Sheeran & Rodley: Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law

Scott Sheeran (Univ. of Essex - Law) & Nigel Rodley (Univ. of Essex - Law) have published Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law (Routledge 2013). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

The Routledge Handbook of International Human Rights Law provides the definitive global survey of the discipline of international human rights law. Each chapter is written by a leading expert and provides a contemporary overview of a significant area within the field.

As well as covering topics integral to the theory and practice of international human rights law the volume offers a broader perspective though examinations of the ways in which human rights law interacts with other legal regimes and other international institutions, and by addressing the current and future challenges facing human rights.

This highly topical collection of specially commissioned papers is split into four sections:

• The nature and evolution of international human rights law discussing the origins, theory and practice of the discipline.
• Interaction of human rights with other key regimes and bodies including the interaction of the discipline with international economic law, international humanitarian law, and development, as well as other legal regimes.
• Evolution and prospects of regional approaches to human rights discussing the systems of Europe, the Americas, Africa and South East Asia, and their relationship to the United Nations treaty bodies.
• Key contemporary challenges including non-State actors, religion and human rights, counter-terrorism, and enforcement and remedies.

Vrdoljak: The Cultural Dimension of Human Rights

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak (Univ. of Technology, Sydney - Law) has published The Cultural Dimension of Human Rights (Oxford Univ. Press 2013). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

The intersections between culture and human rights have engaged some of the most heated and controversial debates across international law and theory. As understandings of culture have evolved in recent decades to encompass culture as ways of life, there has been a shift in emphasis from national cultures to cultural diversity within and across states. This has entailed a push to more fully articulate cultural rights within human rights law.

This volume analyses a range of responses by international law, and particularly human rights law, to some of the thorniest, perennial, and sometimes violent confrontations fuelled by culture in relations between individuals, groups and the state in international society. Across the different issues tackled, the contributions are tied by one unifying thread - that culture is understood, protected and promoted not only for its physical manifestations. Rather, it is the relationship of culture to people, individually or in groups, and the diversity of these relationships which is being protected and promoted; hence, the fundamental overlap between culture and human rights.

Tzanakopoulos: The Solange Argument as a Justification for Disobeying the Security Council in the Kadi Judgments

Antonios Tzanakopoulos (Univ. of Oxford - Law) has posted The Solange Argument as a Justification for Disobeying the Security Council in the Kadi Judgments (in Kadi on Trial: A Multifaceted Analysis of the Kadi Judgment, Matej Avbelj, Filippo Fontanelli & Giuseppe Martinico eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The Kadi judgments of the courts of the EU have received enormous scholarly attention and have had significant practical impact. And reasonably so: they are landmark decisions, with numerous implications for several crucial issues, from the relationship between different legal orders to the primacy of Security Council decisions, from the required level of protection of fundamental human rights in the application of coercive measures against individuals to the competence of the EU, and so forth. This brief study focuses on one particular aspect of the Kadi decisions: their employment of the Solange argument as a justification for disobeying the Security Council by not implementing its binding decisions.

Ni Aoláin & Gross: Guantánamo and Beyond: Exceptional Courts and Military Commissions in Comparative Perspective

Fionnuala Ni Aoláin (Univ. of Minnesota - Law) & Oren Gross (Univ. of Minnesota - Law) have published Guantánamo and Beyond: Exceptional Courts and Military Commissions in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge Univ. Press 2013). Here's the abstract:

The Military Commissions scheme established by President George W. Bush in November 2001 has garnered considerable controversy. In parallel with the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the creation of military courts has focused significant global attention on the use of such courts to process and try persons suspected of committing terrorist acts or offenses during armed conflict. This book brings together the viewpoints of leading scholars and policy makers on the topic of exceptional courts and military commissions with a series of unique contributions setting out the current 'state of the field'. The book assesses the relationship between such courts and other intersecting and overlapping legal arenas including constitutional law, international law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law. By examining the comparative patterns, similarities and disjunctions arising from the use of such courts, this book also analyzes the political and legal challenges that the creation and operation of exceptional courts produces both within democratic states and for the international community.