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International
Human Rights Law:
Prospects & Challenges
• Week 1, Lecture 2:
• A brief history of human rights
Lecture Overview• State sovereignty – a foundational principle
of the international legal system.
•
Limited international recognition andprotection of individual and group rights
prior to the Second World War.
•
Catalysts for international recognition andprotection of human rights (“HRs”) after theSecond World War.
•
Revising the traditional view of sovereignty.
Sovereignty—a foundationalprinciple of the internationallegal system
• Rights and privileges of sovereignty
• Nonintervention by one State in anotherState’s domestic affairs
• Consequences of sovereignty forprotecting individual & group rights
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International protection ofindividual & group rights priorto the Second World War• Treaties guaranteeing freedom of religious worship
for Catholics & Protestants (17th century)
•
Abolition of slavery & slave trade (early 19th century)
• Minimum international standards of treatment offoreigners residing in other countries (19th century)
• Treaties protecting ethnic minorities in Central &Eastern Europe (early 20th century)
Individual and group rightsprior to the Second World War
• What do these four historicalexamples have in common?
Catalysts for protecting HRsafter the Second World War
•
During the Second World War, the Naziregime in Germany organized mass detentionand extermination of Jews, Gypsies,Communists, gay men, and other groups.
•
Allied Powers were aware of some atrocities,but failed to act.
•
Widespread public horror when the full scopeof atrocities were revealed at the war’s end.
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Catalysts for protecting HRsafter the Second World War
•
Recognition that domestic laws & institutions were insufficient to protect individuals &groups from violence, discrimination & otherforms of mistreatment by governments. Why?
• Constitutions can be suspended or revised,
• Democratic institutions can be disbanded,
•
Courts can be shut down or coopted.
.
Catalysts for protecting HRsafter the Second World War
•
Responses to the shortcomings of protectingrights in domestic legal systems …
•
develop a shared global understanding offundamental rights and freedoms,
•
create international laws and institutions toprotect those rights and freedoms, and
• revise the traditional understanding ofState sovereignty.
Revising the traditionalunderstanding of sovereignty
• “Universalization” of human rights
• “Internationalization” of human rights
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Revising the traditionalunderstanding of sovereignty
• The universalization of rights means…
•
“acceptance, at least in principle and
rhetoric, of the concept of individual human
rights by all societies and governments [as]reflected in national constitutions and law.”
•
LOUIS HENKIN, THE A GE OF RIGHTS (1990)
Revising the traditionalunderstanding of sovereignty
• The internationalization of rights means…
•
“agreement, at least in political-legal
principle and in rhetoric, that individual
human rights are of international concern anda proper subject for diplomacy, international
institutions, and international law.”
• LOUIS HENKIN, THE A GE OF RIGHTS (1990)
For additional information•
U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for HumanRights, “What are Human Rights?”
•
Judge Thomas Buergenthal, A Brief History of
International Human Rights Law (video)
• Aryeh Neier,The International Human Rights Movement: A History
(Princeton Univ. Press 2012)
•
Samuel Moyn,The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard
Univ. Press 2010)
