Beyond Human Rights: The Legal Status of the Individual in International Law (Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law)

A paradigm change is occurring, in the course of which human beings are becoming the primary international legal persons. In numerous areas of public international law, substantive rights and obligations of individuals arguably flow directly from international law. The novel legal status of humans in international law is now captured with a concept borrowed from constitutional doctrine: international rights of the person, as opposed to international law protecting persons. Combining doctrinal analysis with current practice, this book is the most comprehensive contemporary analysis of the legal status of the individual. Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now revised by the author in this English edition, not only deals with the individual in international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international investment law, but it also covers fields such as consular law, environmental law, protection of individuals against acts of violence and natural disasters, refugee law and labour law.

Anne Peters is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, and a Professor at the Universität Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, and Universität Basel, Switzerland. She has been a member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) in respect of Germany (2011–15) and served as the President of the European Society of International Law (2010–12). Her current research interests relate to public international law, including its history, global animal law, global governance and global constitutionalism, and the status of humans in international law.