual, and unmediated dialogue can provide true healing.

Author: Wei Zhang
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
ISBN: 9004308776
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
The first volume of Chinese Perspectives on Human Rights and Good Governance collects research articles regarding human rights, good governance, rule of law and Constitutionalism in China.

Author: Ned Richardson-Little
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108424678
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake.

Author: Rogers M. Smith
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204662
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
From anxiety about Muslim immigrants in Western Europe to concerns about undocumented workers and cross-border security threats in the United States, disputes over immigration have proliferated and intensified in recent years. These debates are among the most contentious facing constitutional democracies, and they show little sign of fading away. Edited and with an introduction by political scientist Rogers M. Smith, Citizenship, Borders, and Human Needs brings together essays by leading international scholars from a wide range of disciplines to explore the economic, cultural, political, and normative aspects of comparative immigration policies. In the first section, contributors go beyond familiar explanations of immigration's economic effects to explore whose needs are truly helped and harmed by current migration patterns. The concerns of receiving countries include but are not limited to their economic interests, and several essays weigh different models of managing cultural identity and conflict in democracies with large immigrant populations. Other essays consider the implications of immigration for politics and citizenship. In many nations, large-scale immigration challenges existing political institutions, which must struggle to foster political inclusion and accommodate changing ways of belonging to the polity. The volume concludes with contrasting reflections on the normative standards that should guide immigration policies in modern constitutional democracies. Citizenship, Borders, and Human Needs develops connections between thoughtful scholarship and public policy, thereby advancing public debate on these complex and divisive issues. Though most attention in the collection is devoted to the dilemmas facing immigrant-receiving countries in the West, the volume also explores policies and outcomes in immigrant-sending countries, as well as the situation of developing nations—such as India—that are net receivers of migrants.

Author: Uladzislau Belavusau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110718875X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
The volume revisits memory laws as a phenomenon of global law, transitional justice, historical narratives and claims for historical truth. It will appeal to those interested in the conflict between legal governance of memory with values of democratic citizenship, political pluralism, and fundamental rights.

Author: Hans-Christian Günther
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004193782
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
The present volumes unites papers which explore the European image of god in an intercultural context. They range from classical antiquity to contemporary philosophy and science.

Author: Sor-hoon Tan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351952757
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Over the last ten years citizenship has become an area of interdisciplinary research and teaching in its own right. This book highlights that globalization poses new challenges for established understandings and practices of citizenship, and that intellectual work is required to fashion models of citizenship better suited to present problems and realities. In particular, this volume emphasizes the pluralization of identities and communities within states brought about by such forces as mass immigration, global communication, substate regionalism and more generally the fragmentation of modern notions of nation. The challenge is to devise forms of democracy and political identity adequate to these 'globalized' conditions. Ideally suited to anyone interested in globalization, cultural diversity and citizenship.